More than 160 prominent writers, scholars and human rights advocates outside mainland China have signed an open letter to President Hu Jintao asking him to release a well-known intellectual and dissident who was detained this month. The letter was posted on the Internet on Tuesday.

The letter to Mr. Hu indicates that the case of the intellectual, Liu Xiaobo — one of the driving forces behind a bold manifesto demanding democratic reforms that has received worldwide attention — is quickly turning into the latest human rights cause célèbre in China. The call for his release could embarrass the Communist Party at a time when Chinese leaders are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the policy of “reform and opening up.”

Among the writers signing the letter are three Nobel laureates in literature — the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney and the Nigerian novelist Wole Soyinka — as well as other writers who regularly champion freedom of expression, including the Italian novelist Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie.

Just as notable is the fact that an array of foreign China scholars also signed the petition, possibly risking their access to the country. Academics specializing in Chinese studies are often cautious about taking stands on political issues deemed sensitive by the Communist Party because the Chinese government has a track record of denying visas to people who publicly oppose the party’s views. Some of the scholars who signed the petition are already on the Chinese government’s blacklist, but others still have regular access to the country.

The scholars include Geremie R. Barmé of Australian National University; Richard Baum of the University of California, Los Angeles; and Andrew J. Nathan of Columbia University.

Prominent scholars in Hong Kong, which is controlled by China but enjoys greater freedoms than the mainland, also signed the letter.

Mr. Liu, a 53-year-old literary critic who has directed the Independent Chinese PEN Center, a group of writers who advocate for broader free speech, was taken by security officers from his home on the night of Dec. 8 and has not been heard from since.

Human rights advocates say that Mr. Liu has been made a target because he was one of the driving forces behind Charter 08, the recent manifesto demanding democratic reforms and accountability from the Communist Party that was signed by more than 300 Chinese from various backgrounds and recently posted on the Internet.

Other people who signed the manifesto have also been detained and questioned by the authorities. All except Mr. Liu have been released.

The officers who detained Mr. Liu took computers, mobile phones and personal papers from his home. His wife and other family members have received no word of his whereabouts or condition.

The open letter to Mr. Hu that was posted on Tuesday says: “For the international community to take seriously China’s oft-stated commitment to respect human rights and the rule of law, and for China’s own citizens to trust the judicial system to redress legitimate grievances, it is urgent that China’s central leadership ensure that no one be arrested or harassed simply for the peaceful expression of his or her views.”

The letter notes that although Mr. Liu was detained in the past for several years, he has never been convicted of any crime.

Mr. Baum, the political scientist at the University of California, helped bring the petition to prominence by circulating it on Chinapol, a Listserv managed by Mr. Baum that is read by many scholars of China. In an interview via e-mail, Mr. Baum said that he usually tried to avoid using the Listserv for political causes but that this case was different.

“While I have always tried to maintain Chinapol’s political neutrality, some violations are so egregious that I cannot, as a sentient being, remain neutral,” he said in an e-mail message.

Bruce Jacobs, a professor of Asian languages and studies at Monash University in Australia, said he signed the petition because “Liu was clearly arrested because of Charter 08.”

“That concerned me,” he said, “I’ve been very concerned with human rights in China for a long time, and recently it’s gotten worse.”

Mr. Liu has been a pillar of political dissent in China for years. He supported the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and continued his dissident writings afterward, work that led to his detention by the authorities. Starting in 1996, he spent three years doing hard labor for having “repeatedly stirred up trouble and disrupted public order.” Since 1999, he has been allowed to continue his activism, presumably with the permission of the country’s leaders, but has been under surveillance.

Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that if Mr. Liu is formally arrested and charged, then that would mean Chinese leaders want to show intellectuals that the Communist Party is hardening its line and unwilling to tolerate any dissent.

“He’s been detained before,” Mr. Bequelin said. “But if they send him to jail, that sends a political signal.”

A BOFFIN too busy to find real love has INVENTED his idea of the perfect woman – a female ROBOT.

