The 'mouse' that caused an uproar in China

"People talk about changes in the Chinese media," says a Beijing-based media expert. "But it goes up and down. All political news still goes through the state. When it comes to important questions, there isn't any independent media."

Expressions of support for those who are testing the individual and collective limits of speech in China is also still a dicey question. The case of the "stainless-steel mouse" is an example.

One reason authorities arrested Liu Di was her support of another web master whose "missing children" website was widely believed to be a site to post messages about the Tiananmen Square massacre. The web master denies this.

Since September, moreover, "mouse" supporters have signed three separate petitions calling for her release - including one that is dated for the anniversary of her arrest Friday. More than 300 Chinese used their real names on the petition, arguing that there is strength in numbers and citing the extraordinary facts of the case. Thousands more Chinese have signed using fictitious Internet names, preceded by the words "stainless steel."

Yet last week brought the arrest of essayist Du Daobin, who was responsible for helping organize one of the petitions. Ann Cooper of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called on Chinese leaders to release Du.

"After Liu Di's arrest, Du had actively called for her release and recently helped to organize an online campaign to show solidarity by taking a series of actions, including spending one day in a darkened room to symbolically accompany Liu Di in prison. He also wrote a number of essays supporting Liu Di and calling on authorities to release her," Ms. Cooper points out.

As materials for this report were being prepared, Chinese prosecutors sent her case back to police, citing no evidence of crime - though Liu has been in jail for 364 days. No mention of her arrest has ever shown up in China's state-controlled media.

China hands describe a tension between what Chinese authorities say is necessary to keep stability in a large and developing country and what intelligent, often urban and educated Chinese will accept as limits to their speech and expression.

In the kinder reading, many officials, particularly those under 60, say privately that the rules governing free expression must change; but they look for a gradual solution. They and their offspring, many of whom are educated in the West, may even have sharp disagreements with the current limits of acceptable expression and diverse opinion. In this view, free expression in China is improving.

In the less kind reading, the Chinese security and police are regularly told to crack down. There may be exceptions, as when the daughter or son of a high party member or rich family gets in trouble; or when there are excesses of youth.

But these are exceptions. The rest - labor activists, upstart college students, journalists, writers, intellectuals, professors, dissidents, religious believers with too much spunk, those who stand out in a too-public fashion or attract too much attention - are warned, or arrested. In this reading of China, free expression is not improving in the short- and midterm.

Despite some changes of style, more arrests are taking place, and ordinary Chinese are still strictly censoring themselves.

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