A Beijing appeals court has upheld the eight-year prison sentence given to an American geologist for obtaining information on the Chinese oil industry, dimming hopes for his release in a case that has further strained US-China relations.
The Beijing high people's court, in a brief decision, rejected Xue Feng's arguments that the information he collected was commercially available and asserted the government's authority to classify material state secrets, said his lawyer, Tong Wei.
"They rejected all our arguments," Tong said outside the courthouse afterwards.
Xue, a 46-year-old oil industry consultant, has already been in custody for more than three years. His case has strained already troubled ties between Washington and Beijing and has been raised repeatedly in high-level meetings after he told American consular officials his interrogators physically mistreated him.
US ambassador Jon Huntsman, who attended the court to underscore Washington's interest, questioned the charges against Xue and called for his release.
"This has been a long, difficult and painful ordeal for Xue Feng, but not only for Xue, also for his wife, Nan, and two kids, Rachel and Alex," Huntsman told reporters. "We ask the Chinese government to consider an immediate humanitarian release for Xue Feng, thereby allowing him to get back to his family and his way of life."
Already trying to ease strains over economic disputes, China's military buildup and its assertive foreign policy, the Obama administration had hoped Beijing would free Xue and deport him before President Hu Jintao's state visit to Washington last month.
Instead, members of Congress confronted Hu about Xue. The conservative Republican head of the House foreign affairs committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Florida, and Kevin Brady, the Texas Republican who represents the suburban Houston district where Xue's family lives, separately pushed letters into Hu's hands urging Xue's release.
Before the appeals ruling, his older sister, who still lives in China, said her brother's treatment was now yoked to the larger diplomatic tensions between the two countries. "My brother is basically a sacrificial object, a funerary object, in the struggles of China-US relations," Xue Ming said in an interview.
Xue's case has come to symbolise China's arbitrary use of vague state secrets laws to protect powerful business interests, specifically the government's biggest oil companies.
Born in China and trained at the University of Chicago, Xue (pronounced shweh) was detained while on a business trip to China in November 2007. He was convicted of obtaining detailed information on the oil industry while working for the US-based energy information consultancy now known as IHS Inc. Included was a database listing locations and other geological information for more than 32,000 oil and gas wells belonging to China National Petroleum Corp and China Petrochemical Corp.
At his trial and appeal, Xue and his lawyer never denied he obtained the information, but argued that such information was publicly and commercially available in most countries. In fact, the database had been advertised for sale on the internet for several years. And, they said, the government only classified the database, power-point presentations and other documents after he obtained them.
Tong said that in rejecting Xue's appeal, the court did not even consider that the database and other information had been classified retroactively. Rather, Tong said, the court deferred to the government's unquestionable authority to declare information secret.
Xue reacted stoically to the verdict, Huntsman said, and the two talked briefly afterwards. "I think he was mentally prepared for it, disappointed of course. We all are," Huntsman said.
Held in a detention centre during his trial and appeal, Xue will be moved to a prison in the coming weeks. His avenues for appeal exhausted, his supporters are looking for a political solution.
Given the lack of judicial independence in China's authoritarian, Communist party-dominated system, high-profile cases such as Xue's are particularly susceptible to government influence. After Xue's appeals hearing last November, there were subtle signs Beijing might heed Washington's concerns.
The Beijing high court should have ruled around the time Hu travelled to Washington. Tong said that a lawyer for a co-defendant petitioned the court for an extension for reasons Tong said he was never told. The co-defendant, geologist Chen Mengjin, has already been released from prison after serving two and a half years and faces no more punishment.