Perfect couple ... Le Trung with Aiko

Inventor Le Trung, 33, created Aiko, said to be “in her 20s” with a stunning 32, 23, 33 figure, shiny hair and delicate features.

She even remembers his favourite drink and does simple cleaning and household tasks.

"Fem-bot" Aiko, who has cost £14,000 to build so far, is a whizz at maths and even does Le’s accounts.

Le, a scientific genius from Brampton in Ontario, Canada, said he never had time to find a real partner so he designed one using the latest technology.

He said he did not build Aiko as a sexual partner, but said she could be tweaked to become one.

Odd pair ... Le with his robot girlfriend Barcroft

“Her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm and reacting to touch as if she is playing hard to get or being straight to the point,” he said.

The former software programmer has taken out credit cards and loans, sold his car and spent his life savings on perfecting the machine.

“I want to make her look, feel and act as human as possible so she can be the perfect companion,” said Le.

The odd looking pair go out for drives together in the Canadian countryside, before sitting down at the dinner table, but Aiko never eats anything.

Le said: “So far she can understand and speak 13,000 different sentences in English and Japanese, so she’s already fairly intelligent.

“When I need to do my accounts, Aiko does all the maths. She is very patient and never complains.”

Click below to see more amazing pictures

The fem-bot has a touch-sensitive face and body so she reacts if shown affection or hurt.

“Like a real female she will react to being touched in certain ways. If you grab or squeeze too hard she will try to slap you. She has all senses except for smell,” he said.

Le, a child genius who was put in a class for talented youngsters, made his first robot when he was just eight years old.

He began work on Aiko two years ago in the home he shares with his brother.

But the stress of working on such a difficult project became too much for Le and he suffered a mild heart attack in November last year.

“It was shocking to have a heart attack at the age of 33,” he admits. “But the doctors said I’d been doing too much.

“I may need to have Aiko look after me one day.

“She doesn’t need holidays, food or rest and she will work almost 24-hours a day. She is the perfect woman,” he said.

“People have mixed reactions when they meet Aiko,” he said. "They either love or hate her. Some people get angry and accuse me of playing God. Once someone threw a rock at Aiko. That really upset me.

“But many people are fascinated by her.

"Women are generally impressed and try to talk to her. But the men always want to touch her, and if they do it in the wrong way they get a slap.”

Whistle-Blowers in Chinese City Sent to Mental Hospital

In an investigative report published Monday by a state-owned newspaper, public security officials in the city of Xintai in Shandong Province have been institutionalizing residents who persist in their personal campaigns to expose corruption or the unfair seizure of their property. Some people said they were committed for up to two years, and several of those interviewed said they were forcibly medicated.

The article, in The Beijing News, said most inmates were released after they agreed to give up their causes.

Sun Fawu, 57, a farmer seeking compensation for land spoiled by a coal-mining operation, said he was seized by local authorities on his way to petition the central government in Beijing and taken to the Xintai Mental Health Centre in October.

During a 20-day stay, he said, he was lashed to a bed, forced to take pills and given injections that made him numb and woozy. When he told the doctor he was a petitioner, not mentally ill, the doctor reportedly said: “I don’t care if you’re sick or not. As long as you are sent by the township government, I’ll treat you as a mental patient.”

In an interview, the hospital’s director, Wu Yuzhu, acknowledged that some of the 18 patients brought there by the police in recent years were not deranged, but he said that he had no choice but to take them in. “The hospital also had its misgivings,” he said.

Xintai officials do not see any shame in the tactic, and they boasted that hospitalizing people they characterized as troublemakers saved money that would have been spent chasing them to Beijing, the capital, where local security officers rack up steep hotel and restaurant bills. There is another reason to stop petitioners, the aggrieved citizens who seek redress from higher levels of government: they can prove embarrassing to local officials, especially if they make it to Beijing.

