A VETERAN journalist working for a newspaper in Singapore was charged by China yesterday with spying for Taiwan.

The prosecution of Ching Cheong, who has reported on China for more than 20 years, came after a four-month investigation and may be intended to send a message to the media about the limits placed on press freedom by the Communist leadership.

Mr Ching, 55, a China-born Hong Kong citizen — and thus a Chinese national in the eyes of Beijing — disappeared on April 22 in southern China, where he was trying to obtain a manuscript of interviews with a Communist Party leader purged for opposing the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on student demonstrators.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in May that Mr Ching, the Hong Kong-based chief China correspondent of The Straits Times, was being held on espionage charges. His arrest has now been formally approved by a court in Beijing.

The official Xinhua news agency said that Mr Ching had admitted taking hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy military secrets for Taiwan’s National Security Bureau.

He had been recruited in 2000 and had used the alias Chen Yuanchun to buy “a great deal of information about China’s political, economic and especially military affairs”, Xinhua said. His actions were “detrimental to national security”.

Beijing and Taipei have spied on each other since 1949 when the Chinese civil war ended.

Mr Ching could be executed if convicted. Mary Lau, his wife, said: “We firmly believe that he didn’t do things that harm the country.”

The British Embassy in Beijing said that requests for consular access had been denied, even though Mr Ching holds a British National (Overseas) passport and should have the same protection rights as other British citizens. Alexandra Louizos, an embassy spokeswoman, said: “The Chinese authorities failed to recognise that . . . they think he is Chinese. All we can do is to keep trying.”

Mr Ching is the second employee of a foreign news organisation to be taken into custody in a year. Zhao Yan, a researcher for The New York Times, was arrested last October for revealing state secrets. China has 42 journalists in jail, more than any other country.

The Communist Party is tightening its grip on the media. The Culture Ministry said this week that it would bar new foreign television channels and step up censorship of imported programming to strengthen government control over popular culture.

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