Taipei - A Taiwan-based Chinese dissident, angry that the Taiwan government has not granted him permanent asylum, on Monday asked Taipei to send him back to China.

Cai Lujun, 40, said he made the request because he can no longer endure the "endless wait" for asylum and the humiliation of living like a "half-ghost, half-human being" in Taiwan.

He said he is not afraid of imprisonment in China for defecting to Taiwan, because it is better being jailed in China than begging for food and waiting indefinitely for asylum in Taiwan, he said in a statement.

In a statement entitled: The Taiwan and US Governments, Please Remember: I Am A Human Being!, Cai also blasted the United States for rejecting his asylum application, calling it a coward before China.

Cai applied for asylum in the United States with the de facto US embassy - the American Institute in Taiwan - on September 11. The AIT turned him down on the grounds that Taiwan has a well-established mechanism to protect asylum seekers.

Cai, a former businessman in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, was a jailed for three years in 2003 for criticizing China's dictatorship on the Internet.

On July 26, 2007, he fled to Taiwan on a Taiwan fishing boat to seek asylum.

Cai was kept in a detention centre for illegal Chinese job seekers for three months and was released from the detention centre in December 2007, after Taipei confirmed he was a bona fide defector.

Then began the long wait for asylum.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) promised to grant asylum to Cai and four other Chinese pro-democracy activists - some of whom have been in Taiwan for four years - or find a third country to accept them.

But MAC claimed it cannot grant asylum now as the Asylum Bill is still pending review in parliament. Its effort to help them find asylum in a foreign country has been futile because most countries have diplomatic ties with China and do not want to offend Beijing by sheltering Chinese dissidents.

Cai lives on a 10,000-Taiwan-dollar (320-US-dollar) monthly subsidy, and cannot work, seek medicare or apply for a cell phone because he does not have permanent residence in Taiwan.

After holding several news conferences and a half-day hunger strike in front of them Presidential Office Building, Cai said he has lost faith in the Taiwan government and wants to go home, even if he faces jail in China.

"After one year's painful experience in Taiwan, I now want to return to China. China is a scoundrel and it admits it is a scoundrel. Taiwan is more shameless than China because it claims to be a nation of freedom and democracy but does not respect human rights," he said by telephone. (dpa)