Mysterious online calls for Chinese rallies inspired by Middle Eastern demonstrations — with another called for Sunday — have fallen flat, though foreign media have flocked to the proposed rally sites to see if anyone would show up.

Although no large protests have occurred, at least one activist was detained for being present at a suggested demonstration spot.

One journalist was attacked by unidentified men while trying to report on the situation in Beijing last weekend, and many others were harassed by police who confiscated equipment and erased video footage.

A European broadcast journalist said Thursday that he was told by police there would be unspecified consequences if he went again to the specified site on Beijing’s popular Wangfujing shopping street. He asked not to be identified by name for fear it would affect his future Chinese visa applications.

He said that during his videotaped meeting at a police station Wednesday, officials told him he would be punished if he filmed the shopping street again and that his normal life in China would be disrupted. He said three other colleagues from other media reported having similar conversations with police.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said in a statement that some journalists reported being “accused of trying to help stir up a revolution, disrupt harmony in China and simply cause trouble.” The warnings came days after police told reporters that a section of Wangfujing and an area near People’s Square in Shanghai were off-limits.

An Associated Press journalist who met with police Thursday was told his journalist card could be revoked if he went to Wangfujing again without prior approval from the local district office.

The requirement appears to signal a tightening of reporting rules in China, which were liberalized ahead of the Olympics to allow foreign media to travel freely and interview anyone as long as they first asked permission from the interviewee. Some sensitive areas, such as Tibet, have remained off-limits to reporters without special permits.

Online posts of unknown origin that first circulated on an overseas Chinese news website nearly two weeks ago have called for Chinese to gather peacefully at sites every Sunday in a show of people power meant to promote fairness and democracy. A renewed call Monday expanded the target cities from 27 to 35. China’s extensive Internet filtering and monitoring mean that most Chinese are unaware of the appeals.

David Bandurski, a media issues expert and China watcher at the University of Hong Kong, said the government reaction to the appeals has been surprisingly strong, particularly since no protests apparently took place.

“We’re seeing sparks (online) but we don’t even know exactly where these sparks come from, or how representative they are of dissidents in China,” he said.

The messages called for a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” — the name of the mass protests in Tunisia that ousted that country’s longtime president and sparked the ongoing wave of revolts across the region.

A human rights activist who posted messages on Twitter about being present near the specified site on Wangfujing on Feb. 20 has been detained by Beijing police on suspicion of taking part in an illegal demonstration, the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in a statement Thursday.

The group said Wei Qiang was believed to be the only individual to be criminally detained for showing up at the rally location.

Government anxiety over possible protests could be linked in part to the session of China’s legislature that begins Saturday in Beijing, but Bandurski said official concern that simmering social issues could boil over was more likely to blame.

“Political meetings are always a cause for the jitters in China ... but it’s not the meetings themselves that are so key,” he said. “It’s the fact that China is facing some really serious questions about the future of its economic growth, whether it’s sustainable and how, and the role political reform should play in that future.” Many Chinese are frustrated over inflation, corruption and inadequate social benefits, the same issues said to have pushed people in the Middle East to take to the streets.