China Dissidents Add Branches to Banned Opposition Party

Chinese dissidents set up five new branches of a banned opposition political party Thursday, resuming a campaign that threatens to land more of them in jail.

The branches of the China Democracy Party were the first that dissidents have dared set up since China’s Communist rulers launched a crackdown on the group more than two months ago. At least six party members have been imprisoned.

Dissidents in the northern province of Hebei declared their new branch in a fax sent to foreign news organizations in the capital.

The other four branches were set up by dissidents in Henan and Liaoning provinces and the provincial cities of Xian and Huanggang, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement reported.

They bring to at least 16 the number of branches set up across China since three dissidents declared the party’s founding in June. Loosely coordinated to prevent police infiltration, the branches have drawn between 200 and 500 members, dissidents said. Alarmed by the party’s appeal at a time of growing discontent among laid-off workers and poor farmers, Communist Party leaders ordered the crackdown in November. President Jiang Zemin vowed to annihilate challengers to the Communists’ 50-year monopoly on power.

The party’s three most prominent members, including founding member Wang Youcai, were all convicted of trying to subvert China’s political system.

Also Thursday, Wang Ce, an exiled democracy campaigner who sneaked back into China and gave Wang Youcai $1,000, was sentenced to four years in prison, Wang Ce’s wife said.

The Intermediate People’s Court in Hangzhou city called Wang Ce’s family this morning to tell them of the verdict, said his wife, Tang Xuanzhong. She said the court officer did not provide details about his conviction.

Meanwhile, the government tightened its grip over the western province of Xinjiang, transferring a team of crack troops to a city rocked by riots in 1997 and arresting hundreds of people it brands terrorists and religious extremists.

The unit was moved to Yining after more than 30 years in a nearby county and includes troops mobilized temporarily to help quash a series of 1997 riots in the Yili region that left at least 10 people dead and more than 100 injured.

Three weeks after the riots, nine others were killed and dozens wounded when a series of home-made bombs exploded in the provincial capital of Urumqi.