Xue Feng (; born February 6, 1965), is a

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong ...

geologist who worked for

IHS Inc. Accuris is an information services provider. History IHS Information Handling Services (IHS) "was founded in 1959 as Information Handling Services to provide information for aerospace engineers through microfilm databases". It subsequently gre ...

when he was arrested by the

Beijing State Security Bureau The Beijing State Security Bureau (; Beijing SSB) is a municipal bureau of China's Ministry of State Security tasked with national security, intelligence and secret policing in the country's capital. Like other state security bureaus, the Be ...

during a business trip to China. He was subsequently tortured, charged with espionage, and sentenced to 8 years in prison. On April 3, 2015, he was released from the Beijing No.2 Prison and immediately deported to the U.S.

Early life and education

Xue Feng was born on February 6, 1965, near the city of

Xi'an Xi'an is the list of capitals in China, capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populou ...

Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...

province in China. While pursuing a geology degree at Xi'an's Northwest University in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he acted as an interpreter and guide for visiting geologists. One geologist that he met, David Rowley, invited him to do his PhD at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. While at the

, Xue Feng worked on

ultra-high-pressure metamorphism Ultra-high-pressure metamorphism refers to metamorphic processes at pressures high enough to stabilize coesite, the high-pressure polymorph of SiO2. It is important because the processes that form and exhume ultra-high-pressure (UHP) metamorphic r ...

, a transformation that can be seen in rocks that have been to depths of 70 km or more. He graduated with a doctoral degree in geology. He worked as the Northeast Asia manager for IHS Inc. Xue has a wife, Nan Kang, and two children.

Arrest

On November 20, 2007, Xue Feng was arrested by the BSSB and charged with "exporting intelligence" for purchasing a commercially available database of Chinese oil wells. Residing in

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, Xue was on a business trip for IHS, Inc at the time of his arrest. Following his arrest, human rights activist

John Kamm John Kamm is an American businessman and human rights activist. He is the founder of The Dui Hua Foundation, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that promotes universal human rights in well-informed, mutually respectful dialogue with China. He i ...

told the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

that the BSSB had ignored the deadlines for notification and visits required by Chinese law and its consular agreement with the U.S., and had not provided US consular officials his whereabouts for more than three weeks following his arrest. Upon finally receiving access to US consular officials, Xue revealed he had been tortured, displaying cigarette burn marks on his arms. After taking office in 2009, President Obama pressed for Xue's release in meetings with Chinese officials, to no avail. Later appeals, attended personally by U.S. ambassador Jon Huntsman, were unsuccessful. During

Hu Jintao Hu Jintao (born 21 December 1942) is a Chinese retired politician who served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 2002 to 2012, the president of China from 2003 to 2013, and chairman of the Central Military Comm ...

's state visit to Washington, D.C., members of Congress confronted Hu about Xue.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen ( ; ; born July 15, 1952) is an American politician and lobbyist from Miami, Florida, who represented from 1989 to 2019. By the end of her tenure, she was the most senior U.S. Representative from Florida. She was Chairwoman ...

, at the time chairwoman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, and

Kevin Brady Kevin Patrick Brady (born April 11, 1955) is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 1997 to 2023. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district includes northern Houston, including The Woodlands. He reti ...

, who represented Xue's Houston district, separately pushed letters into Hu's hands urging Xue's release. After 8 years in the Beijing No.2 prison, he was released and deported to the U.S. on April 3, 2015.

Publications

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Early life and education

Arrest

Publications

See also

References

Further reading