SHANGHAI—Spurning a personal appeal from President Barack Obama, a Chinese court on Monday sentenced an U.S. geologist to eight years in prison for trying to buy data about the Chinese oil industry, a heavy penalty that legal experts said is a warning to foreign businesses and a rebuke to Washington.

The Beijing Number One Intermediate Court fined 44-year-old Xue Feng 200,000 yuan, or about $29,850, in addition to the prison sentence, for attempting to obtain and traffic in state secrets.

Tong Wei, Mr. Xue’s lawyer, termed the sentence “harsh” and said few details of the allegations against Mr. Xue were made public.

In a statement issued shortly after the sentence, which came as the U.S. was celebrating its Independence Day holiday, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said Washington is “dismayed” at Monday’s sentence. It called for Mr. Xue’s “humanitarian release” and deportation.

The U.S. government has taken a strong interest in Mr. Xue’s case since he was detained three years ago. President Obama last year urged Mr. Xue’s release in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, and other U.S. government officials have raised the issue. And, in a strong sign of Washington’s attention to the case, U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman attended Monday’s 40-minute sentencing. Mr. Huntsman and other U.S. Embassy representatives have visited Mr. Xue almost 30 times since he was detained.

Although it has attracted less attention than other allegations involving Chinese secrets, Mr. Xue’s case nevertheless raises stark implications for foreign entities conducting research in China, a basic task of foreign multinational companies that operate here.

Other recent cases in China touching on secrets also involved other charges, such as this year’s trial of four Rio Tinto executives who were found guilty of holding steel industry secrets but also of taking bribes. Mr. Xue’s detention, by contrast, stemmed directly from his attempt to purchase a commercially available database of information about the oil industry.

Mr. Xue, a University of Chicago graduate and naturalized American citizen whose family lives in Texas, was seeking the information on behalf of his then-employer, an information services business now known IHS Inc.

IHS, based in Englewood, Colo., couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Monday’s sentence “sends a very bad signal to the foreign business community if they care to examine what happened,” said John Kamm, executive director of The Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco group focused on helping those detained in China. “This guy was doing his job,” said Mr. Kamm, who himself is a former chemical industry executive in China. “Where’s the damage to justify this? This is an outrageous decision.”

Mr. Xue’s case is the latest of several involving harsh penalties for foreign nationals, in what some observers see as a sign of a more confrontational international posture by China’s government. In the Rio case, Australian citizen Stern Hu was sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting bribes and taking commercial secrets. In April, China executed four Japanese men for drug trafficking, its first executions of Japanese nationals since the two countries normalized relations in 1972. And in December, the government executed British national Akmal Shaikh for smuggling heroin despite the strong protestations of the British government and others that Mr. Shaikh was mentally ill and that the courts had mishandled his case. The move prompted Britain’s then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown to say he was “appalled and disappointed” by China’s behavior.

Mr. Xue’s case has underscored the limits of the U.S. government’s ability to influence the conduct and outcome of Chinese espionage charges. The verdict’s timing on the U.S. holiday – coming a year after the trial concluded – appeared to be a calculate act of defiance.

Chinese security agents initially denied Mr. Xue the right to contact the U.S. Embassy and his whereabouts were unknown for weeks, while his extended detention, quick trial and alleged actions were likewise cloaked in secrecy. Detained in November 2007, Mr. Xue was formally arrested in April 2008 and tried in July 2009.

Mr. Xue’s lawyer said options about a possible appeal will be considered later.

The Associated Press, which brought the case to public attention last November even as the U.S. government was keeping word of Mr. Xue’s detention under wraps, has reported Mr. Xue showed U.S. Embassy representatives proof he was tortured.

“One notable aspect of this case was the Chinese government’s thumbing its nose at the (U.S. government’s) efforts to support Xue,” said Jerome A. Cohen, a New York University law professor and authority on China’s legal system.

Courtesy byonline.wsj.com