At a public forum on Saturday, Tsang said "some progress" has been made in the case of Ching Cheong, a chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper and a Hong Kong resident who was arrested in April.

But he called on the Chinese authorities to release more details about the journalist's case, the Chinese-language broadsheet SingTao Daily reported.

"I know some progress has been made and I hope related people on the mainland could let us know as soon as possible what has happened to Mr Ching," Tsang was quoted as saying.

"When dealing with his case, I hope they could also treat this as soon as possible in accordance with the proper lawful procedures we know," said Tsang, who on Thursday was chosen by a majority of a 800-member Beijing-backed election committee to be Hong Kong's next leader.

Permanent security secretary Stanley Ying Yiu-hong said Sunday that China's Security Bureau had kept in close contact with Ching's family and passed on related information to them.

Ching was arrested in China's southern city Guangzhou in April.

Chinese authorities announced last month he was being held on espionage charges but have given few details of the reason for the arrest, saying only he had admitted spying for "overseas organs" in return for huge sums of money.

Ching's wife, Mary Lau, said she believed his arrest was connected with his attempts to acquire the manuscript of a publication about the late Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang.

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

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