Saturday, July 17, 2010
Kansas City Star: Since its turn to market economics in the 1970s, China has widely prospered and taken pride in its rapid rise. But occasionally the veil slips and primitive authoritarianism stands revealed.
The latest incident is the eight-year sentence for a U.S. citizen accused of stealing state secrets.
And what were these “secrets”? A database, sold to a U.S. consulting firm, made up of the grid coordinates of some 30,000 Chinese oil wells. This is information commonly available in most normal countries.
Yet in China, the line between public and private, government and commerce, is too often blurred. In this case, the oil wells were owned by state-run firms, ergo the wells’ location was a “state secret” — as if the man accused in the case, Xue Feng, had gone around plotting the grid coordinates of missile silos.
Keen interest
U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman was present at Xue’s sentencing, rightly showing Washington’s keen interest in the case. Indeed, Xue should be released and allowed to return to the United States as soon as possible.
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