The Xintai government Web site noted that provincial authorities had recently referred to Xintai as “an advanced city in building a safe Shandong.” They said that from January to May this year, the number of petitioners who went over the heads of local authorities was 274, a 4 percent drop from the same period in 2007. Although China is not known for the kind of systematic abuse of psychiatry that occurred in the Soviet Union, human rights advocates say forced institutionalizations are not uncommon in smaller cities. Robin Munro, the research director of China Labour Bulletin, a rights organization in Hong Kong, said such “an kang” wards — Chinese for peace and health — were a convenient and effective means of dealing with pesky dissidents.

“Once a detainee has been officially diagnosed as dangerously mentally ill, they’re immediately taken out of the criminal justice system and they lose all legal rights,” said Mr. Munro, who has researched China’s practice of psychiatric detention.

In recent years practitioners of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement, have complained of what they call coerced hospitalizations. One of China’s best-known dissidents, Wang Wanxing, spent 13 years in a police-run psychiatric institution under conditions he later described as abusive.

In one recent, well-publicized case, Wang Jingmei, the mother of a man convicted of killing six policemen in Shanghai, was held incommunicado at a mental hospital for five months and only released days before her son was executed in late November.

The article in The Beijing News about the hospitalizations in Xintai was notable for the attention it gained in China’s notably constrained state-run media. Such Communist Party stalwarts as People’s Daily and the Xinhua news agency republished the article, and it was picked up by scores of Web sites. At the country’s most popular portal, Sina.com, it ranked the fifth most-viewed news headline, and readers posted more than 23,000 comments by evening. The indignation expressed was universal, with many clamouring for the dismissal of those involved. “They’re no different from animals,” read one post. “No, they’re worse.”

By Monday evening, the Xintai city government was rejecting the report by The Beijing News as reckless and slanted. In a telephone interview broadcast on Shandong provincial television, an unidentified municipal official suggested that those confined to the mental hospital had gone mad from their single-minded quest for justice. “There are some people who have been petitioning for years and become mentally aggravated,” the official said. Reached by phone on Monday, a hospital employee said Mr. Wu, the hospital director who voiced his misgivings to The Beijing News, was unavailable. The employee, Hu Peng, said that officials from the local government had taken him away for “a meeting” earlier in the day.

Although he would not provide a reporter with contact information for the former patients, Mr. Hu defended the hospitalizations, saying that all those delivered by the Public Security Bureau were sick. He added that the hospital was not authorized to provide a diagnosis to the patients, only to treat them. “We definitely would not accept those without mental problems,” he said.

Chinese authorities have already had to deal with workers' protests

"The redistribution of wealth through theft and robbery could dramatically increase and menaces to social stability will grow," Zhou Tianyong, a researcher at the Central Party School in Beijing, wrote in the China Economic Times.

"This is extremely likely to create a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil," he wrote.

His views do not reflect leadership policy but highlight worries in elite circles about the impact of the economic slowdown.

Mr Zhou warned that the real rate of urban joblessness reached 12% this year and could reach 14% next year as the economy slows.

China's annual GDP growth has already slowed to 9% in the third quarter, from 10.1% in the second. Some forecasters see growth slowing to 7.5% next year.

The government has launched a stimulus package and cut interest rates to boost the economy.

Unrest warning

Last month, China's top planner warned that the economic slowdown in China could fuel social unrest.

Zhang Ping, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the impact of the global crisis on China's economy was deepening.

"Excessive bankruptcies and production cuts will lead to massive unemployment and stir social unrest," he said.

She said he started arguing and yanked off a black wig that was sewn to her natural blond hair. The ex-boyfriend reportedly slapped her after she began chasing him.

Investigators found the victim's hair in "disorder." She said she and the alleged wig-snatcher lived together for eight months. She knew his first name, but apparently recalled only the first letter of his last name. THIS AFTER EIGHT MONTHS LIVING TOGETHER!

The ex-boyfriend called the victim's cell phone while an officer was there. Speaking to an officer via the cell phone, he admitted pulling the wig off and leaving when the victim started crying and said she was calling authorities. The ex-boyfriend hung up after police asked for his last name. Investigators continue to try to identify the alleged wig-puller.

This is a true story.