It was the second time in recent days that Jon Huntsman, a former Republican governor of Utah who will soon leave his job in Beijing, has sparred with China over rights.
“I’m extremely disappointed in the outcome, although it wasn’t completely unexpected,” Huntsman said after the court upheld an 8-year sentence for US citizen Xue Feng received last year for arranging the sale of a Chinese oil database.
“We ask the Chinese government to consider an immediate humanitarian release of Xue Feng, thereby allowing him to get back to his family and to his way of life,” Huntsman told reporters.
Critics say Xue’s conviction was unwarranted under China’s vague state secrets laws, and Huntsman and the Obama administration have repeatedly pressed for his release.
“This case has been brought up in every single meeting that I’ve been involved with for almost two years,” Huntsman said, referring to dealings between Beijing and Washington.
“We’ll not let this one go.”
“He was disappointed, of course,” said Huntsman, who met Xue for the eighth time after the verdict. “We are all very disappointed when you consider that the charges are very, very questionable.”
China maintains the court ruling was properly handed down, but critics say China’s prosecutors and courts often do the bidding of party officials.
Xue’s case underscores the risks facing foreign businesses involved in information gathering within China, where the rule of law is often murky.
“This outcome will be greeted with dismay and concern in Washington and throughout the international business community,” John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, a US -based group that promotes prisoners’ rights in China, said in a statement.
Last year, an Australian citizen, Stern Hu, and three colleagues working for mining giant Rio Tinto were detained for stealing state secrets during the course of tense iron ore negotiations. The four were later convicted of the lesser charges of receiving kickbacks and stealing commercial secrets.
Huntsman’s brother said the ambassador, a fluent Mandarin speaker who was given his post by President Obama, will decide within a couple of weeks whether to bid for the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential race.
Were he to, his positions on China as Obama’s envoy are likely to come under intense scrutiny.
Huntsman was involved in the Obama administration’s efforts to steady relations with China after tension in 2010, when the two powers argued over Chinese Internet censorship, Tibet, US arms sales to Taiwan, disputed Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea and unease over North Korea.
In January, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a state visit to the White House, a summit that both sides said helped to improve ties, although there were no major policy breakthroughs.
Although Huntsman has been assertive in addressing US concerns over rights with China, he has used a soft, nuanced approach, mindful of antagonising China’s leaders, said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Peking University.
Measured rhetoric was extremely important in dealing with China, Zhu said.
“Most of the Chinese are opposed to provocative and assertive human rights diplomacy from the US ,” said Zhu. “In the past decade, we’ve seen that human rights concerns from Washington has always shown an undeniable aspect of realism, rather than idealism.”
This week, Huntsman clashed with China over online censorship. He posted messages on a Twitter-like Chinese microblog service, asking readers their opinions on a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Internet freedom, the Wall Street Journal reported.
His messages were deleted by censors, who often remove text that questions the wide controls on speech imposed by China’s ruling Communist Party.
Xue, a Chinese-born geologist, was detained late in 2007 after negotiating the sale of an oil industry database to his employer at the time, Colorado-based consultancy IHS Energy, now known as IHS Inc.
The database was classified as a state secret only after Xue helped sell it, according to the Dui Hua Foundation.
After Xue’s conviction last year on charges of attempting to obtain and traffic in state secrets, the US State Department said it was extremely concerned about his rights to proper legal process, and called on Beijing to free him.
