By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) - A court on Friday upheld the convictions of two laid-off workers who led some of China's biggest labor protests in 50 years, an official said.

The provincial-level People's High Court in the northeastern city of Liaoyang rejected the appeals of Yao Fuxin, who was sentenced last month to seven years in prison, and Xiao Yunliang, who was sentenced to four years, a court clerk who identified herself only as Miss Pan said.

The men were arrested last year after tens of thousands of laid-off workers demanded better benefits from bankrupt state-owned factories in protests in Liaoyang. They were among the largest protests reported since China's 1949 communist revolution.

According to state media, the men were convicted of subversion for trying to set up a Liaoyang branch of the would-be opposition China Democratic Party that hoped to challenge the communist's monopoly on political power.

The party was suppressed and its leaders arrested soon after they announced its formation in 1998. Relatives of the two men denied they had tried to set up a party branch and said they had only passing contact with the group.

The charges against them did not mention the protests, though their families said that was why they were arrested.

Protests by laid-off workers have grown common amid mass layoffs and closures of state industries across China. Authorities often dispel them by arresting organizers and offering some concessions.

China's communist government doesn't permit workers to organize outside of state-controlled unions.

Labor discontent is especially strong across the northeast, China's former industrial heartland where corruption is believed to be common.

Shuttered factories encircle Liaoyang, about 600 miles northeast of Beijing, while their former workers eke out a living as peddlers and day laborers.

The New York-based group Human Rights in China criticized the court's handling of the case.

``Nothing in these cases meets even the most rudimentary standards of justice,'' said a statement by Liu Qing, the group's president.

Yao's defense lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said the court did not notify him of the hearing, as required by Chinese law.

Mo, who works in Beijing, said the court rejected a request to to submit new evidence and question the accusers.