The man has been in pre-trial custody since being detained in January, according to media reports.

"I can confirm the court will deal with the matter," Katerina Eliasova, a spokeswoman for the Municipal Court in Prague, told AFP.

She said the man, a Chinese national, was charged with "unauthorised activity for a foreign power" but declined to give further details, including on any trial date.

The Seznam Zpravy news site said earlier the man was the Prague correspondent of a daily run by the Communist Party of China.

He met Czech and Slovak officials in this capacity and tried to obtain information from them.

If convicted, he is facing up to five years in prison, Seznam Zpravy added.

The Czech intelligence service BIS regularly singles out China as a security threat, alongside Russia, in its annual reports.

In the 2024 report, it said that "members of Chinese intelligence services continued cultivating relationships with selected pro-China individuals on the Czech political scene".

These actors sought to find "sympathisers" who would promote China's interests, hamper Prague's cooperation with Taipei, and "avoid raising the issue of human rights in China".

Last year, the Czech foreign minister summoned China's ambassador over a cyberattack by the China-linked group APT31 targeting his ministry.

The ministry said the attack started in 2022 and targeted "one of its unclassified networks".

Prague has recently angered Beijing as the Czech senate speaker, Milos Vystrcil, from the right-wing opposition Civic Democratic Party, is on a four-day visit to Taiwan -- his second in six years.

Trying to keep Taipei isolated on the world stage, Beijing sees such visits as an infringement of the one-China policy, which Prague officially pursues, just like the rest of the EU.