Beijing ? A Chinese-born U.S. citizen who lives in New York and runs a U.S.-based trading company has been imprisoned here since last September on suspicion of spying for Taiwan for the last 14 years, official Chinese media reported Wednesday.

The reports said David Wei Dong, also known as Dong Wei, was accused of taking $3,000 a month from Taiwan’s National Security Bureau and Military Intelligence Agency to collect information about Chinese activities in the United States and Chinese attitudes toward Taiwan’s political and economic affairs. He also set up a foundation at St. John’s University in New York with money from the Military Intelligence Agency to bring over students from mainland China who later could be recruited as Taiwanese spies, according to the unusually detailed reports, which quoted Chinese officials.

China and Taiwan have often arrested people accused of espionage as part of the long standoff between their governments, which revolves around Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan must reunite with the mainland. Last December, for instance, China announced 43 people from Taiwan and the mainland had been arrested on spying charges shortly after Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian detailed the whereabouts of nearly 500 Chinese short-range ballistic missiles along China’s southern coast.

Dong’s case was considered notable because he is a U.S. citizen and entitled to consular protection. The last U.S. citizen arrested on charges of spying for Taiwan, Li Shaomin, a professor at the City University of Hong Kong, was convicted in July 2001 and immediately expelled after being held for five months. He later said the charges were untrue.

Dong, 52, was described as a native of China’s Sichuan Province who went to the United States to study in 1986 and became a naturalized citizen in 1995. China Daily and the Global Times, two Beijing-based newspapers controlled by the government, said he was taken into custody in the southern city of Guangzhou shortly after entering China 10 months ago on what he described as a business trip. The Global Times, without citing sources, predicted he would be convicted and made to serve a sentence in China rather than be expelled like Li.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said U.S. consular officials in Guangzhou were notified at the time of Dong’s arrest and, according to international convention, have visited him in prison regularly. The last visit was June 4, a spokeswoman said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry and Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing did not respond to requests for comment. Similarly, a spokesman for Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said he had not heard of the allegations against Dong.