Whistle-blower in China faces prison.

For much of his adult life, Wu Lihong campaigned to clean up his befouled local lake. That cause appeared to get a boost in May when the sorry state of Lake Taihu, the third-largest in China, elicited national outrage after a carpet of algae scum on the lake made tap water undrinkable for millions of households.

Mr. Wu's efforts came at a price. Last Friday in a courtroom in Yixing he was sentenced to three years in prison for fraud and extortion. His wife says he was tortured in detention and calls the verdict an act of vengeance by embarrassed local officials.

Becoming a political or social activist has long been a solitary, sometimes dangerous path in China. The treatment of Wu and other whistle-blowers who expose cases of environmental or public-health failings illuminate the Chinese political system's deep aversion to bearers of bad news.

And its tolerance for dissenting voices appears to be waning. China's leaders are gearing up for a crucial twice-a-decade party congress due to be held in October, when factions jostle for power and leaders talk up their achievements.

Amid rising concern over corruption, national leaders have asked citizens to report any misbehavior by members of the ruling Communist Party. In 2002, President Hu Jintao told a party committee that such a reporting system would strengthen the party. "The masses should play a role in supervising party officials," he said.

As Wu discovered, though, some local officials don't take kindly to such civic spirit. Nor is it clear that Beijing is ready to loosen its grip on free expression so that social activists and whistle-blowers can shine light into China's dark corners, analysts say.

"The Communist Party and central government really need people to step up and tell them where things are going wrong. They need an active population that acts like the country's welfare is important to them," says Russell Moses, a political analyst in Beijing. "But they don't give the sort of legal and political protection that these people are entitled to for speaking up."

The result is an opaque system that leaves whistle-blowers to twist in the wind. Even drawing attention to causes that the leadership itself champions, such as curbing the pollution of waterways, can be risky if it presents the party in a bad light, say human rights monitors.

"China limits itself in respect to the environmental crisis precisely because of its restrictions on press reporting and [nongovernmental organizations]," says Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch. "It deprives itself of the time-tested, most effective way of addressing these issues."

Even the Western legal system, which traditionally offers varying degrees of protection to whistle-blowers, still elicits mixed reactions when applied in practice. But China's top-down political culture is far less forgiving of such betrayals, and a culture of secrecy and silence prevails in the bureaucracy and workplace, say analysts.

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