HONG KONG/SINGAPORE, - The chief China correspondent of Singapore's government-linked English-language daily, the Straits Times, has been detained in Beijing, the newspaper's publisher Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. said on Monday.

The group said that Hong Kong-based correspondent Ching Cheong, 55, was being held by authorities in the Chinese capital but declined to discuss details.

"We have been told by a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Singapore that Ching Cheong is assisting security authorities in Beijing with an investigation into a matter not related to the Straits Times," said a spokeswoman.
She added that the company had "no cause to doubt" that Ching conducted himself with "utmost professionalism".

Two newspapers said on Monday that Ching was detained on April 22 in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, when he travelled there to collect secret papers involving former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang who opposed the army's Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Zhao, a former Communist Party chief, was purged for opposing the army massacre of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of student protesters on June 4, 1989. He died in a hospital in Beijing in January.

Citing Ching's wife, Mary Lau, the Hong Kong Economic Times said the journalist had expected to obtain the politically sensitive manuscript from one of his sources.
An official with the Foreign Ministry spokesman's office said she had not seen the reports.

China-born Ching, a permanent Singapore resident and a Hong Kong citizen who has been working for the Straits Times since 1996, could be charged with "stealing core state secrets" by the Chinese government, the Washington Post reported, also citing Lau.

The Hong Kong government said it had no immediate comment on the reports, while the Hong Kong Journalists' Association said it was investigating the newspaper accounts.

China last October, arrested New York Times researcher Zhao Yan for “revealing state secrets”, an offence that carries the death sentence. The secrets were believed to be news that former leader Jiang Zemin was retiring from politics.
Zhao is yet to go on trial.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said recently that China had the most journalists in prison of any country for the sixth year in a row.

A Singapore government spokeswoman had no immediate comment.