China sentences US citizen for stealing state secrets

This undated photo provided by Jeff Gillis shows his wife, Phan Phan-Gillis

US businesswoman Phan Phan-Gillis was found guilty on Tuesday of stealing Chinese state secrets two decades ago, according to her lawyer, Shang Baojun. This verdict comes as mutual suspicions of spying between the world’s biggest economies grow. 

Two years ago, in spring, Phan Phan-Gillis, more commonly known as Sandy, was visiting China as part of an American trade delegation when she was seized by Chinese security officials while attempting to cross from the city of Zhuhai to Macau.
According to the Financial Times, Phan-Gillis was sentenced at a secret trial to three and a half years in prison for espionage activities alleged to have taken place between 1995 and 1998. News of her sentencing has not been reported in China. Born in Vietnam to an ethnically Chinese family, Phan-Gillis moved to the US and eventually settled in Houston, Texas. There, she worked as business liaison between China and the US, advising Chinese and American businesses seeking customers and investment from both countries. After being detained, she was taken to Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi autonomous region several hundred kilometers away, where she was eventually tried and sentenced. Phan-Gillis’s lawyer, said his client remained hopeful that she would be deported rather than serve her sentence in China.

“This is only the first trial, we have to wait to receive the official verdict and see after the period of appeals is over whether she will be able to leave the country,” he told the Financial Times. “If she is deported [back to the US], then I think Sandy will be able to accept this sentence.” 

According to her family, Phan-Gillis was a business consultant who traveled regularly to China and who also served as president of the Houston Shenzhen Sister City Organization.