A retired professor at China's prestigious Tsinghua University and renowned expert on solar energy was given a suspended three-year jail term on Tuesday on embezzlement charges.

 

Xue Zuqing, 69, transferred more than 1 million yuan (US$128,500) from a fund in the Tsinghua Solar Co. Ltd, a state-owned enterprise where he worked as general manager, to his wife's bank account in August 2002, the Haidian People's Court in Beijing heard.

 

The money was later used by his sister to pay for a new apartment.

 

The company, jointly set up by Tsinghua University and a Beijing glass factory, established the fund by selling 20 percent of its stock to a solar energy research institute in east China's Shandong Province in 1999.

 

Xue recovered the money in September 2003, after he was dismissed as general manager in March the same year.

 

The court gave him a five-year reprieve for his cooperation in the investigation and for returning the money.

 

Xue was an acknowledged expert in the solar energy industry and an inventor of all-glass evacuated collector technology, which has become widely used in the solar energy industry. He won national awards for technological innovation, including the State Science and Technology Awards in 2000.

 

Xue retired from the Tsinghua University as an associate professor in electronics engineering in 2002.

 

With total assets of 290 million yuan (US$37.3 million), Tsinghua Solar Co. Ltd is one of the world's largest manufacturers of solar products.

 

(Xinhua News Agency February 6, 2007)