The Kinmen county government said the plan was put on hold as it could not find a "suitable location" for the 30-metre (99-foot) high statue by Chinese activist artist Chen Weiming.

"We are still evaluating the project and there is no proper location for it. There is no political pressure involved," said an official at the county government.

Chen has been raising funds for the project in the United States, where he is based, to erect the statue on Kinmen, a fortified frontline island off China's southeastern Xiamen city.

Some observers suspect the plan was called off due to political concerns to avoid angering China.

"It's quite possible and it would be very sad if that's really the case as it shows that life in Taiwan is threatened by authoritarian Chinese communist party," said Wu'er Kaixi, a former leader of the Tiananmen protests.

"I urge the Kinmen county government not to set this precedent and risk losing Taiwan's freedom," said Wu'er Kaixi, now a political commentator based in Taipei.

On the night of June 4, 1989, the Chinese military shot dead hundreds if not thousands of students and other pro-democracy protesters who had been demonstrating peacefully in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Tanks also crushed the Goddess of Democracy statue which students had built out of styrofoam and papier-mache and which had stood for five days in the square.

China's communist party has never offered a full account of the Tiananmen Square massacre, which Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou has previously criticised.

Ties between Taipei and Beijing have improved markedly since Beijing-friendly Ma became Taiwan's president in 2008. He was reelected for a second term on Saturday.

Beijing, Shanghai and the southern province of Guangdong have recently ordered new users of weibos -- microblogs similar to Twitter -- to register using their real names, making it easier for authorities to track them.

"This started at the end of last year. At first it applies to new users only, and it will then be expanded to existing users," said Wang Chen, the minister in charge of the press office of the State Council -- China's cabinet.

He told reporters weibos had exploded in popularity, with hundreds of millions of loyal users who wrote around 150 million postings every day.

"Weibo is a new Internet application. It's speedy, influential, and has a wide reach and strong potential for mass mobilisation," he said on Wednesday.

With more than half a billion Chinese now online, authorities are concerned about the power and influence of the Internet to spark unrest in a country that maintains tight controls on traditional media.

The government exercises tight censorship over the web in a system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China", and is particularly nervous as the country will undergo a major leadership transition towards the end of the year.

But despite the controls, people are still using weibos to vent their anger and frustration over official corruption, scandals and disasters by re-posting information and images as fast as the authorities can take them down.

Residents in Guangdong protesting against land seizures and a power plant last month posted photos and reports of their demonstrations on weibos, defying official efforts to block news of the incidents.

At least one of the protests ended with an apparent victory for local residents.