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Amazing Spider-Man #40, April 1968, CGC 7.5

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus7/04/2010 10:28:06 pm PDT

One of tonight’s more troubling headlines:

Chinese Court Sentences US Geologist to 8 Years

An American geologist detained and tortured by China’s state security agents over an oil industry database was jailed for eight years Monday in a troubling example of China’s rough justice system and the way the U.S. government handles cases against its citizens.

Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court convicted Xue Feng of collecting intelligence for overseas and illegally providing state secrets.

[…]

Born in China and trained at the University of Chicago, Xue ran afoul of the authorities for arranging the sale of a detailed commercial database on China’s oil industry to IHS Energy, the energy consulting firm he worked for that is now known as IHS Inc. and based in Colorado.

The case has been seen as a troubling complex of the pitfalls of Chinese justice, […]

Xue languished in detention. His disappearance in 2007 and arrest did not become public for two years until reported by The Associated Press last November. During the early weeks of his detention, state security agents tortured Xue, stubbing lit cigarettes into his arms and hitting him on the head with an ashtray.

Later allowed visits by U.S. consular officers, Xue told them he wanted his case made public. However, his wife, who lives in Texas, disagreed, believing that quiet lobbying might be more effective and fearing that the publicity would trouble their two children and possibly jeopardize her relatives still living in China. Amid their disagreement, the U.S. State Department pursued back-channel diplomacy.

[…]

Aside from Xue, Cohen ticks off other instances of detentions without legal basis, among them Gao Zhisheng, a crusading rights lawyer disappeared by authorities repeatedly, and Zheng Enchong, a lawyer who spent three years in prison after revealing a corrupt land deal and is now in the fifth year of house arrest that has little legal basis.

These are increasingly apparent, visible signs of lawlessness,” said Cohen.

Chinese officials have wide authority to define state secrets, and the latitude makes it difficult for foreigners and Chinese alike to know when they are crossing the line.

Draft regulations released by the government in April defines the business secrets of major state-run companies as state secrets. In Xue’s case, the database had been prepared by a Chinese company and contained detailed information on the state of the Chinese oil industry, which is predominantly state-controlled.

There’s a lot that could be written about this story, and perhaps if I have time I’ll write up a Pages entry.

In the transition from a US-dominated world to a multi-polar world we will be faced with less influence in all manner of situations. This is the way of the world, and something from which we Americans have often been shielded overseas by our super-power status. Sure, drug traffickers and such usually face harsh treatment in many of the worlds’ courts, but in this case it was a business man arranging the sale of a database to one of the world’s premier petroleum industry service companies (IHS.)

Recommend reading the whole article.