By RENEE SCHOOF - Associated Press Writer

BEIJING, Dec. 14 (AP) -- China today accused the United States of meddling in its internal affairs by condemning the 14-year prison sentence given to dissident Wei Jingsheng.

Wei was convicted of sedition and sentenced during a one-day trial Wednesday.

He served 14 1/2 years in prison after writing essays in the late 1970s calling for democracy. Upon his release in 1993, Wei immediately resumed promoting democracy and he was taken into custody in 1994 after less than seven months of freedom.

The White House, State Department and House of Representatives on Wednesday all protested Wei's conviction and called for his release.

These statements are "unwarranted accusations and attacks," Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Jian said today.

Chen's statement, read at a briefing, focused on the United States and did not mention any other country by name, although Germany and Britain have also expressed dismay over the case.

"We strongly condemn these malicious moves by the U.S. side that constitute a serious infringement on China's sovereignty and interference in China's internal affairs," he said.

The United States should stop such "vicious actions" in order to prevent harm to relations with China, Chen said.

A New York-based rights group, Human Rights Watch-Asia, called on the Clinton administration to organize international support for a strong resolution condemning China for rights abuses when the U.N. Human Rights Commission meets in Geneva in March.

"The Chinese government must be held accountable for its treatment of Wei and for all ongoing human rights abuses in China and Tibet," the group said in a statement.

Resolutions critical of China have been debated by the commission in previous years and voted down.

Chen said this was another form of interfering in China's internal affairs. Countries that criticize China before the Human Rights Commission should "stop their futile, harmful activities that also violate international laws," he said.

In Hong Kong, a half-dozen protesters today took turns squeezing into a hastily constructed metal cage padlocked to railings outside the office of the Xinhua news agency, China's de facto embassy in the colony.

Taxi driver Shing Waipong said his first thought when he heard of Wei's sentencing on the radio was: "The Chinese people are slaves."

Other Hong Kong residents said they feared that Wei's fate was an example of what could happen to them when China takes control of the British colony in 1997.

Virginia Fung, a legislator who joined today's protest, described the worries of her constituents approaching her in the streets: "They say, `Will this happen to me in the future?' I say I don't know."

Lawmakers raised the arrest repeatedly in questioning Governor Chris Patten in the legislature today, and newspapers published angry editorials.

Patten tried to reassure them, saying Britain had made several proposals to China on preventing laws against treason or subversion being used to silence dissidents.

"I guess that Mr. Wei will be in many people's thoughts and prayers this Christmas, and he'll certainly be in mine," Patten said.