Chinese authorities have freed a former newspaper reporter and cyber dissident who was jailed for subversion in 2003, a human rights group said Wednesday.

Huang Jinqiu was released from prison in October after serving eight years of a 12-year sentence, US-based Human Rights in China said in a statement.

Huang, who worked as a journalist for several newspapers and was a regular contributor to dissident news website Boxun, was arrested in September 2003 and convicted of subversion the following year.

His sentence was reduced by nearly four years for manual labour he performed in prison and "other reasons", the activist group said.

While he was in prison, Huang was tortured and kept in solitary confinement for periods of time, it said.

The subversion charge related to Huang's attempts to set up a democracy party online and recruit members to the organisation.

Political power in China is monopolised by the Communist party and authorities have ruled out a move to multi-party democracy.

China detains two for 'spreading rumour' on web
Beijing (AFP) Dec 12, 2011 - Chinese authorities have detained two men for "spreading a rumour" on the Internet that thousands of police officers were deployed to guard a wedding convoy, state media said Monday.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, the two men were detained in the central province of Hunan on Sunday for posting a video clip online showing scores of police officers and a wedding convoy on a street.

But a statement from the Hunan People's Court, posted on the court website Friday, explained that judicial police officers were actually training at a base in Hunan, and happened to pass a wedding convoy on their way out.

Xinhua said the video went viral and received a large number of hits, adding that the two men had been given a five-day administrative detention.

It is the latest in a string of government clampdowns on online "rumours", as it seeks to tighten controls over the Internet -- which now has more than half a billion users in China -- amid fears of social unrest.

The title of the video, posted on popular YouTube-like sites, said "5,000 police officers create the best wedding in Changsha (Hunan's capital)".

Authorities in China are concerned about the power of the Internet to influence public opinion and trigger unrest in a country that maintains tight controls on its traditional media outlets.

Leading Internet firms have already been asked to tighten their grip on the web.

In September, the head of Sina said the web giant -- owner of China's most popular Twitter-like microblogging service, or weibo -- had set up "rumour-curbing teams", apparently in response to government pressure.

Chinese police have already detained several people for spreading a rumour that AIDS patients were trying to transmit the HIV virus by contaminating food in restaurants, state media has reported.

The story triggered huge concern among the public, forcing the health ministry to issue a statement explaining there had never been a case anywhere in the world of HIV being transmitted through food.