At a time when China's government has granted the foreign media greater freedom, it is tightening controls on Chinese who write about politically sensitive or embarrassing topics, human rights activists and journalists say.

International PEN, a writer's organization that calls itself the world's oldest human rights group, said Monday that local police prevented 20 Chinese writers from attending its international conference in Hong Kong over the weekend.

Some were warned not to go, while others who had permits to travel to Hong Kong, a Chinese territory under separate administration, had their documents seized at the border.

The travel restrictions came after China's recent ban of eight books, most of them works of history, including one about the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003. The Chinese government was criticized for being too slow in confronting the deadly new virus.

The crackdown came just weeks after the government relaxed decades-old restrictions on foreign media, giving them greater freedom to report the 2008 Beijing Olympics — a move that it hoped would burnish its international image.

But Chinese writers said the tolerance granted foreigners does not extend to those who write for a Chinese audience.

"It's all for show," said Yu Jie, a writer who has been blacklisted and unable to publish under his own name for more than two years. "They're actually tightening their grip on China's writers."

Liu Xiaobo, a prolific Internet essayist and political critic, said authorities rejected his application for a permit to attend the International PEN event in Hong Kong.

"They have different regulations for the outside and for us on the inside," Liu said. "The new openness that they talk about is all about the Olympics. Nothing has changed for the people within the country. ... It's barbaric."

Fifteen Chinese writers did attend but the 20 who didn't either could not obtain travel documents or were told not to go, said Zhang Yu, general secretary of the Independent Chinese PEN Center.

Zhang Yihe, whose book on the repression of classical Chinese opera stars in the 1960s was among eight recently banned, decided not to attend the conference after being warned by authorities. Zan Aizong, a former journalist, and Zhao Dagong, another dissident writer, had travel papers but were blocked from leaving, PEN said.

While the Chinese leadership has sought to create the appearance of a more open society in advance of the Olympics, critics say it has actually grown less tolerant of dissent under President Hu Jintao — whose government has imposed new restrictions on religion, the media, political activism and the Internet.

"China did itself a PR favor" by loosening restrictions on foreign journalists, said Kristin Jones of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The move, however, "doesn't address the more serious risks faced by Chinese journalists," she said.

Jones, who is a senior research associate for Asia, said not only do domestic journalists face greater restrictions on their work, but they are also more likely to be threatened or physically attacked by local authorities than foreigners are.

Authorities continue to use vaguely worded state secrecy and subversion charges to suppress criticism of the ruling Communist Party.

"It's a double standard because the Chinese government knows that if these people are allowed to travel, to move, to speak freely, they will reach new audiences," said Vincent Brossel, a spokesman for Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based advocacy group.

"They know the impact will increase if these people ... especially human rights defenders, become an icon for the fight for democracy," he said. "It will be much more difficult for authorities to crack down on them."

The crackdown has hit China's whistleblowers as well as its journalists.

An elderly doctor who embarrassed Chinese leaders by exposing blood-selling schemes that infected thousands with HIV was detained by authorities at her home, apparently to prevent her from applying for a U.S. visa, fellow AIDS activists said Monday.

Gao Yaojie — who is in her 80s — was to be honored next month in Washington by Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international group that provides aid and training to women who serve as community leaders. But Gao was warned last week not go, said Hu Jia, a fellow campaigner and friend.

Police detained Gao at her home in central Henan province before she could leave for a planned trip to Beijing on Sunday to arrange her visa, Hu said.

It was at least the second time authorities have tried to stop her from traveling abroad. In 2001, Gao was refused a passport to go to Washington to accept an award from a U.N. group.

She gained recognition in the late 1990s for her efforts to alert people in Henan to an AIDS outbreak being spread by tainted blood transfusions. Her warning came at a time when the government was still tightlipped about its problem with the disease.

Gao spoke openly to the press and distributed brochures about the spread of AIDS among poor farmers through commercial blood banks. She has distributed medicine, cared for AIDS orphans and hosted AIDS sufferers in her modest apartment.

Health experts and aid agencies condemned Indonesia on Thursday for refusing to share H5N1 bird flu samples with foreign laboratories but conceded that the developing country has a valid point to make.

Life-saving medicines from HIV antiretrovirals to heart disease drugs are often inaccessible to developing countries because of restrictive patent laws and high costs. These same nations now increasingly worry that vaccines and drugs to fight the H5N1 virus would similarly be out of reach in the event of an influenza pandemic.

