EIJING, Feb. 10 — International human rights groups expressed outrage today at the life sentence handed down to a dissident based in the United States as the Chinese government released further details of what it said were his crimes.

According to the court verdict, Mr. Wang had been gathering military intelligence for Taiwan from 1982 to 1990 under the cover of the company name "Guanzhong," according to the government-controlled New China News Agency.

It added that since 1996 he had organized "terrorist activities" in connection with an underground political party he wanted to form, including procuring guns, and planning explosions and assassinations. He also plotted to bomb the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, the verdict said, according to the news agency.

But the report provided little evidence to support the charges, and court officials in Shenzhen, reached by phone, refused to provide further details. The United States Embassy had asked to send an observer to Mr. Wang's trial, but the request was denied because involving what the Chinese government considers state secrets are held in private.

Mr. Wang, who holds a United States green card, is still a Chinese citizen and so is not covered under bilateral consular agreements that would give him access to embassy assistance while in jail.

Associates of Mr. Wang called the charges politically motivated and ridiculous.

"The charges are just fabricated to get at Dr. Wang, since he is a founding father of the overseas Chinese democracy movement," said Yongjun Zhou, a leader of the Free China movement, who was released from a Chinese labor camp just last year. "There is no well-formed dissident group in China — we can't even meet," he added. "How can we organize a terrorist group?"

He noted that, like many exiled dissidents and China scholars, Mr. Wang had sought financing from the government of Taiwan. But he said that was public knowledge and common practice, not a crime.

In Hong Kong, about a dozen rights activists attempted to deliver a petition protesting the sentence to an office of the Chinese government.

The verdict, which can be appealed within the next 10 days, is the latest in a bizarre saga involving charges and countercharges of espionage, kidnapping and more.

Colleagues in the United States say that Mr. Wang had traveled to Vietnam last June to meet with labor activists based in China. On July 3, the Chinese police said they found Mr. Wang and two colleagues bound in a temple in South Guangxi Province. The police first rescued them, then detained them after realizing who they were.

Human rights advocates contend that the Chinese police kidnapped Mr. Wang — a longtime adversary of the Chinese government — and took him into custody.

According to colleagues based in the United States, Mr. Wang sneaked into China in 1998 on a false passport in hopes of meeting with members of the then fledging China Democracy Party. The party was later declared illegal and its members were arrested. Mr. Wang was caught by the police and later expelled.

But in the report by the New China News Agency, the Chinese government essentially said the purpose of the visit was to start a "terrorist cell." He met with three Chinese "to spread terrorism and ordered them to obtain guns for kidnapping," the report said.

For the past year, human rights advocates have charged that the Chinese government has been using the global campaign against terrorism as an excuse to detain and imprison its political enemies, from Muslim activists who want an independent state in China's northwest, to the members of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong.