China deports US geologist after serving eight years in jail for selling state secrets

A US geologist convicted on state secrets charges and imprisoned in China has been released and returned to the United States, a human rights group said.

Xue Feng, who had been serving an eight-year sentence in Beijing No. 2 Prison, was immediately deported upon leaving jail, the US-based Dui Hua Foundation said in a release dated yesterday.

The rights group, which advocates clemency and better treatment for prisoners in China and had repeatedly raised Xue’s case with Chinese officials, said that he arrived in the US city of Houston on Friday evening.

“Dui Hua is delighted that Dr Xue has finally been reunited with his family in America after a terrible ordeal,” the San Francisco-based group’s executive director John Kamm said in the release.

The freeing of Xue could not be immediately confirmed with the US embassy in Beijing.

There is no listed phone number for the prison and its website had no information on Xue’s release.

Xue, a Chinese-born US citizen, was first detained in November 2007 over the sale of a database on China’s oil industry while working for US energy and engineering consulting firm IHS.