A US citizen freed after being held in China for almost 100 days on suspicion of spying said his release was probably due to Chinese President Hu Jintao's upcoming visit to the United States.
China-born Xie Chunren, 56, was arrested on May 31 while on honeymoon in Sichuan province in the country's south-west. Police told him they suspected him of involvement in activities endangering national security, allegations he denied in repeated interrogations.
"They asked me so many questions. I just said, 'no, I didn't do anything'," Xie told Reuters by telephone from his home in New Jersey. "If there was a case, if I really did something, I don't think they would have released me."
Xie was freed on September 4, the day before Hu left on a trip to Canada, Mexico and the United States, and arrived home on Friday. He said he would have faced months more detention if not for Hu's visit.
His wife, who is Chinese, was not arrested. "I think I'm lucky. President Hu Jintao is going to visit the United States, so I think it was perfect timing for me. Otherwise, at least six months, I think, because six months is the legal time they can keep me," he said.
Hu had been due to hold talks with President George W. Bush in Washington last Wednesday but the meeting was postponed to enable Bush to focus on the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. The two are now expected to meet in New York this week on the fringes of the September 14-16 UN summit.
Xie said he was first held in hotels in the Sichuan capital, Chengdu, with two guards in his rooms at all times, and then moved to a building outside the city which he could not identify but said was not a jail. He stayed there for more than 90 days.
CONFINEMENT In August, the US embassy in Beijing said China suspected Xie of spying for Taiwan.
China claims the self-ruled island as its own, and both sides have been spying on each other since they split in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war.
China maintains that Xie confessed during interrogations that, under instructions from Taiwanese spy agencies, he had engaged in activities that "threaten China's national security".
"Given that Xie's crimes were relatively minor and his attitude in admitting them during the investigation was good, Chengdu National Security Bureau ordered him to write a letter of penance and removed the residential surveillance on September 4," a Foreign Ministry official told Reuters.
Xie said he had been fed and allowed to sleep throughout the detention and never tortured, the greatest hardship being confinement to small rooms. "I could walk inside my room, three or four steps to one wall and then I'd turn around and walk to another wall," he said.
Xie said he had been forced to sign an agreement pledging not to reveal the kinds of questions asked during the detention, but did say that many queries revolved around his connection to David Dong, a Chinese-American also known as Dong Wei who has been held in China since 2003 accused of spying for Taiwan.
Acknowledging he knew Dong, Xie said: "We never discussed anything against the Chinese people or the Chinese government." Chinese media have said that Dong Wei was recruited by Taiwanese military intelligence and received a monthly salary to steal state secrets.
Xie, who has travelled frequently to China for work related to his business selling nutritional supplements, said that while he was told at his release he was free to return to the country, he had no plans to do so for quite a while. "I didn't do anything and they can arrest me," he told Reuters. "Why should I go back again?"