The Chinese authorities have indicted an American engineer on charges of stealing Chinese state secrets and bribery, the US said on Friday.
Fong Fuming, who is in his 60s, has been in detention in China for 19 months and was indicted on Sept. 29, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a daily briefing.
"We've consistently urged the Chinese government to resolve the case as soon as possible, and we'll continue to do so .... We think that it is a violation of international standards, certainly," the spokesman added.
The US has had regular consular access to Fong, most recently on Aug. 15, he said.
Fong's case follows the release of three US-based scholars convicted of espionage shortly before US Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Beijing in July. Two were expelled.
US President George W. Bush plans to visit China later this month for the first time in his presidency. He is scheduled to meet Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shanghai.
The US and China ended on Thursday three days of dialogue on human rights -- their first since the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
"The Chinese received a clear and consistent message about the importance of human rights in the US-China relationship. We had frank exchanges on a wide range of topics," Boucher said of the talks, which took place at the assistant secretary level.
"We have discussed during this round having another round of the dialogue with the Chinese, but at this point no final decisions or dates have been set," he added.
In unusually blunt language, Boucher also lamented that China had not used missile talks held in Beijing this week to pledge adherence to an agreement on missiles reached with the US in November.
"The United States made clear that our intention was to achieve an authoritative clarification of China's willingness to implement fully the terms of the US-China November 2000 missile non-proliferation arrangement and to take appropriate action to implement these commitments," he said.
"We are frankly disappointed that China is not in a position to provide authoritative assurances in this regard."
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