At least 26 activists have been detained in the wake of the political upheaval that has rocked the Arab world and sparked calls for anti-government demonstrations in China, human rights organisations said.

More than 30 others have been "disappeared" by authorities without charge, Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said, with the victims including prominent rights attorneys and bloggers who had otherwise been tolerated for years.

"The situation for rights activists and critics of the government is grim, with many of the advances made by a generation of courageous activists being rolled back in a very short time," said Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch.

China won the 2008 Olympic Games with a bid that included a promise to improve human rights, but Beijing has taken a sharply "hardline turn" since then, Bequelin said.

The government tightened control further after jailed democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, which angered Beijing, and has silenced nearly every major activist or dissident inside the country.

This week, police in southwest China formally charged veteran activists Ran Yunfei, Ding Mao and Chen Wei with "inciting subversion of state power," rights groups said.

The charge is often used to put away government critics -- Liu was convicted on the same charge in 2009.

Wang Songlian, researcher with CHRD, said activists were living in fear.

"Nobody knows when this is going to end, and nobody knows who's next," Wang told AFP.

"This is the harshest crackdown we have seen in the past 15 years. Every day, someone is disappeared, taken away, detained or charged."

Among those detained without charge since mid-February are Teng Biao, Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jitian -- well-known rights lawyers whose mostly futile efforts to use China's own laws to contest individual rights cases had long been met with relative tolerance.

Chinese authorities have ratcheted up their crackdown since February, when online calls -- inspired by the Arab unrest -- urged people to gather weekly for "strolling" demonstrations across China.

People were urged to protest over social issues such as inflation, corruption and growing income disparities -- a mix of problems that contributed have to the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa.

No obvious protests have been reported.

At least 200 other people have been put under looser forms of detention or other restrictions since February, CHRD said, adding that most of those measures had since been lifted.

The current crackdown indicates authorities feel their heavy-handed control of the Internet -- including censorship and blocking of sites seen as subversive -- has failed to stymie calls for social activism, rights groups said.

"The authorities are not only detaining seasoned dissidents, they are trying to silence a whole new generation of online activists," Catherine Baber, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific deputy director, said in a statement.

In one indication of the toughness of the crackdown, veteran dissident Liu Xianbin, 43, was sentenced last week to 10 years in jail after he posted pro-democracy articles online.

"The authorities are taking down, one by one, leading critical voices who have accumulated a large (Internet) following over the years," said Bequelin.

China's government routinely responds to questions about its treatment of dissidents by insisting its people enjoy freedom of expression.

A working group under the UN Human Rights Council this week said it had urged China to bring its arrests and trials into conformity with global norms and to release rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng.

Gao has been held in police custody for more than two years without charge and subjected in the past to torture and other harsh treatment. His wife Geng He, who lives in the United States, told AFP they still had no news.

"As seen in the case of my husband, the government control is getting tighter. The only way they will loosen up is if the international community pays more attention. But right now it's getting worse and worse," Geng said.

"The Chinese government claims that it's governed by the law, but whenever anything happens, the first thing they do is to make the lawyers who are protecting the law disappear."

But foreign pressure will do nothing to deter China from its tough approach, former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew said.

"(China's government) is not interested in what the world thinks about them. They're interested in their own internal stability," Lee said in an interview Tuesday on US public television.

earlier related report
US supports Philippines over China executions
Washington (AFP) March 31, 2011 - The United States on Thursday voiced support for the Philippines after China executed three Filipinos on drug charges in defiance of repeated appeals.

"I believe that this is something that we will want to support our Filipino friends on," Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told Congress. He said he would speak with Philippine officials in coming days.

The Philippines had pressed for China to spare the lives of the three. In December, President Benigno Aquino said the Philippines skipped the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in hopes of persuading Beijing.

"It's fairly unusual in Asia when a government makes a very, almost personal, appeal at the very highest levels," Campbell said.

"I think you know how strongly the Philippines government and President Aquino's own cabinet felt about this issue. To be turned away in such a manner, I think it was a little bit of a surprise to Filipino friends," he said.

However, Campbell said he was not suggesting that the three should have gone unpunished.

The three Filipinos were arrested in 2008 for attempting to smuggle heroin into China. The Philippines, a largely Roman Catholic nation where many oppose the death penalty, said the trio had been duped by crime syndicates.

Campbell was responding to questions by Representative Ed Royce, a Republican whose district in southern California has many Filipino Americans.

"The radical disparity of the death penalty here when the people organizing it get off scot-free is riveting," Royce said.

The United States has a long-standing alliance with the Philippines, a former US colony. A number of Asian nations have recently sought closer ties with Washington amid concerns over a rising China.

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