UPDATE 1-China says WSJ admitted 'mistake' after its reporters were expelled

China's foreign ministry said on Wednesday 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".

Toby Doman, spokesman for Wall Street Journal's publisher Dow Jones & Co, declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Reuters. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters that the newspaper had not formally apologised.

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."