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A former Chinese state media journalist has been sentenced on Friday to seven years in prison for espionage, his family has confirmed to the BBC.

Dong Yuyu, 62, who has been detained since 2022, was active in academic and journalism circles in the US and Japan and met regularly with foreign diplomats.

He was having lunch with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing when he was arrested by police.

At the time of his detention, Dong had been a senior staff member of the Guangming Daily, one of the five major newspapers linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

In February 2022, Dong was arrested while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat the day after the Winter Olympics ended in Beijing, at a restaurant where he had often met foreign friends.

The diplomat was also detained – then released several hours later amid protests from the Japanese government.

Dong met regularly with other journalists and foreign diplomats as part of his job.

His family said in a statement that according to a court judgement, two other Japanese diplomats Dong met with were named as “agents of an espionage organisation”, which is the Japanese embassy.

“We are shocked that the Chinese authorities would blatantly deem a foreign embassy an ‘espionage organization'”, said his family’s statement.

“Today’s verdict is a grave injustice not only to Yuyu and his family but also to every freethinking Chinese journalist and every ordinary Chinese committed to friendly engagement with the world,” they added.

The Beijing court where Dong was sentenced on Friday had a strong security presence, Reuters reported, as journalists were asked to leave and a diplomat said they were not allowed to attend the hearing.

“In the past, the Chinese court system has selected Western holidays to release news as it is a time when the public is focused on other matters,” the US National Press Club said in a statement on Tuesday, ahead of Dong’s sentencing on Thanksgiving night in the US.

While Dong’s trial had been completed in July 2023, he was held with no verdict and barred from seeing his family, the press club said.

Rights groups and advocates have criticised his conviction and called for him to be released.

“Chinese authorities must reverse this unjust verdict, and protect the right of journalists to work freely and safely in China,” Beh Lih Yi, Asia programme manager at the Committe to Protect Journalists told Reuters.

“Dong Yuyu should be reunited with his family immediately.”

Dong joined the Guangming Daily after graduating from Peking University’s law school in 1987.

In 1989, he was one of tens of thousands of students who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests. He was later sentenced to hard labour, but kept his job at the newspaper, according to a family statement.

He eventually rose to become deputy head of the editorial department, and was among the most pro-reform voices at Guangming Daily, the statement added.

A Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2007, Dong had also written several articles for the New York Times and was previously a visiting fellow and professor at several Japanese universities.