Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong citizen working as chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, was formally charged on Friday with spying for Taiwan, four months after he was arrested.

"The Hong Kong Journalists Association is deeply concerned with the case of Ching Cheong," the group said in a statement.

"The HKJA strongly urges the Chinese authorities deal with Ching Cheong's case in a manner that is open, fair and consistent with the rule of law.

"We also demand the Chinese government respect his civil rights and allow him to exercise his rights, including the rights to have access to his relatives, to legal representation and to seek help from the Hong Kong government," it added.

Ching, 55, was arrested in April in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou although the foreign ministry waited until May to announce he was being held on espionage charges. He has since been held under house arrest in Beijing.

China's official Xinhua news agency said Ching set up "a number of channels for espionage" in Hong Kong and mainland China for Taiwanese intelligence between early 2000 and March 2005.

Xinhua also said Ching obtained "a great deal of information" on China's political, economic and particularly military affairs. It also accused him of receiving several million Hong Kong dollars (hundreds of thousands of US dollars) from Taiwan for his espionage activities.

It repeated a Chinese assertion that Ching had confessed.

His wife Mary Lau has said she believed Ching's arrest was connected to his attempts to acquire a publication about late Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang, who opposed the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

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