Chinese journalist sentenced for leaking 'state secrets'

A Chinese journalist has been sentenced to seven years in prison by a Beijing court after being convicted of publishing a secret Communist Party document.

Freelance journalist Gao Yu, 71, was convicted and sentenced April 17 on charges she gave an overseas Chinese news site a report detailing an ideological strategy to counter internal pressure for democratic reforms, media outlets including CNN reported.

Yu was arrested in April 2014 and later appeared on state-run CCTV confessing to obtaining the secret document and sending it overseas, where it was published by the U.S.-based Mirror Media Group. Yu has said the confession was given under duress, according to Radio Free Asia.

"Document No. 9," as the secret report is known, discusses ways for the Chinese leadership to respond to calls for reforms including the release of political prisoners, the separation of powers among branches of government and the promotion of Western-style press freedoms.

Yu was imprisoned on similar charges in 1993 after reporting on Chinese political affairs for a Hong Kong magazine, Mirror Monthly, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). She was released in 1999 on medical grounds.

She was also arrested in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square protests and spent 15 months in jail. Yu was then the deputy editor of a newspaper that supported the pro-democracy movement.

China has the most journalists jail in the world of any country with 44, according to a Dec. 1 census published by CPJ.