WASHINGTON — The Chinese government denounced on Monday the United States’ secret expulsion this fall of two Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage, and asked for a reversal of the action. The expulsions appeared to be the first of Chinese diplomats suspected of spying in more than three decades.

The two men were detained with their wives after the group drove through the outer perimeter of a sensitive military base in Virginia — the one that houses a fenced-off inner compound with the headquarters of the Navy’s elite commando unit, SEAL Team 6, according to two people briefed on the episode.

The statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, made at a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing, was the first official acknowledgment by either side of the expulsions, which were reported by The New York Times on Sunday. Neither Washington nor Beijing made an announcement at the time of the expulsions, and the State Department still has not publicly acknowledged them.

The two Chinese Embassy employees from Washington drove in late September without permission onto the base, the Dam Neck Annex of Naval Air Station Oceana, five miles south of downtown Virginia Beach. The men and their wives ignored a guard’s order to turn around just inside an entry checkpoint and depart. They did not stop until fire trucks drove onto a road to block their path, according to people briefed on the intrusion.