China charges US journalist 'spy'

Mr Wu is connected with a book on Tiananmen

China has formally charged a Chinese-born American journalist arrested nearly four months ago with spying for Taiwan, the authorities in Beijing have confirmed.

Wu Jianmin is accused of "taking money from Taiwan spy organs and entering the Chinese mainland to gather intelligence", the Foreign Ministry said in a brief written statement.

Last week, the authorities in Beijing released three Chinese-American scholars who had been convicted of spying for Taiwan.

Taiwan split from China in 1949 but China regards it as a renegade province that must be re-united with the mainland.

A Hong Kong-based human rights group, Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, said Mr Wu had frequently written about the suppression of the pro-democracy movement in China in 1989.

He is suspected of contributing to The Tiananmen Papers, a book on the discussions by China's top leadership before the 1989 massacre, in which hundreds, if not thousands, of pro-democracy protesters were shot dead.

Uncertainty

Mr Wu was arrested in the southern city of Shenzhen and faces 26 charges.

US citizen Li Shaomin was deported

Little is known about the case, but a US diplomat said on Wednesday that Chinese authorities had accused him of gathering information that "endangered national security".

It is unclear whether Mr Wu's case has any connection with Li Shaomin, Gao Zhan or Qin Guangguang who were convicted on similar charges last month. Mr Li was deported and the others were sentenced to 10 years in prison but released on medical parole.

Mr Wu, 46, taught at a Communist Party school and worked for a state newspaper in southern China from 1986 to 1988, said political activists. He is then thought to have left for the United States.

Another detainee, Xu Zerong, a China-born academic from Hong Kong, has still not been formally charged after being held in China for almost a year, according to the Information Centre.