The Australian embassy in Beijing is trying to locate Sydney Falun Gong practitioner Nancy Chen, who disappeared in the city of Yibin, Sichuan province, last Wednesday.

A spokesman said the embassy was concerned for Ms Chen's safety and was in touch with the Chinese authorities to try to establish her whereabouts and contact her.

Her husband, Herbert Lu, said in Sydney he had received a phone call early yesterday from Yibin saying the Public Security Bureau had detained his wife because she was a Falun Gong practitioner. He said Ms Chen had been held in Beijing for 24 days in 1999 or 2000 before being deported. He thought his wife was on a Chinese government blacklist and might have been involved in a protest in Tiananmen Square but could not remember the details.

He said she had flown to the Sichuan capital Chengdu about January 17 with her six-year-old daughter after a few days in Hong Kong with friends. She had planned to stay with her parents in nearby Yibin.

It is understood Ms Chen entered the US consulate office in Chengdu early on Wednesday morning seeking help. She stayed at the consulate until the early evening, as consular officers notified the Australian embassy and tried to make arrangements for her family or friends to collect her. Eventually a consular officer took her to a nearby hotel where she met a family friend.

What happened next is not clear. Mr Lu said Ms Chen had phoned her mother, saying she had been kidnapped. She asked her mother to tell her husband to ask the Australian Government to "save me".

An officer at the Chengdu Public Security Bureau Falun Gong division would not discuss the case over the telephone.

Falun Gong practitioners from Australia and other countries have frequently been detained in mainland China in recent years before being deported. They have complained of brutal treatment and beatings by police.