ASSOCIATED PRESS in Shanghai

Updated at 11.42am:
A longtime Chinese democracy activist has been released after serving a two-year prison term for setting up a pro-democracy Web site, a human rights group said on Wednesday.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders welcomed Ouyang Yi’s release at the December 4 end of his sentence. But the press freedom group protested that Ouyang was now serving a “second sentence” because he is being kept under police surveillance and is banned from publishing for two years.

Mr Ouyang was detained in December 2002 and sentenced in March 2004 for “incitement to subversion.”

“Ouyang Yi has been released from prison but he no longer has the right to work at his job as a teacher nor to live from his writing,” the group said in a statement. “His case illustrates the methods the government uses to silence ’subversive’ intellectuals,” it added.

Mr Ouyang was among 192 people who signed an open letter demanding political reforms ahead of a major Communist Party gathering in late 2002.

At least four other dissidents imprisoned in connection with the letter remain jailed, the group. They are Jiang Lijun, He Depu, Zhao Changqing and Dai Xuezhong.

Mr Ouyang had also published several political articles on the Internet and was a member of the China Democracy Party, a would-be opposition party that was crushed in the late 1990s.

Chinese authorities have escalated efforts in recent years to stamp out online dissent, imprisoning dozens of people for voicing their opinions on the Internet and prosecuting them under vaguely worded subversion and security laws.

About 60 people are imprisoned in China for having posted Internet messages critical of the government, Reporters Without Borders said.