Mary Lau was given the latest news of her husband over the weekend in a letter from the Hong Kong Security Bureau, according to the Hong Kong Journalists' Association.

"She has been given notification in black and white, he is under house arrest in the capital," Mak Yin-ting, association honorary general secretary, told AFP. "The letter was simple; it said only that. It gave no indication of his condition."

A statement from the association said the letter had been signed by Hong Kong's police commissioner and delivered with "information from China's Ministry of State Security" dated April 23. The statement didn't indicate what that information was.

Ching, a 55-year-old reporter with Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, was arrested on April 22 by Chinese authorities who late last month announced he was being held on espionage charges.

Officials have given few details of the reason for the arrest, saying only that he had admitted spying for "overseas organs" in return for money.

Lau says she believed Ching's arrest, in the southern city of Guangzhou, was connected with his attempts to acquire the manuscript of a publication about the late, disgraced former Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang.

Zhao was purged and kept under house arrest for the last 16 years of his life for opposing the military crackdown on Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters on June 4, 1989.

Ching's arrest has caused international condemnation and activists in Hong Kong have been petitioning the local government to bring its influence to bear on the government in Beijing.

They warn that a lack of action by the Hong Kong authorities could put at risk what few hard-won freedoms the overseas press have in China.

"The government could certainly do more given the political sensitivity of the issue and its impact on this could have on press freedom on the mainland," said Mak.

"It also has implications for press freedoms here: Hong Kong is an information centre and to be a financial centre there has to be free flow of information."

Lau last week said her husband had been working for the Chinese authorities when he was arrested. She said he had offered advice on Hong Kong and Taiwan to a leading scholar at a top Chinese government-run academy.

In an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, Lau said Ching was asked by Lu Jianhua, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to help compile his reports commissioned by the central government. Lu has also disappeared and has reportedly been detained by the Chinese authorities.
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