Yet another cyber-dissident bites the dust as China’s neandrathals lock him up for the most unpardonable of sins — exposing the stinking corruption of government officials.

Chinese official who exposed government corruption on the Internet has been sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of subversion, a Hong Kong human rights group says.
The sentence, handed down on Wednesday, was the latest in a string of jailings of dissidents and coincided with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the United States and Canada.

The People’s Intermediate Court in Dazhou city in the southwestern province of Sichuan convicted Li Zhi, a 33-year-old municipal financial official, the Information Centre for Human Rights & Democracy said in a statement on Friday.

Chinese officials were not immediately available for comment.

Li wrote essays revealing corruption involving Sichuan officials on Web sites and chatrooms earlier this year, the group said.

Living in an authoritarian country where information flow is a matter of national security, dissidents have been flocking to the Internet as the medium gains in popularity.

Online police have tightened their noose by monitoring Web chatrooms and filtering text deemed objectionable as they pass routers at international gateways.

Wen acknowledged during his visit to the United States that China’s human rights situation was not perfect, but said it was among his government’s top priorities.

Not perfect?? Among his “highest priorities”??? Well, here’s a great opportunity to show you really mean it: Let the cyberdissidents go home and stop imprisoning new ones. That’s all you have to do.

(Not really, but it would be a damned good start.)