The funniest bit of the film Prisoners of Freedom City is when the secret policeman picks his nose. He has a good dig around while sitting outside the apartment he's monitoring, unaware that those he's observing have turned the tables and are filming him.

You might not expect a documentary about being under house arrest to be very amusing, but humour is one of the weapons that the dissidents Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan use in their chronicle of the 214 days Hu has spent under house arrest in the past year. From the window of their small apartment in the ironically named Freedom City housing complex in east Beijing, he films everything he can see. In winter, the secret policemen jump up and down to keep warm. In summer, they lounge around in torpor, chatting and playing cards. They smoke and snooze and snack. Truly the life of a secret policeman is dull.

Hu is usually described as an Aids activist, as he has campaigned for those who were infected by contaminated blood supplies and face discrimination as well as disease. But, increasingly, he has become a symbol of those who are denied the right to speak out in a China which claims it is opening up before the Olympics next August.

"From the outside it is an open Olympics, but internally it's very tight," he said when I interviewed him in the small apartment he shares with his wife, Zeng. We had pushed our way past three plain-clothes policemen who tried to obstruct our entry. "I'm only one of many Chinese citizens under illegal custody. Our film will prove the harm the Chinese government inflicts on its citizens. The harm is intensified as the Olympics approaches."

Zeng, who is 23, never expected fame, but when Hu was "disappeared" a week after their wedding last January she started to write a blog (http://zengjinyan.spaces.live.com). Hundreds of thousands of Chinese people logged on to read about her struggle with the police, who finally admitted that they had seized - or, as she put it - "kidnapped" him. Then people began to translate her blog and suddenly she was famous, a tiny, frail-looking young woman who had taken on the Chinese state. A few months ago, Time magazine named her one of the hundred most influential people in the world.

Eighteen years on from the Tian anmen Square massacre, China is less brutal and repressive than it was at that time, but the Communist Party remains monolithic. Any hint of organised opposition is rapidly quashed. The Beijing government's greatest fear is that those protesting about diverse issues - land-grabs, Aids, forced abortions - will team up to form a broader opposition movement.

More than anything, it fears that dissenters in one part of the country will make common cause with those in another. Communicators such as Hu and Zeng are treated as a serious threat.

In the film, we see Zeng being harassed by the police as she leaves the apartment to go to work each day. In one scene, three burly men in plain clothes block her path, stepping this way and that to stop her passing. On other occasions they harass her as she gets into her car. Always they follow her. On one occasion we see her standing in front of a police car with a placard that reads "Shame to Insult a Woman". The driver tries to push her over as he edges out of the parking space, but she stands her ground. In a potent symbol of China's relationship with those who oppose the party, it looks for a moment as if the car is going to run her over, but in the end she refuses to budge and the driver loses his nerve.

At one point, she has a T-shirt made with the Chinese characters meaning "Shame on you for following me" printed on the back - so that's what the secret policemen read as they tail her. A few days ago, we picked Zeng up from Freedom City and talked to her in a vehicle. An unmarked grey Mazda followed us at all times.

"I don't feel like a dissident," she said. "Sometimes I don't think Hu Jia is a dissident, either. We just uphold certain principles, and these principles are not permitted under the conditions in which we live."

She, too, campaigned for people with HIV and Aids as a student, but now her aims are broader.

"I want civil society to grow fast in China," Zeng said. "I don't want to see fierce battles. I want people in Europe to know what it's like for Chinese human rights advocates and those who think independently."

Hu and Zeng's first child is due in November. With Hu back under house arrest, she wonders how they will cope. She worries that she is put ting too much pressure on her family, and that she is now so notorious, she will never get a job.

I wish you could see the film, but when they tried to board a plane to show it in Europe, Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan were barred from leaving the country. The police told them they were "suspected of harming state security".

Lindsey Hilsum is China correspondent for Channel 4 News

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