Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong was detained in April 2005 in southern China and sentenced in Beijing to five years in prison this August, convicted of spying for Taiwan, the self-ruled island over which Beijing claims sovereignty.

Ching was denied a second hearing and on Friday the official Xinhua news agency said Beijing's Higher People's Court had rejected his appeal.

"We find it hard to accept and are shocked," Ching Hai, the journalist's brother, told Hong Kong Cable TV outside the courthouse in Beijing.

"We find it unfair and it casts suspicions on China's transparency and fairness in their state secret procedures."

In his defence, Ching said he had never given documents containing state secrets to the Taiwan foundation he was convicted of dealing with, Hong Kong Cable TV reported.

He also urged the central government to waive the sentence, invoking the "one country, two systems" framework under which Hong Kong is governed. He noted that the former British colony had yet to adopt a controversial anti-subversion law.

Law Yuk-kai, director of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, said the ruling did not bode well for the protection of human rights in China and betrayed serious flaws in the legal system.

"This is a clear case of a very defective legal system in which the suspect has to prove his innocence," he said.

"As far as we can see, the Chinese authorities ... have been insistent on convicting him, despite the weak evidence and outcry in Hong Kong and in the international community."

Singapore's Straits Times said it would issue an official statement later in the day.

Ching's wife originally said he had gone to southern China to collect documents relating to disgraced former Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang.

In August, Ching was also deprived of his political rights for a year and had property worth 300,000 yuan ($37,700) confiscated.

China is the world's leading jailer of journalists, with at least 32 in custody and another 50 Internet campaigners also in prison, according to advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Ching, like many Hong Kong residents, holds a passport of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as well as a British National (Overseas) passport issued in the waning days of British colonial rule.

He is a permanent resident of Singapore.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Tan Ee Lyn and Chris Buckley in Beijing)

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