CHINA SENTENCES MAN TO DEATH FOR ESPIONAGE, SAYING HE SOLD SECRETS

[Under President Xi Jinping, China has sought to rally the public behind the cause of catching foreign and domestic spies. Last week, China celebrated its first National Security Education Day, and security officials have established an anti-spying hotline.]

By Javier C. Hernández

BEIJING — In a sign of China’s increasingly aggressive efforts to combat espionage and other security threats, the government said it had sentenced a former computer technician to death for selling 150,000 classified documents to foreign spies, according to state media reports on Tuesday.

The man, Huang Yu, 41, worked for a research institute specializing in cryptography in Chengdu, a city in southwestern China. He sold the materials, which included military codes, from 2002 to 2011, making about $700,000, the state-run broadcaster China Central Television reported. The government did not specify which spy agencies he had assisted.

Mr. Huang’s death sentence was the first known case of a Chinese citizen’s receiving the death penalty for espionage since 2008, when the governmentexecuted a biomedical researcher and a distant relative of his, accusing them of passing secrets to Taiwan.

The trove of information Mr. Huang is accused of selling, including 90 top-secret documents, is one of the largest known leaks in China in recent years, national security experts said.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has sought to rally the public behind the cause of catching foreign and domestic spies. Last week, China celebrated its first National Security Education Day, and security officials have established an anti-spying hotline.

In 2014, Mr. Xi signed a counterespionage law to more extensively track foreign spies and Chinese citizens who assist them. Last year, the government approved a sweeping national security law, broadening the definition of what constituted a violation.

The publicity given to Mr. Huang’s case reflected Mr. Xi’s determination to highlight the threats posed by foreign entities and the government’s tough approach to issues of national security, analysts said.

“The authorities are, in this way, advertising the fact that there is severe punishment available for crimes against national security,” said Eva Pils, a legal scholar at King’s College London. “I would read this as intending to produce a kind of warning effect.”

Cases of espionage have received wide attention in China recently. In January, officials announced that they were prosecuting a Canadian manwho ran a cafe near the border with North Korea on charges of spying and stealing state secrets. Last year, China detained four Japanese citizens on suspicion of espionage.

As part of National Security Education Day on Friday, Beijing officials hung posters at government offices warning about the risks of romantic relationships with foreigners, according to The Associated Press. The posters, titled “Dangerous Love,” told the story of how a spy named David, posing as a visiting scholar, seduced a young propaganda worker and persuaded her to give him secret documents.

The details of Mr. Huang’s case were revealed in a 15-minute special report on CCTV, which portrayed him as a disgruntled employee who contacted foreign spy agencies online in hopes of getting rich.

Mimicking the style of several recent televised confessions that the ruling Communist Party has used as a propaganda tool, the report showed Mr. Huang in shackles and an orange vest, shuffling down a dark hallway. In an interview with CCTV, he recounted how he arranged meetings in Southeast Asia with foreign spy agencies and stole materials from his wife and brother-in-law, who also handled classified information in their work.

“If there are other people who see me and they are doing similar things — betraying their country — I hope they’ll report themselves to the national security people,” he said in the interview. “That’s good for their family and themselves, and it will lead to a better outcome.”

Mr. Huang was arrested in 2011, and it was unclear why the authorities waited until now to publicize the case. His wife was sentenced to five years in prison, and his brother-in-law was sentenced to three years in prison, the state media reports said. They were both accused of negligent disclosure of state secrets.

The government’s decision to sentence Mr. Huang to death drew criticism from human rights groups. China is believed to execute more people each year than the rest of the world combined, though the government does not release official statistics.

After China pursued the death penalty for two citizens in 2008, accusing them of spying for Taiwan, the Bush administration and European diplomats forcefully denounced the decision.

On Wednesday, the American Embassy in Beijing said it was aware of Mr. Huang’s case but referred a reporter to the Chinese authorities for comment. Officials at the European Union and the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment.

While China has sought to gradually reduce its use of capital punishment in recent years, advocates have criticized officials for resorting to it even in cases of nonviolent crime, like corruption and drug trafficking.

William Nee, a researcher for Amnesty International in Hong Kong, called the decision to execute Mr. Huang a “deplorable reversal of the general trend.”

In an email, Mr. Nee said the government’s campaign against spying would fuel distrust in Chinese society.“This idea of spies being everywhere, common to China in the Mao era, to some extent, is now helping to increase paranoia and suspicion in society, and even greater xenophobia,” he said.

Follow Javier C. Hernández on Twitter @HernandezJavier.

Yufan Huang and Zhang Tiantian contributed research.

@ The New York Times