Beijing: Hong Kong based reporter of Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, Ching Cheong, was jailed for five years for spying in China.
A Chinese court seized his property and the reporters confessed spying for Taiwan. The reporter was detained since April 2005.
Ching was arrested in the southern province of Guangdong where he had travelled to collect documents related to disgraced former Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang.
The verdict was announced six days after a Beijing court incarcerated a Chinese researcher working for the New York Times for 'fraud', signaling that the Communist Party regime will not tolerate dissent.
Ching is also deprived of political rights for one year and his personal property worth $37,500 has been confiscated.
"The penalty is a mitigated one considering that after Ching Cheong was detained, he voluntarily confessed to more espionage activities than those the state security departments had known about," a court document said.
"He also gave up his notebook computer, which contained evidence of espionage, to the authorities," the official Xinhua news agency quoted a document released by the court.
With Agency inputs
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