Ten years ago as students, workers and passers-by witnessed army troops and tanks crush pro-democracy protests, they promised to fight on.

''Maybe we'll fail today,'' a young art student, nearly incoherent with grief and anger as he watched another student being carted away, told a New York Times' reporter at the scene. ''Maybe we'll fail tomorrow. But some day we'll succeed. It's a historical inevitability.''

That inevitability should have been propelled forwards by new technology - especially the Internet. But as the tenth anniversary of Tiananmen Square approaches, it is clear that, while the Internet has had an impact, it has not been the watershed for Chinese dissidents that many had originally hoped.

"I think it is na�ve to think that the Internet alone would bring democracy to China," said Bobson Wong, Executive Director of the Internet's Dissident Freedom Network, which publishes articles from dissidents around the world. "What it has done is bring a lot more information. It's not going to bring change immediately."

Change on the way

Traditional demos still more effective

That's not to say that dissidents - inside China and beyond - are not using the Net to get their message out.

A group of activists, led by 1989 student leader Wang Dan, has launched an Internet petition that calls for the Chinese Government to re-evaluate the official verdict on the 1989 pro-democracy movement, release all political prisoners, and respect international human rights covenants.

The site has already been visited by more than 63,000 people.

The New York-based organisation, Human Rights in China, says the Internet has become an integral part of its campaign to spread democracy in China.

"Although short wave radio still reaches more people, the Internet has particular power because the information is digital," says executive director Xiao Quing.

"Even if a site is blocked, someone can find it, cut and paste the information and put it in an email or a bulletin board. Within two weeks we get emails from China saying they've read things that we've never sent them."

Long and winding road

Ironically, the Chinese government is doing its share to improve Internet access. It is reportedly investing tens of millions of dollars to expand access to the Net across the country. It has made information technology a "national pillar industry".

And users are flocking online. In the last three years, Internet use has sky-rocketed, with official estimates of user growth at 1,150% in 1996 and 800% in 1997. According to the state-sponsored China Internet Network Information Centre, there were 1.175m Internet users by the end of June 1998 - up from the March figure of 820,000 a year earlier.

So how long will it take for technology to really make an impact?

Human Rights in China's Mr Xiao is optimistic. He predicts that once the infrastructure is improved it could take as little as three years.

Lin Hai, jailed for two years

"All it takes is one energetic and sometimes notorious user to break through the whole thing," he said, referring to China's attempts to create a vast national intranet with monitored content.

Mr Xiao could be thinking of individuals like Richard Long, the editor of VIP Reference, a daily email news service that reports stories normally censored by state news organisations.

"We are not just reaching people who are already pro-democracy," Mr Long said in a phone interview from his office in Washington, DC. "They don't agree on every issue but they still see it as a valuable resource."

After just two years, VIP Reference reaches more than 300,000 people in China. But such success has put Mr Long - and his business partners - on China's most wanted list.

In March 1998, a Shanghai computer entrepreneur, Lin Hai, was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to VIP Reference, which is considered a "hostile foreign publication".

"I feel very sad about Lin Hai's arrest," Mr Long said. He has never met Lin Hai who was simply participating in a database-exchange programme set up by VIP Reference. "But the best thing to do is to keep going to make sure that everyone in China understands the misfortune caused by the government."