But since Beijing hosted the world in August 2008, the ruling Communist Party has launched a sustained crackdown on dissent which experts say is driven by fear of social unrest and growing concern about the power of the Internet.

Violent unrest in restive Tibet and Xinjiang was met with security crackdowns, dissidents have been jailed, controls on the Internet tightened and assertiveness by the local media has been quashed.

Even in largely autonomous Hong Kong, pro-democracy activists have felt a cold wind blowing from Beijing.

"This greater harshness reflects that it is becoming more and more difficult for the party to rein in civil society," said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

"The Internet, greater rights awareness, an ever more daring commercial press and social demands from the middle class are creating unprecedented challenges to the party's authority," he said.

This past week alone, authorities upheld an 11-year prison term for leading dissident Liu Xiaobo and jailed quake activist Tan Zuoren for five years.

They also confirmed a three-year sentence for quake campaigner Huang Qi, in a show that Beijing wants no further inquiries into alleged corruption that may have led to the deaths of thousands in the 2008 Sichuan disaster.

Prominent rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was detained more than a year ago and has not been heard from since, and the government refuses to reveal his whereabouts, amid fears he may have died in custody.

"There is quite a good consensus among the various power blocs and factions within the party that they have to pull out all the stops to crush dissent and other challenges, whether those challenges come from dissidents like Liu Xiaobo, or the Tibetans and Uighurs," said China analyst Willy Lam.

The crackdown touches on more than just dissidents and restive regions.

After loosening media controls in the Games run-up, the hammer came down again in 2009, with reporting on the aftermath of Sichuan limited and outlets ordered to use state media copy on US President Barack Obama's November visit.

The government has also moved to dampen the power of the more than 380 million people using the Internet. Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been blocked, while Google has threatened to leave China after the Gmail accounts of dissidents were hacked.

"The authorities are really quite scared by things like the Twitter revolution in Iran and also the Charter 08 movement" spearheaded by Liu, said Lam, who teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"After this Charter 08 movement, the leadership perceives a new threat coming from cyberspace," he explained.

"That's why they have been recruiting more cybercops and cracking down harder on people like Liu Xiaobo who have been effectively using the Internet to galvanise support and to press for political reform."

China promised greater freedoms for the seven years running up to the Games, but experts say it has reneged on its pledges.

"To a large extent, the authorities got away with it," said Roseann Rife, Asia-Pacific deputy director at Amnesty International.

"With the financial crisis, they gained a certain amount of leverage, so there is this general feeling that they don't have to pay attention to some of these things -- they're powerful enough that they can go their own way."

China has hit back at the West for meddling in the Liu case, arrested an Australian employee of mining giant Rio Tinto on charges relating to industrial espionage, and executed a Briton for drugs smuggling despite London's protests.

"The Chinese government feels it has become rich, that it has the power to challenge universal values, and the latest series of trials shows this kind of resolve," said Bao Tong, once a top aide to purged former leader Zhao Ziyang.

Top leaders themselves have expressed concerns over stability, with politburo member Zhou Yongkang, the nation's security czar, warning last month that "people's demands for social equality and justice are higher".

To keep unrest at bay, the government has pushed for at least eight percent annual economic growth as a way to prevent job losses, and also has proposed new regulations to ease increasingly violent disputes on land seizures.

In Hong Kong, strains are also emerging, with authorities under fire for handing over a dissident for prosecution on the mainland despite the territory's autonomous status. A dance troupe linked to the Falun Gong spiritual group was also denied entry to the city.

Increasingly rowdy street protests against the Hong Kong government have in turn been met with growing impatience in Beijing.

"The Communist Party lacks a sense of security," leading Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho told AFP. "They're worried the situation will become difficult to control."

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