Washington  - A US citizen was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison on Friday for spying on behalf of the Chinese government, the Justice Department said.

Tai Shen Kuo, 58, pleaded guilty in May on a charge of conspiracy to deliver national defence information to a foreign government. Kuo provided a Chinese contact with the details of US arms sales to Taiwan and other secret US military communications from March 2007 until his arrest in February.

Kuo, a furniture salesman from New Orleans, Louisiana, is a naturalized US citizen originally from Taiwan. He was sentenced to 188 months in prison and a 40,000 dollar fine by a federal court in Virginia.

Gregg Bergerson, a weapons system analyst at an agency of the Department of Defence who gave Kuo the classified information, was sentenced last month to 57 months in jail. (dpa)