CHINA TRIES TO SILENCE LAST OF DISSIDENTS : COURT SENDS TIANANMEN SQUARE ICON TO PRISON FOR 11 YEARS.

Byline: Patrick E. Tyler The New York Times

With a harsh court verdict Wednesday that will send the former student leader Wang Dan to prison for 11 years, China's Communist Party leadership may have silenced the last of its prominent critics at home and ushered in an era of authoritarianism that leaves only commerce to occupy the Chinese.

Despite the international protests that greeted the announcement this month that China had charged Wang, the 27-year-old icon of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, with a capital offense, a Beijing court convicted and sentenced him Wednesday after a four-hour show trial in a sealed courthouse.

In Washington, the Clinton administration condemned the Chinese court's action but said Secretary of State Warren Christopher's visit to China in mid-November would go ahead as scheduled.

American officials acknowledged that the timing of the verdict was embarrassing, coming only hours after a midlevel American delegation to prepare for Christopher's visit left Beijing following discussions that included human rights and Wang in particular.

Looking weak and pale, according to his mother, Wang was taken to the No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, where he was convicted of ``plotting to subvert the government'' through his critical writings in foreign publications from 1993 to 1995 and through his association with other prominent dissidents, like Wei Jingsheng, Liu Xiaobo and Wang Juntao. Each of them had pressed the government in recent years to be more tolerant of dissent and to fulfill past promises of democratic rule.

Now they are all in jail, labor camps or exile.

As in most delicate political cases, the verdict and sentence Wednesday were preordained by Communist Party leaders. Wang was also denied his political rights for two more years after his sentence is completed in 2007. When he emerges at the age of 38, he will have spent 17 years in prison.

With the persecution of Wang and the crackdown on other dissidents, President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng seem to have demonstrated that they have the support of the broader Communist Party leadership and the Chinese military to govern with a tough style in the era of transition that awaits the death of Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader, who is 92 and no longer able to rule.

The court, in issuing its judgment, also seemed to reinforce Communist Party resistance to reconciliation with the millions of students, intellectuals and workers who supported the student movement of 1989. That movement was again branded a ``counterrevolutionary riot'' Wednesday, and those who took part were called criminals ``who wish to step up the so-called Chinese democratization.''

The 11-year sentence was among the harshest given to any of the students who led hundreds of thousands of their university classmates to Tiananmen Square in 1989 to petition the party leadership for democratic change.

After a violent military crackdown ended the demonstrations on June 4, Wang was No. 1 on the government's most-wanted list, and after turning himself in, he served nearly four years in prison. He was re-arrested in May 1995 and held in secret detention for 17 months until he was formally charged with a capital offense of subversion on Oct. 7.

The chief trial judge, Cai Yue, was quoted by the official New China News Agency as saying Wang had enjoyed ``the full right of defense in accordance with the law.''

``Cai Yue said that the court made sure that Wang Dan and his defenders fully exercised their rights of defense,'' the agency said, and the court allowed ``defense speeches delivered by Wang Dan'' and his mother, Wang Lingyun, who read ``testimony materials of witnesses she had collected on her own.''

Cai also asserted that the trial was given public notice and was attended by ``people from all walks of life.''

But outside the courthouse Wednesday, police officers put up a cordon and forcefully repelled reporters and onlookers who approached the building.

A reporter for The Associated Press who approached the court's public notice board was forced into a taxi and warned that he would be expelled from the country if he tried to return. Police confiscated videotapes from two foreign television crews, and some of Wang's friends and colleagues were secretly detained Tuesday and released Wednesday after the trial was over.

Wang's parents and sister were allowed to attend the trial, as were some Chinese journalists from state-controlled news organizations. There were conflicting reports Wednesday night whether his parents were also detained after the trial to keep them away from journalists. The telephone at their apartment rang busy throughout the evening.

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PHOTO Wang Dan was handed an 11-year sentence after a four-hour trial.