China Detains American Woman on Spying Allegations
22 September 2015 - 3:20AM
Dow Jones News
BEIJING—Chinese authorities have detained an American citizen
for six months over allegations of spying and theft of state
secrets, her husband and lawyers said Monday in the first public
disclosure on the case.
Phan Phan-Gillis—a 55-year-old Houston-based businesswoman of
Chinese descent—was on a trade delegation from Houston traveling
the southern coastal city of Zhuhai in March when she was taken
into custody, according to Jeff Gillis and her Chinese lawyers. She
was transferred to the inland city of Nanning where on Sunday
authorities placed her under criminal detention, a procedure that
often leads to a formal arrest, according to Mr. Gillis and the
lawyers.
Mr. Gillis and the lawyers said they haven't been given details
on what Ms. Phan-Gillis is alleged to have done. State-security
officials have given few specifics about her case and haven't
allowed her to directly contact her family, friends and lawyers,
Mr. Gillis said.
She has been granted regular visits from U.S. consular officers.
One of them, Tyler Allen, who has been handling the case declined
to comment. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the State Department's
Bureau of Consular Affairs didn't immediately respond to requests
for comment.
Phone calls to China's Ministry of State Security weren't
answered. A propaganda official at Nanning's public-security bureau
said she didn't have knowledge of the case.
"My wife isn't a spy or a thief," Mr. Gillis said in an
interview. "She is a hardworking businesswoman who spends huge
amounts of time on nonprofit activities in Houston and China."
At the time of her detention, Ms. Phan-Gillis was traveling in
China as part of a five-person trade delegation that included
businessmen and Houston municipal officials, according to Mr.
Gillis and Ed Gonzalez, a Houston city council member who led the
delegation. Mr. Gonzalez, in an interview, said nothing unusual
happened during the roughly weeklong trip—which included meetings
with local officials in the cities of Qingdao and Shenzhen—until
Ms. Phan-Gillis failed to emerge from immigration checks at
Zhuhai.
Mr. Gillis, a 53-year-old oil-and-gas services manager in
Houston, said he didn't publicize his wife's detention at first so
as not to jeopardize efforts by officials to secure her release. He
decided to go public ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's
arrival in the U.S. on Tuesday for a weeklong visit that includes
talks with President Barack Obama.
China's definition of state secrets is broad, and foreign
nationals—including U.S. citizens—have in the past fallen foul of
the law in their handling of information on the mainland. In April,
a U.S. geologist jailed in China for more than seven years after
being convicted of trading in Chinese state secrets was released
and deported to the U.S. That case underscored Beijing's deep
sensitivities about information it considers secret, and the limits
of foreign diplomacy in influencing such cases.
Ms. Phan-Gillis—born in Vietnam to descendants of migrants from
China's southern Guangdong province—moved to Houston in the late
1970s and became a U.S. citizen in the early 1980s, according to
Mr. Gillis, her husband of 13 years. For decades, Ms. Phan-Gillis,
who is known by the nickname Sandy, ran her own business
consultancy and also had interests in project management and
financing.
As president of the Houston Shenzhen Sister City Association—a
group that promotes business ties between the two cities—she has
helped arrange visits to China by business, cultural and sports
delegations from Houston and vice versa, according to Mr. Gillis
and public records published online by the Houston city
council.
--Olivia Geng contributed to this article.
Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 21, 2015 13:05 ET (17:05 GMT)
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