China has expelled American academic Mr Li Shaomin following his conviction for espionage. Two other US-based scholars were convicted on spying charges yesterday.
Mr Li was put on a plane to San Francisco as Beijing appeared to be trying to improve relations with the United States by moving to resolve the cases ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday.
China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Mr Li - a management professor at City University in Hong Kong - was expelled, a day after the conviction ofUS permanent residents Ms Gao Zhan and Mr Qin Guangguang.
Mr Li, an American citizen, was convicted of spying on July 14th. The court did not impose a sentence and ordered his expulsion.
Ms Gao, accused of helping Mr Li gather intelligence for Taiwan, was not formally ordered expelled after her conviction yesterday because she is a Chinese citizen. Both insisted they were innocent.
But Ms Gao asked for medical parole after her conviction, a means China has used in the past to expel convicted dissidents, and US State Department spokesman Mr Philip Reeker said Washington was pressing the Chinese government "at every level" to free her.
There was no word on whether Mr Qin - who works for a U.S. medical group and was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and Stanford -- had also applied for medical parole or if there were other reasons to expel him.
The scholars were detained earlier this year when Beijing's relations with the administration of President Bush were strained due to the downing of a US military spy plane over Chinese airspace.