The HKJA and other groups in the meeting with Leung expressed their concern that Hong Kong may be enacting a Chinese law and accepting Chinese definitions of what constitutes a violation of that law.
This has spawned a debate about media ethics and whether more concrete steps should be taken to regulate media activities," said the HKJA report.
"We don't know where he is, what exactly he is charged with or whether there will be a prosecution," HKJA chairman Daisy Li Yuet-wah, an assistant Ming Pao editor, said in an interview in Hong Kong in January.
An HKJA statement speculated that the Chinese allegations probably referred to Xi's news gathering and added, "The authorities alleged at the same time that Xi's behavior was 'unrelated to the normal work of a journalist.' We were deeply puzzled by these contradictory allegations."
The HKJA is pressing Chinese authorities for an open and fair trial of the pair and to allow the Hong Kong and international media to attend the proceedings.
She disclosed that HKJA sources in China reported that Xi had been followed each time he had gone to the mainland.
Li said the Chinese government has not responded to the HKJA's letters of protest.
While the HKJA seeks to free Xi, a mood of apprehension about 1997 hangs over Hong Kong's journalism establishment.
A 1993 report by the HKJA and London-based Article 19, a free-speech organization named for that article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, warned, "The auguries are not good.
The report points out that final interpretation of the law will be determined by a committee of the National People's Congress, not Hong Kong's judiciary as advocated by the HKJA and Article 19.