By Nagesh Narayana: Subscribe to Nagesh's RSS feed
July 5, 2010 1:04 PM EDT
U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who attended a court session on Monday in Beijing, was apparently given the taste of state secrets law when an American geologist was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of supplying secret data to a US firm.
Xue Feng, 44, was arrested in 2007 for allegedly supplying the Colorado-based consultancy firm IHS Energy with what it says was secret database of Chinese oil industry. Xue maintained that the database was publicly available and that he was tortured to admit guilty.
But Chinese rules say any information on state-run firms is a state secret and invites punishment for violation. He was also fined $24,500.
A statement from the U.S. Embassy expressed its ''dismay'' and asked the Chinese authorities to free Xue on humanitarian considerations. ''Now that the Chinese legal system has ruled, I believe the time has come for Dr. Xue, who has already been detained for two and a half years, to be released,'' said Huntsman in the statement. ''I urge the Chinese authorities to take into account the long ordeal he has suffered and in the spirit of justice allow him to be return home and be reunited with his family."
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Three other Chinese nationals Li Yongbo, Chen Mengjin and Li Dongxu were also reportedly sentenced on similar grounds. In March, another China-born Australian national, Stern Hu, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of arranging and bribing state-run firms and mining giant Rio Tinto. The list is quite long.
Hardly a day passes without China charging someone for violation of its 1989 state secrets law, which it says will further revise soon to include more stringent rules covering even internet users under the ambit.
“They want to use the this law to force telecommunications and Internet companies to cooperate with the Chinese authorities in exposing the identities of people leaking state secrets,” Vincent Brossel of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders told Radio Free Asia recently.
The new law is likely to affect Internet service providers, users and cybercafes who will be required to supervise and report any violation of "state secret" laws online.
The "state secret", till now confined to dissidents and journalists, will soon be made applicable to net users and foreign companies which usually rely on Chinese-origin employees to get information.
The new law currently under scrutiny of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, defines a state secret as information that would damage China’s security or interests in political, economic, defense, and other areas.
A look at what constitutes a commercial secret in China virtually includes everything -- listing information related to strategic plans, mergers, equity trades, stock listings, reserves, production, procurement, management, finances, negotiations, joint venture investments, and technology transfers.
China has come under heavy criticism from global companies for its human rights record. With major online tech companies like Google facing restraints to operate in China, activists of freedom of press have expressed apprehensions that U.S. may no longer be in a position to defend its citizens or companies in China, if they were charged under these draconian state secret laws.
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