Australia-based academic leaves China after questioning | Reuters

By Philip Wen | SEOUL SEOUL Australia-based Chinese academic Feng Chongyi said late on Saturday he had boarded a flight leaving China, ending an ordeal that saw him interrogated by authorities and delayed from exiting the country.Feng, an Australian permanent resident who retains his Chinese passport, boarded the flight from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou and was scheduled to arrive in Sydney on Sunday morning. Flight tracking websites confirmed the plane had taken off. Feng's case had sparked concern among international academics and prompted Australian government intervention. "I'm on the plane," Feng told Reuters via text message shortly before his plane took off. "I will be back." His lawyer, Chen Jinxue, told Reuters that state security officers who had been questioning Feng daily told the academic on Saturday morning that he was free to leave.  As a condition for his departure, Chen said, Feng was made to sign a statement agreeing not to divulge details of his questioning or where it had taken place.China's foreign ministry could not immediately be reached for comment late on Saturday.In a short video message to supporters recorded shortly before he left China, Feng described his ordeal as "one of life's little accidents".  "Now it is over," Feng, a long-serving associate professor in Chinese Studies at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), said in the video seen by Reuters.

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