He was among 1,800 workers laid off by China Central Television in early July.

Like most journalists and cameramen in the news centre, Mr Fan had never signed a contract with the nationwide state broadcaster although he worked full time for it for five years.

In an internal letter circulated a few days before their forced departure, the station said it had decided to lay off all staff without a contract - in response to the labour law, which will come into effect on January 1.

Under the new law, employers who refuse to sign contracts with their staff are fined the equivalent of two months of the woerker's salary.

Mr Fan said that even though he had worked virtually full time for China Central Television and had always wanted a contract, he had never been offered one.

CCTV personnel director Yang Xiaomin told the Southern Weekly newspaper earlier that the station had about 2,000 staff - about the same as 17 years ago, although the number of channels had risen from three in 1990 to 16.

To meet the soaring demand for manpower, CCTV tried to get round the limited headcount by outsourcing work to a service company - which hires 6,000 people to work for CCTV - according to the report.

A third category of staff, in addition to people on the CCTV payroll and those hired by the service company, is freelancers with no contracts, although many of them are virtually full-timers.

Mr Yang told the Southern Weekly about 1,800 of these freelancers had been laid off as CCTV moved to comply with the new labour contract law.

Mr Fan and another documentary producer decided to file a complaint with the Haidian district labour bureau on the grounds that they had had an employment relationship with CCTV for years and had not been given any contract or insurance, although they deserved them.

And despite their employment relationship, CCTV did not pay them any compensation when they were laid off, Mr Fan said.

The two men said they knew it was impossible to get job contracts but they had filed a complaint anyway, hoping to get some justice.

'We thought that even if they refused to give us a contract, they should give us compensation,' Mr Fan said.

He said he had been hoping to set an example for other axed colleagues to fight for their rights but he was disappointed that most had not taken any action in the past two months.

So far, he had heard of only two other complaints lodged with the labour bureau.

'These people deal with the law every day, but they will not stand up for their own rights,' Mr Fan said.

'They said they did not want to cause trouble to the programmes they once worked for. It is so absurd.'

CCTV eventually agreed to resolve the problem through negotiation with the two directors, and the two sides settled, with each receiving more than 100,000 yuan in compensation.

The director who filed the complaint with Mr Fan said: 'Everybody knows the power of CCTV. But we wanted to challenge it. We wanted people to know the truth.'

Both men said their supervisors, and even their referees for their CCTV jobs, had been under immense pressure. 'They were summoned for talks and told it was their responsibility that their former subordinates had caused CCTV trouble,' Mr Fan said.

Contacted for comment, Mr Yang only referred to the earlier interview by Southern Weekly and refused to comment further on the case.

CCTV personnel department officials also refused to comment despite repeated calls.

Li Yingchun , a lawyer who specialises in labour law, said CCTV's actions were illegal because it had not granted compensation to the people with whom it had had an employment relationship.

'Although they did not sign a contract, the two parties had formed an employment relationship, and the compensation CCTV finally gave them was no different from what it gave people who had signed contracts.'

According to the law, an employer was obliged to pay a month's salary for every year an employee had worked for it, Mr Li said.

He said it was not difficult for other former CCTV staff to seek compensation.

'The case is not very complicated,' Mr Li said.

'As long as they can prove they have had an employment relationship with CCTV, then they should have the support of the labour tribunal' under the labour bureau.

As for Mr Fan, he believes that although his blog was shut down on Thursday, 'my goal was reached because the truth is now known'.