A 20-year-old factory worker who joined a banned political party was sentenced to jail for 18 months yesterday, his mother said.
A court in southern China's boomtown city of Shenzhen found Xue Mingkai guilty of subversion of state power because he joined the US-based China Democracy party last April, Xue's mother Wang Shuqing said.
Xue was the latest of several people jailed in recent months for subversion or other vaguely defined laws that critics say are often used to silence dissent.
Human rights groups had said Xue faced up to 10 years in jail and three others he was in contact with had also been arrested and tried for subversion, in Liaoning, Hunan and Hubei provinces.
"Since I was young I did not like the abuses of the one-party dictatorship and I wanted to establish a party to participate in politics and change the Chinese Communist party's way of governing," Xue said during interrogation, according to a submission by the defence.
Founded by dissidents in 1998, the China Democracy party was quashed six months later by the Communists . Dozens of founding members were arrested and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison, most on charges of subverting state power.
After the crackdown, some of the founding members fled to the US.