Chen Guangcheng was convicted of damaging property and "organizing a mob to disturb traffic" after a trial in the eastern province of Shandong, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Chen's supporters say local officials fabricated the charges against him in retaliation for his activism.

Chen's wife, Yuan Weijing, said he would appeal. "I did not expect such a harsh sentence," Yuan said by phone from their home, where she was under house arrest.

The U.S. State Department criticized the detention of Chen's lawyers, saying it raised questions about China's commitment to the rule of law.

The Xinhua report yesterday gave the first detailed account of the charges against Chen. It said he instigated an attack on government offices in Shandong's Yinan County because he was upset with workers sent to carry out poverty-relief programs.

Chen was accused of getting several members of his family to help damage police cars, the report said. It said his relatives gathered a bigger group that smashed windows at a police station, overturned cars and beat police officers.

PRC law on the test

Chinese attorney Xu Zhiyong knows the risks of fighting human rights cases in the all-powerful one-party state, but when police held him for bag-snatching as he prepared to defend a blind activist, his tolerance was tested.

"It was just too absurd. They must have received instructions to stop me from serving as the defense no matter what," said Xu, a 33-year-old Beijing law professor who has made a vocation of taking up test cases for citizens' rights.

That stiff sentence and Xu's 22-hour detention last week are among several recent blows that have exposed a deepening struggle between China's ruling Communist Party and a network of "rights defenders" seeking to use the law to challenge power.

"As the rights defense movement has grown and matured, the authorities seem to be determined to take on the whole movement," said Teng Biao, a young Beijing legal activist. "Gao Zhisheng's detention is certainly a warning."