BEIJING (REUTERS) - China's foreign ministry summoned a US embassy representative on Wednesday (Feb 27) to make stern representations over Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's condemnation of its move to expel three Wall Street Journal journalists last week.

The head of the foreign ministry's news department, Hua Chunying, also said that if the United States further harasses and restricts Chinese news agencies in America, China must take further action, according to a statement from the ministry.

The foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the Wall Street Journal had been in touch with the Chinese government over a February column that Beijing says carried a racist headline, and had admitted its "mistake".

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters that the newspaper had not formally apologised.

Toby Doman, spokesman for Wall Street Journal's publisher Dow Jones & Co, declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Reuters.

China last week ordered three journalists with the Wall Street Journal's Beijing bureau to leave the country after the newspaper declined to apologise for a column with a headline calling China the "real sick man of Asia".