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Two jailed in China for selling military secrets

The photographs included hundreds of China's first aircraft carrier.

By Ed Adamczyk
The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning. CC/ wikimedia.org/Yhz1221
The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning. CC/ wikimedia.org/Yhz1221

DALIAN , China, March 11 (UPI) -- Two men in China have been sentenced to prison for selling photographs of military projects and equipment, including hundreds of photos of China's first aircraft carrier.

The men, identified only as Han and Zheng, received six- and eight-year sentences, respectively, in Dalian, Liaoning province in northern China, for leaking state secrets.

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Han, 30, was approached by a man identifying himself as a reporter, and was paid to photograph some of the many military projects in Dalian, a major defense manufacturing center, according to evidence presented in court.

The men sold the photographs to foreign contacts, although it was not made clear who purchased them.

Zhang, 23, delivered several hundred photographs of China's first aircraft carrier, also named Liaoning, which has long been in port in Dalian to be refitted. Built by the Soviet Union in 1988, it was purchased by the Chinese military in 1998.

The two men were tried under a law passed this year allowing the Chinese government to seize any property "linked to activities deemed harmful to the state," although the aircraft carrier has been in plain sight for years. U.S. Secretary of defense Chuck Hagel visited it in 2014.

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