Hopes that Beijing would loosen social and political controls as the nation prospers economically have proved to be wishful thinking. If anything, the opposite is true. The charging last week of leading dissident Liu Xiaobo with subversion, after seven months' detention, is just the latest disturbing case.
According to a Xinhua report, Beijing police said Mr Liu 'has been engaged in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumours and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialist system in recent years'.
Mr Liu was taken away by police and held incommunicado in December, shortly before the release of Charter 08, a manifesto he and other dissidents drafted to call for, among other things, sweeping political and democratic reforms, respect for human rights and an end to one-party rule in the country.
If his detention last year was seen as a mind game by the communist authorities to warn the dissidents not to go too far in a politically sensitive year, Mr Liu's formal arrest for alleged subversion is the clearest sign of an intensified crackdown against political dissent.
In 2005, human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was arrested after he wrote several open letters calling on state leaders to stop suppressing freedom of religion. Gao was convicted of inciting subversion in 2006.
Another prominent dissident, Hu Jia, was arrested in 2007 after he wrote a series of articles criticising the Chinese government.
Aside from the arrests, Beijing has also moved to tighten control over the internet and the media ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic on October 1.
