BEIJING, Jan 1 (AFP) - China sentenced dissident Li Hai to nine years in prison for "breaching state secrecy" in an indication revealed Wednesday that that its uncompromising 1996 stance on dissent remains firm.

"I received a letter from the Chaoyang district court in Beijing announcing the December 18 sentencing of Li Hai to nine years in prison," Li's mother, Gong Liwen, said in a telephone interview.

The dissident has already filed an appeal with the intermediate court, she said.

Li, 42, was arrested May 31, 1995 and was judged exactly one year later, though the verdict was suspended until December.

He had been accused of having "attempted to establish the identities, ages, addresses, the crimes committed, penalties served and sites of detention for people implicated" in the Tiananmen Square democracy movement that was crushed by the army on June 4, 1989, his mother said.

The sentence "is incomprehensible, as the articles of the Criminal Law cited in the case "only called for seven years in prison," said Gong, who has not been allowed to see her son since he was detained.

Human Rights in China, a New York-based human rights watchdog, also denounced the heavy sentence, saying it is "null and void," because it "did not conform with procedures defined by the Chinese Criminal Law."

In a statement, the group demanded that the verdict be annulled.

Gong said the prosecutor had initially judged the evidence supporting the charges against Li as insufficient, but that the court eventually decided to pursue the case "by virtue of a decree passed in 1988 by the National People's Congress."

Li, a former researcher at the Beijing University philosophy department, was first arrested in May 1990, just before the first anniversary of the army crackdown. He was released seven months later.

His December sentencing capped a year during which the Chinese regime dealt a series of devastating blows to what remained of China's dissident community, which is now almost entirely behind bars or in exile.

The month of October saw authorities effectively remove the last well-known dissenters from Chinese society.

The arrest of 1989 democracy movement activist Liu Xiaobo, followed by the flight overseas of veteran dissident Wang Xizhe and the sentencing of former student leader Wang Dan to 11 years in prison left the movement without a prominent spokesman.

Human rights groups have warned that the treatment of these opponents and others during the year has demonstrated a new, zero-tolerance approach by Chinese authorities, in which no distinction is made between overt anti-government action and simple expression of dissent.

Liu and Wang Xizhe's most prominent recent move had been penning an open letter calling for Tibetan autonomy and labour reforms, and Wang Dan's recent activities had largely confined themselves to opposing the detention of prisoners of conscience in writing.

Human Rights Watch has warned that "both levels of dissent are henceforth to be indiscriminately treated as 'endangering state security'" by Beijing.

Despite the silencing of the biggest dissenting voices, authoritiess showed no let-up late in the year, tirelessly pursuing and jailing even lesser-known dissidents, who also included Zhang Zongai, Fu Guoyong and Chen Ping.