Chinese court sentences Houston-area geologist to 8 years
BEIJING, China
In pronouncing Xue Feng guilty of spying and collecting state
secrets, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court said his
actions "endangered our country's national security."
Its verdict said Xue received documents on geological conditions
of onshore oil wells and a data base that gave the coordinates of
more than 30,000 oil and gas wells belonging to China National
Petroleum Corporation and listed subsidiary PetroChina Ltd. That
information, it said, was sold to IHS Energy, the U.S. consultancy
Xue worked for and now known as IHS Inc.
The sentence of eight years is close to the recommended legal
limit of 10 for all but extremely serious violations. Though Xue,
now 45 and known as a meticulous, driven researcher, showed no
emotion when the court announced the verdict, it stunned his lawyer
and his sister, his only family member allowed in the courtroom.
"I can't describe how I feel. It's definitely unacceptable,"
Xue's wife, Nan Kang, said by telephone, sobbing, from their home
in a Houston, Texas, suburb where she lives with their two
children.
U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman attended the hearing to
display Washington's interest in the case. He left without
commenting and the U.S. Embassy issued a statement calling for
Xue's immediate release and deportation to the United States.
Xue's sentence punctuates a case that has dragged on for more
than two-and-a-half years and is likely to alarm foreign businesses
unsure when normal business activities elsewhere might conflict
with China's vague state security laws.
Chinese officials have wide authority to classify information as
state secrets. Draft regulations released by the government in
April said business secrets of major state companies qualify as
state secrets.
"This is a very harsh sentence," said John Kamm, an American
human rights campaigner whom the State Department turned to for
help last year to lobby for Xue's release. "It's a huge
disappointment and will send very real shivers up the spines of
businesses that do business in China."
Agents from China's internal security agency detained Xue in
November 2007 and tortured him, stubbing lit cigarettes into his
arms in the early days of his detention. His case first became
public when The Associated Press reported on it last November.
Like IHS, many multinationals have come to rely on people like
Xue to run their China operations. Another China-born foreign
national, Australian Stern Hu who worked for the global mining firm
Rio Tinto, was sentenced in March to 10 years for bribery and
infringing trade secrets that dealt with iron ore sales to Chinese
companies.
Born in China, Xue earned a doctorate at the University of
Chicago and became a U.S. citizen, returning to his native country
to work. By all accounts, including witness statements cited in the
court verdict, Xue poured his energies into his work for IHS,
trying to gather information on China's oil industry, contacting
former school mates from his university days in China.
Two of the three other defendants sentenced along with Xue on
Monday were school mates. Chen Mengjin and Li Dongxu, who worked
for research institutes affiliated with PetroChina were each given
two-and-a-half-year sentences and fined 50,000 yuan ($7,500). The
other defendant, Li Yongbo, a manager at Beijing Licheng Zhongyou
Oil Technology Development Co., was sentenced to eight years and
fined 200,000 yuan ($30,000). Xue was also fined 200,000 yuan.
Li and Xue arranged the sale of the database -- which was
originally prepared by a Chinese company for sale to PetroChina's
parent company and contained details on the coordinates and volume
of reserves for the 30,000 wells -- to IHS for $228,500, the court's
sentencing document said.
A spokesman for IHS, which is based in Englewood, Colorado, said
the company is disappointed by the news yet declined to comment on
China's broad interpretation of state secrets. In the past, the
spokesman, Ed Mattix, has said that Chinese authorities never
notified IHS that it was involved in any wrongdoing.
During Xue's closed-door trial, which ran over three dates last
July and in December, the court document said he defended himself,
arguing that the information he gathered "is data that the oil
sector in countries around the world make public."
David Rowley, Xue's thesis adviser at University of Chicago and
a geologist, said that the location and seismic and other data of
oil wells is commonly available and could not compromise Chinese
security since the government controls access.
"What frightens me most about this is that Xue Feng is, in my
experience, a straight-up individual who worked hard, who didn't
push limits, or try to pull a fast one by, but was simply honest
and entirely well meaning," Rowley said in an e-mail. "That's
IHS's business -- acquiring and redistributing data (bases) so he
was simply doing his job."
In rejecting Xue and his lawyer's arguments that no crime had
been committed, the court cited the National Administration for the
Protection of State Secrets as saying that the information Xue
received on China National Petroleum Corp. was classified as either
secret or confidential.
The court document indirectly acknowledged the difficulties Xue
and IHS would have collecting data in such a restrictive
environment.
"IHS Co. has information exchange agreements with many oil
companies, but exchanging information with Chinese oil companies is
very difficult. Because China controls energy information
relatively strictly, IHS Co.'s information and data on China are
not very complete," the sentencing statement cited one witness as
telling the court.