9/25/2002 06:28

BEIJING (AP) A Chinese author who posted essays about politics on the Internet has been arrested on subversion charges, a police official said Wednesday.

Chen Shaowen was detained in August in Lianyuan, a city in the central province of Hunan, after posting ''a lot of reactionary articles and essays'' online, said the official contacted by telephone in Lianyuan. He wouldn't give his name.

Chen was formally arrested this month, the official said. He wouldn't give any other details, and an official who answered the telephone at the Hunan provincial headquarters of the State Security Bureau refused to give any information.

Chen's arrest comes amid a tightening of media controls ordered in advance of a major Communist Party congress in November. President Jiang Zemin is expected to step down as party leader at the meeting, setting in motion a process of handing over power to a younger generation of leaders.

Chinese authorities recently blocked access to the U.S.-based Google and AltaVista search engines and barred Chinese Internet users from seeing foreign Web sites run by human rights groups and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

An AIDS activist who used the Internet to distribute a government report on the disease was detained in August by security agents and held for a month on charges of leaking state secrets.

The state newspaper Hunan Daily said Chen had written more than 70 articles and 40 essays since 2001 that were posted on ''foreign reactionary'' Chinese-language Web sites. The newspaper said Chen was accused of falsifying information and ''slandering the Chinese Communist Party.''

Essays under Chen's byline appear on a Web site that says it is run by the Asia Democracy Foundation, a New York City-based group that tries to promote discussion of democracy in China, Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia.

''If the Chinese Communist Party continues to exist, there will be no 'New China' in the future,'' says one essay.

The essay calls for independent labor and farmers' unions something anathema to the communist government, which allows only state-supervised unions and imprisons and harasses independent labor organizers.

Another essay complains that ''for 50 years, the Chinese Communist Party has fooled people, brainwashed people and carried out crude political rule.''

According to a biography on the Web site, the 40-year-old Chen was fired from a job as a police officer for giving speeches supporting pro-democracy protesters in 1989.

Subversion charges have been used against numerous Chinese dissidents. Activists convicted under the law have been sentenced to up to 13 years in prison.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it has written to Jiang appealing for Chen's release.

''Chen Shaowen has done nothing more than peacefully express an independent viewpoint, a right that is protected under China's constitution,'' said a copy of the letter that the group faxed to reporters.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/268/world/Police_Chinese_Internet_essayi:.shtml