Four days before the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, is due to arrive in China for a historic nine-day visit, Chinese dissidents have stepped up their pressure on the Beijing government to release imprisoned activists.
Some 136 activists have signed an open letter protesting at the arrest of a labour organiser, Mr Zhang Shanguang, according to the Human Rights in China organisation in New York yesterday.
More than 50 Chinese dissidents are reported to have written to Mrs Robinson in Geneva asking for a meeting with her during her visit from September 6th to 15th, although her spokesman, Mr Jose Diaz, said yesterday that he had no knowledge of such a letter.
China has been taking a more tolerant line on dissent in recent months, and the handful of activists throughout the country clearly believe that the visit of Mrs Robinson is an opportune time to press for further gains.
Mrs Robinson is expected to discuss the human rights situation in China with senior officials including President Jiang Zemin, whom she will meet on September 14th.
The former Irish president will also visit Tibet and Shanghai.
Asked if she would be meeting dissidents, Mr Diaz replied: "It's hard to say exactly who she will be meeting. It's also a very delicate situation to say she'll be meeting dissidents for reasons of their own protection."
Mrs Robinson will meet members of non-governmental groups at an Irish Embassy reception on Monday, but no dissidents have been invited.
The labour activist who is the subject of the open letter was detained by police in Xupu county in central Hunan province on July 21st, according to Human Rights in China.
Mr Zhang was allegedly involved in setting up a pressure group to help workers laid off by bankrupt state enterprises.
Police formally charged him on August 28th but did not reveal the details, according to activists. Mr Zhang (45) is suffering from tuberculosis and has already served seven years for his role in pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989.
On Sunday Chinese authorities released another pro-democracy campaigner, Mr Wang Youcai (32). But they told him to stay at home and to apply for police permission if he wished to leave the eastern city of Hangzhou.
Mr Wang was among 13 activists detained in Hangzhou in July for trying to register an opposition party, the Chinese Democratic Party, at the start of the state visit by President Clinton.
All have now been set free. They have given up the project of a new party for now, declaring it too risky.
In another case with human rights implications, a Chinese prosecutor has rejected a case against a software specialist for giving a US pro-democracy Inter net magazine 30,000 email addresses in China, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.
Almost invariably the prosecutor accepts the case put forward by the police. But the accused man, Mr Lin Hai (30), the founder of the Shanghai Zheng Fang Software Company, is still in detention, the group said.
Mr Lin was arrested in April and later charged with "subversion against the state", it went on, adding that his wife, Xu Hong, said the Shanghai Municipal People's Procuratorate had sent the case back to the police because it lacked evidence.
Four Shanghai dissidents, Zhou Jianghe, Li Guotao, Han Lifa and Yao Zhenxian, had called on the Chinese government to free Mr Lin immediately. China has an estimated one million Internet users.