A US-based Chinese democracy activist has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of espionage and leading a terrorist group.

Wang Bingzhang, 55, was sentenced by a court in Guangdong province, southern China, after a one-day trial behind closed doors in January, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Wang Bingzhang

Jailed twice during the Cultural Revolution Permanent US resident Founded two political groups

Profile of Wang Bingzhang

China said in December it had arrested Wang in the south of the country - he had disappeared in Vietnam six months earlier.

His is one of the first major political trials to be held since a new party leadership took over in China last year, and the BBC correspondent in Shanghai, Francis Markus, says the sentence is one of the tightest against a dissident in recent years.

'Kidnapped'

The US human rights group, Free China Movement (FCM), has accused Chinese agents of kidnapping Wang, who is a US resident, and bringing him to China to lay "false charges".

China said he had been engaged in "violent terrorist activities" and had been paid by Taiwan's espionage organisations to collect "state secrets".

FCM director Timothy Cooper described Wang's life sentence as "shameful".

"It is unjust and incomprehensible that a state that seeks to be part of the international community treats a democratic dissident in such a shameful manner," he told AFP news agency.

Wang's daughter, Qingyan, who lives in Los Angeles, told the news agency that the Chinese Government had refused her request to see her father.

"My father is not in a very good physical condition and I really hope he can come home to the United States so I can take care of him," she said.

Mysterious disappearance

He went missing, along with two other democracy activists, last summer.

The three entered Vietnam with valid visas, and were planning to hold meetings with fellow activists there.

Chinese dissidents in the US said in July that they had received information that Wang and his fellow activists were abducted by Chinese security forces along the border of China and Vietnam and were being held at a secret location in China.

But China's official news agency Xinhua said in December that police had found the trio bound and gagged in a temple in Fanchenggang city, southern Guangxi province, on 3 July.

It said they had been kidnapped on 27 July in Tinh Quang Ninh in Vietnam, and were being blackmailed.

After they were found, Wang was transferred to neighbouring Guangdong province, where he was put under house surveillance before being formally arrested on 5 December, the agency said.

The two other activists - Yue Wu and Zhang Qi - who were arrested with Wang, are said to have been cleared of all charges and freed.

Our correspondent says Beijing wants to make sure that dissidents who have been effectively neutralised by being sent into exile in the United States do not come back and, in China's eyes, cause trouble.

Veteran dissident

Wang Bingzhang was jailed twice in China during the Cultural Revolution.

He moved to North America in 1979, founded the magazine China Spring, and organised the Chinese Alliance for Democracy in New York.

He made headlines in 1998 for sneaking into China and getting expelled