Mr. Hu’s wife, Zeng Jinyan, herself a well-known blogger and rights advocate, was distraught in a telephone interview on Thursday.

“I feel hopeless and helpless,” said Ms. Zeng, who is under house arrest with the couple’s infant daughter in their suburban Beijing apartment, though she was allowed to visit her husband on Thursday.

Asked why Mr. Hu was arrested and convicted, she said: “The fundamental reason is to silence him. He had been speaking up and all he said was plain truth. It makes them unhappy. But they can do this to him because they’re unhappy?”

Earlier this year, Ms. Rice raised Mr. Hu’s case during a meeting with China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi. The European Union presidency has also criticized the subversion charge and called for Mr. Hu’s release.

Li Fangping, Mr. Hu’s lawyer, said the court showed leniency by sentencing him to less than the maximum five-year term. The sentence also forbids Mr. Hu to make any public political statements for one year after his release from prison, Mr. Li said.

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“Three and a half years is still unacceptable to us,” Mr. Li told a throng of reporters outside the courthouse. “There is a major disagreement between prosecutors and the defense over punishing someone for making peaceful speech. We still believe the charge does not stand.”

Prosecutors in China rarely discuss cases after a verdict. But Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, reported that Mr. Hu had confessed to the charges. “Hu spread malicious rumors and committed libel in an attempt to subvert the state’s political power and socialist system,” the court verdict stated, according to Xinhua.

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In his human rights work, Mr. Hu has volunteered to help AIDS patients and plant trees to fight the encroachment of desert.

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He has maintained regular contacts with dissidents and other advocates on issues that include environmental protection and legal reform. He has also served as a one-man clearinghouse for information about peasant protests and dissidents.

He was detained on Dec. 27 last year and later charged with “incitement to subvert state power,” an accusation based on six essays and interviews in which he criticized the Communist Party. He wrote a long, blistering essay detailing how the police had tortured two people who had protested the illegal seizure of their homes in Beijing. In that essay, he also criticized the party’s human rights record.

Mr. Hu posted the essay on his personal blog at a delicate time: in advance of last fall’s 17th Party Congress, a major political meeting in which the new party leadership was announced.

Last year, Mr. Hu was also a co-writer of an article that contended that the Communist Party had failed to fulfill its Olympic promises to improve human rights before the Beijing Games, though that article apparently was not included as evidence.

Mr. Li said that Mr. Hu continued to maintain his innocence, though he had acknowledged outside the courtroom that some of his comments were “excessive” in the context of existing law.

China’s subversion laws, like those for state secrets, are deliberately vague and grant prosecutors considerable leeway in determining subversive speech, although freedom of speech is included in the Constitution.

Mr. Hu has 10 days to decide whether to appeal the verdict. His health is also an issue; he has hepatitis B and also takes medication for a deteriorating liver condition. Mr. Li said Mr. Hu had the option of applying for medical parole if he chose not to appeal.

Meanwhile, Ms. Zeng, Mr. Hu’s wife, was anguished. “I’m very disappointed and very pained,” she said. “Yesterday, I thought he could be back home today.”