On Wednesday, Indonesia declared it would only share its H5N1 bird flu samples with those who agreed not to use them for commercial reasons. Its officials insisted it was unfair for foreign vaccine makers to use these samples, design vaccines, patent them and then sell the "discovery" back to the country.

Aid agencies said that, while Jakarta's actions were reprehensible, its concerns and worries were valid and they were not confined to Indonesia alone.

"People (pharmaceutical firms) should be more sympathetic to public health issues," said Loretta Wong, chief executive of Aids Concern, a group dedicated to helping and securing treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS.

"After all, we are talking about human lives. One will not die not being able to watch pirated VCDs but one will die without access to affordable treatment," she said.

Indonesia's move struck a chord with Thailand, which recently voiced similar fears at a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Geneva.

"The Indonesian health minister is wise, and sending a strong message that, unless developing countries which are at the epicenter of the pandemic can be assured access to potential pandemic flu vaccines, they should not cooperate by sending out the viruses to WHO," said Suwit Wibulpolprasert, a senior public health official in Thailand's Ministry of Public Health, in a statement emailed to Reuters.

"Developing countries are having some doubts that WHO may be used as a socially credible intermediary organization to steal their viruses for commercial purposes.

"How can a vaccine firm develop a vaccine if it does not receive the virus from these countries? This is a global problem, not a local one, and should not be addressed by blaming the country that decided not to cooperate when they are treated unfairly."

INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM

But few others backed Indonesia's decision. Sharing of virus samples is crucial as it allows experts to study their make-up and map its evolution and the geographical spread of any particular strain. Samples are also used to prepare vaccines.

"A virus is not something you can patent, it's not a product. If you use it to do business, it's not ethical. We're not talking business here, but saving lives in different countries affected by a virus," said William Chui, chief of pharmacy service at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong.

Although H5N1 bird flu remains essentially a bird disease, it has killed at least 166 people since late 2003, mostly in Asia, and experts fear it could trigger a pandemic once it learns to transmit efficiently between people.

It has flared up in recent months, spreading through poultry in Thailand, Japan, Vietnam and South Korea and killing six people in Indonesia. It turned up last weekend in a British turkey farm.

Experts stressed that this was a global matter and not a problem for Jakarta to solve unilaterally.

"The WHO must intervene, allocate vaccines, govern how it is charged and make sure companies don't profiteer. It is not an Indonesia-specific problem, it is a world issue," Chui said.

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand said it has opened talks with US drugmaker Abbott Laboratories on lowering the price of an AIDS treatment, which could avoid the need for a generic version Bangkok approved last week.

Thailand has already issued a so-called "compulsory license" for the anti-AIDS drug Kaletra, which effectively breaks the drug's patent and clears the way for the kingdom to either produce or import cheaper generic versions.

Hoping to prevent Thailand from turning to generics, Abbott has agreed to work with the kingdom to find ways of reducing the cost of treatment, the health ministry said.

"Abbott has agreed in principle with the Thai government to make Kaletra more affordable for all Thais," said Suvit Wibulpolprasert, the ministry's senior advisor on health economics.

"They have not yet agreed to cut the price, but we are in negotiations over that," Suvit told AFP.

AIDS activists say that generic versions of Kaletra would cut the cost of treatment to 4,000 baht (114 dollars) per month from the current 11,580 baht (331 dollars).

Thailand's universal HIV/AIDS treatment programme has been hailed as a success in the fight against the disease.

In 2002, the Thai government launched a generic version of an HIV/AIDS triple therapy and was able to cut the cost of treatment 18-fold.

Thailand's treatment program has been widely credited with slashing the number of AIDS deaths by about 75 percent last year and the number of new annual HIV infections continues to drop.

In November, Thailand decided to allow generic versions of pharmaceutical giant Merck's high-priced HIV/AIDS drug Efavirenz.

Merck already agreed to cut the price of Efavirenz from 1,300 baht to 880 baht, as Thailand is starting to import the drug from India at the price of 650 baht, Suvit said.

The numbers of new infections of HIV and AIDS patients in Japan hit record highs in 2006, the Health Ministry said Wednesday, underscoring concerns over spreading infections.

The number of new HIV infections last year was 914, up nearly 10 percent from 2005, according to preliminary data released by the ministry's AIDS Surveillance Committee.

The number of those who developed AIDS in 2006 was 390, up 6.3 percent from the year before.

Both numbers were a record high since the ministry began taking statistics in 1985.

The report did not provide analysis on why the numbers are increasing. Ministry official Kozo Akino said while actual infections may be spreading, the surge in the number of infections is also because more people are getting tested.