Correspondents in the former Soviet Union used to tell the story of the foreign reporter who bought two ice-creams when out walking and handed one over his shoulder to his KGB shadow. In Beijing these days agents follow selected journalists in a Mercedes-Benz equipped with video cameras.
The State Security Ministry officials were in evidence monitoring expelled German journalist Juergen Kremb as he tried to attend his last Foreign Ministry briefing in Beijing three weeks ago while serving 48-hours notice to leave the country.
The Der Spiegel correspondent was thrown out for allegedly holding secret documents illegally, though no charges were brought. The treatment of the German reporter follows a pattern.
In October, China expelled a correspondent from the Japanese publication Yomiuri Shimbun, accusing him of buying State secrets, and in September a Chinese national working for the American CBS network was held for three days and had materials taken before being allowed to leave for her home in the United States.
The Foreign Correspondents' Club in Beijing has protested at harassment of its member and the vague laws which it says has left the foreign press corps in a dangerous and vulnerable position, subject at any time "to pressure, harassments and even brutal treatment by police or security agents acting on their own authority".
The consequences of offending the authorities are more serious for Chinese journalists, a number of whom have been jailed for leaking State secrets. But the actions against foreign correspondents represent more than an attempt to quash free journalistic inquiry, in itself a violation of internationally recognised human rights norms. The Government is effectively intimidating Chinese people who provide them with information concerning human rights issues.
All three expelled correspondents were active in monitoring the dissident movement in China (Mr Kremb is the author of a biography on expelled dissident Wei Jingsheng).
In each case the police made a search of their files, sending every activist a message: that contacts with foreign journalists will become known to the State security organs. The rise in the expulsion rate of foreign journalists coincides with a period of intense activity by pro-democracy activists.
Since mid-summer, dissidents from different provinces have been submitting applications - always rejected - to register branches of a new China Democracy Party. Their platform is the foreign press, as all news of their activities is banned in China.
A small number is so persistent in trying to get publicity in outlets such as Voice of America's Chinese language service, said a knowledgeable source, that they could seem to court martyrdom in a competition among themselves to succeed Wei Jingsheng as the authentic voice of Chinese dissidence.
No more than 100 activists are involved in trying to reunite the democratic forces crushed in Tiananmen Square nine years ago, but for the first time since Mao Zedong's communist troops forced the Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-shek to flee to Taiwan in 1949, a rival to the Communist Party is making an attempt to organise on the mainland.
This clearly irritates the Communist Party as it approaches the 50th anniversary of the founding of Communist China next October 1st. The eight official political groups aligned to the communist party are known as "flower-vase" parties for their decorative qualities. Their activity coincides with a major thaw in China's stated human rights policy. After the European Union and the US suspended support for a resolution condemning China's human rights record at the UN Human Rights Commission in the spring, China agreed to an international dialogue on human rights.
This was followed in September by the first visit by a UN Human Rights commissioner to China (though Mary Robinson undermined the case for free journalistic inquiry by blocking this correspondent from accompanying her to Tibet) and shortly afterwards by the signing by Beijing of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which enshrine citizens' rights to set up political organisations.
Mrs Robinson said her office was pressing China to review its laws relating to economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights, while acknowledging the difficulty of "instilling a sense of a culture of human rights". China's UN ambassador Qin Huasun expressed his country's willingness "to further its co-operation with the UN in the field of human rights", an approach which has helped China achieve economic and political goals, including the renewal in the US of Most Favoured Nation status and new levels of co-operation with the US and EU.
In recent weeks China hosted its first ever international human rights forum, bringing together experts from more than 20 nations, and held a bilateral human rights dialogue with EU nations. But on the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, critics say little has changed on the ground and that all the human rights diplomacy has simply bought Beijing some time.
The civil and political rights covenant has to be ratified by the National People's Congress which could take years; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which was signed by Beijing in 1997 still awaits ratification.
Amnesty International claims that China still holds more than 2,000 political prisoners, some convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes which are no longer recognised by Chinese law, and that 250 people are still imprisoned following the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. The rights organisation also says the imprisonment and torture of non-violent advocates of Tibetan freedom continues.
In October, the US State department expressed the view that China was backtracking on improvements in its human rights record early this year, following the arrest of dissidents and pro-democracy campaigners.
Last month, according to the New York-based Human Rights in China, police detained more than 140 Christian worshippers and beat up some of their leaders in a new crackdown on underground Protestant churches. Discussion seminars which debated democracy, including the China Development New Strategy Institute, which initially had official backing, were shut down.
Against that, the realm of individual liberty has expanded enormously in China compared to two decades ago and tens of thousands of individuals today file lawsuits against Government agencies and officials.
Street demonstrations by laid-off workers or protesters against corruption have been permitted, though political protests are not tolerated. Unofficial houses of Christian worship are operating openly.
Investigative reporting has become more vigorous in the Chinese press and television, uncovering abuses of power by corrupt officials. A Beijing official, quoting Deng Xiaoping, said China is "crossing the river stone by stone" towards full civil rights.
But there have been many slippages. After ruling the country unchallenged for half a century, the communist authorities clearly find it difficult to abide dissent or news of dissent, and despite glimmerings of a Beijing spring of 1998, the real thaw has yet to come.