Chinese activists evade web controls

Chinese dissidents say that despite the government's best efforts to stop them, they are successfully using the internet to spread their messages ever more widely through the world's most populous country.

"The more they do to block it, the more people want to get online," said Liu Xiaobo, who spent years in detention after leading a hunger strike in 1989 in support of the student democracy protesters on Tiananmen Square.

The government needs the internet as an integral part of China's economic opening up, but consistently tries to block anything it dislikes, stepping up its efforts during major events such as the National Party Congress, he said.

Although some subjects are still taboo, many of these internet discussions, bulletin boards and petitions have given birth to grassroots groups. Sometimes they succeed in having their causes taken up in the mainstream media, and even changing government policy.