China deports US geologist accused of spying after seven years

An American geologist who was imprisoned for more than seven years on a vague charge of "illegally procuring state secrets" has arrived home to Houston after being deported by China.

Senior US officials, including president Barack Obama and three US ambassadors to China, had for years urged top Chinese Communist Party and government officials to release the American, Xue Feng. But China showed little leniency, and Mr Xue served all but 10 months of his eight-year prison sentence.

Through most of the past decade, Mr Xue’s case has been a frustrating one for the US government and has been cited by human rights groups as an example of the vagaries of the Chinese legal system.

The fact that the Chinese government refused to release him before or during Mr Obama's visit to Beijing in November 2009 despite intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic talks revealed at the time how little leverage the United States has had in recent years in human rights advocacy in China. Mr Obama personally lobbied for Mr Xue's release during the visit, to no avail.

The case also underscored China's unwillingness, in legal proceedings, to recognise the status of Chinese who have given up their Chinese citizenship and become citizens elsewhere. Mr Xue was born in China but was a naturalised American citizen and had lived in the United States since earning a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Other Chinese-born Americans, including Hu Zhicheng, an automotive engineer, have suffered similar fates.

In November 2012, Chinese officials granted Mr Xue a 10-month reduction in his sentence for good behavior. He was first detained in Beijing on November 20th, 2007, and placed in a detention center under the watch of the Ministry of State Security, which oversees espionage and counterespionage matters.

Mr Xue was formally detained in February 2008, tried in July 2009 and then sentenced on July 7th, 2010. His years in formal detention before the sentencing were counted in the time served, as is normally the case in China.

Mr Xue was working for IHS, an American energy and engineering consulting company, when he was detained. He had introduced the company to an oil industry database that he believed was commercially available. After IHS bought the database, Mr Xue was detained. US officials were not allowed to see him for weeks. When he finally did meet with embassy officials, Mr Xue told them of how he had been mistreated and tortured, and he showed them cigarette burns from interrogators on his arms.

Chinese officials have wide powers in categorising items as state secrets, and they often do so retroactively, after a person has been detained. Many foreign officials and scholars say China’s state secrets charges are often used for political purposes.

New York Times