BERLIN - Germany has arrested and indicted a man suspected of spying for China's secret service, the prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.

The man, identified as Klaus L. according to German reporting rules, is a political scientist and had worked at a think tank since 2001, the prosecutor said in a statement.

He was recruited by the Chinese intelligence service during a lecture trip to Shanghai in 2010 and had handed information regularly for money and trips to China until November 2019, the office said.

The suspect, who will appear before a Munich court on Tuesday, had collected information through his various high-ranking political contacts which he had developed over the years working for the think tank, it said.

Broadcaster ARD said the man worked for the Munich-based Hanns Seidel Foundation, a think tank associated with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The foundation had no immediate comment.