Peking Duck got the story first, but let me provide some follow-up. {Just assuming that everyone that reads this blog will read the Peking Duck faithfully as well. And if you aren't, you should.}.

The Standard provides a story this morning on Ching Cheong's arrest for trying to obtain a manuscript of interviews with Zhao Ziyang.

Ching Cheong, 55, a Hong Kong citizen and the respected China correspondent for the Singapore Straits Times, had insisted on entering China even though he knew mainland agents could be targeting him, his wife Mary Lau alleged Monday. Lau said she had heard from both Hong Kong and mainland sources that Ching could soon be charged with "stealing national secrets,'' a charge frequently levelled against journalists in the mainland.

Ching, a one-time deputy editor-in-chief of the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po newspaper, was arrested in a Guangzhou hotel on April 22 after receiving the Zhao interview manuscript, which he had been chasing for months.

...

The arrest seems to underscore Beijing's determination to keep any remarks attributed to Zhao before he died in January after 15 years of house arrest out of circulation.

...

Ching worked for Wen Wei Po, long seen as a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, from 1974 to 1989. He quit along with other journalists to protest against the Tiananmen Massacre.

...

According to the Washington Post, mainland intelligence agents had approached the publisher of that book, Xiang Chuxin, in Hong Kong, asking ``polite questions'' about the new manuscript. One of Xiang's employees was put under house arrest for weeks, according to the report.

Lau told The Standard that Ching was aware that publishers of the memoirs were being investigated previous to his mainland visit.

Ugliness... though this may backfire if Chinese underground press gets a hold of the manuscript of the interviews and floods the black market with the interviews. Though I doubt the black market would want to break this ban due to the political severity that is being meted out by the CCP on this issue.

SCMP this afternoon updates with an AP story from Beijing.

“Ching Cheong confessed: Following instructions from a foreign intelligence agency, he engaged in intelligence gathering activities in China and received a large spying fee,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.

It didn’t give details of what Ching was accused of doing or say for which agency or foreign government he was accused of spying.

Huh? Foreign intelligence agency? Wow. That's a big accusation and leaves me scratching my head.