US-based Human Rights Watch said civil society groups and websites seeking to help drug users and other high-risk groups face routine state harassment and bureaucratic restrictions.

"First-hand accounts provided to Human Rights Watch reveal that activists conducting AIDS information workshops or working with those at high risk of HIV have been harassed or detained," the group said in a 57-page report.

Pornography laws are even "used to censor websites providing AIDS information to gay men and lesbians under pornography laws."

China faces what could be one of the largest HIV/AIDS epidemics in the world, with international experts predicting that over 10 million Chinese could be infected with the human immune deficiency virus by 2010.

According to official figures, China has an estimated 840,000 people infected with HIV, including 80,000 with full-blown AIDS.

On Monday Premier Wen Jiabao told a visiting United Nations AIDS expert that the country was "determined and capable" of controlling the epidemic.

"Grass-roots organizations have direct experience that could greatly strengthen the country's fight against AIDS," said Meg Davis, China researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"But in a number of regions, they face harassment, censorship and even beatings because the Chinese government is suspicious of any activity outside its direct control."

The problems facing AIDS activists are most visible in Henan province, one of the epicenters of the epidemic, the group said.

Thousands of people, perhaps a million or more, were infected with HIV as a result of a profit-driven blood-selling scheme run by provincial officials throughout the 1990s, it said.

Although a program to deal with the epidemic is being implemented, none of the officials that profited from the blood-selling have been arrested while activists seeking to help the sick have been arrested or beaten, it said.

"Henan officials have detained those activists who complained too loudly or who took matters into their own hands by initiating grass-roots initiatives to fill the gaps left by the state," the group said.

"Dozens of activists have been jailed, and some have even been beaten by thugs hired by local officials."

Activists who try to register non-government organizations face a web of bureaucratic restrictions designed to keep government control, it added.

Meanwhile, China's notorious restrictions on the Internet have hampered the delivery of urgently-needed AIDS information to high-risk groups, like homosexuals, its report said.

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