Foreign Reporters Protest Beijing’s Surveillance : China: Journalists say they are being tailed and that Chinese citizens are being warned not to talk to them.

The organization representing foreign journalists in Beijing formally protested to the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday the escalating official efforts to frighten Chinese away from contacts with foreign reporters.

About a dozen foreign correspondents have told colleagues of being tailed by plainclothes security officers at least once in the past few weeks.

Most correspondents have always assumed that their telephones are tapped and that China’s pervasive security apparatus seeks to keep tabs on their Chinese acquaintances. But the surveillance has recently become more blatant and heavy-handed, and growing numbers of Chinese are receiving warnings against seeing foreign journalists.

The government is clearly frightened by the wave of political liberalization that has swept the Soviet Bloc in recent months. The official media has reported little about these events but has stressed that strict political controls are necessary to prevent China from evolving into a democratic capitalist society.

Despite an unremitting propaganda barrage, anti-government sentiment among Chinese at all levels of society has remained intense in Beijing ever since last June’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators. Repression also remains intense. Martial law was lifted in January, but thousands of activists are believed still in jail.

The government now seems to have decided to increase the obstacles faced by reporters attempting to keep in touch with Chinese society and politics.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, quoted by the Associated Press a few days ago during a visit to Geneva, contended that journalists working in China “have great freedom,” but added: “I think that perhaps the freedom has been too extensive.”

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Beijing, in a formal letter delivered Wednesday to the Foreign Ministry, said “there is no other place in the world today where foreign correspondents are subject to such intense, systematic harassment as we are in China.”

The letter requested a meeting of leaders of the club, which represents the 170 foreign journalists in Beijing, and officials of the Foreign Ministry and security agencies.

The letter cited several examples of recent incidents, including cases in which:

* Three Chinese citizens were detained upon leaving the home of a European correspondent and interrogated for nearly one hour.

* A European journalist was followed on several occasions by security agents who sought to surreptitiously photograph meetings with Chinese friends by using a camera partially concealed in a dummy attache case.

* Chinese friends of correspondents were told by their employers that security agents have monitored their contacts with foreign journalists. The Chinese were told that such meetings must cease.

Not all Chinese who maintain friendships with foreigners are automatically harassed. Surveillance is to some degree focused on those journalists who most often report leaks of information that has not yet officially been made public.

The Communist Party and government frequently circulate high-level decisions to thousands or even millions of officials and party members in internal documents before any public announcement is made. While known to huge numbers of people, this information remains officially secret until it is published in the state-run media, a situation that inevitably produces tension between the foreign press and the government.

Foreign Minister Qian, in his comments in Geneva, said that foreign reports of stepped-up surveillance are inaccurate. But he also warned that any “secret activities” by correspondents in Beijing would provoke a response.