Four members of a Chinese rights movement went on trial Monday, a day after its founder was jailed in what has been seen as an escalating government crackdown on anti-corruption activists.

The proceedings bring the total number of New Citizens Movement members tried on charges of disrupting public order to 10, seven of them since last Wednesday in Beijing.

The criminal charges are based on small-scale street protests where the activists held banners calling for officials to disclose their assets as a check against corruption.

China's new leadership under President Xi Jinping says it is tackling graft, but fears any organised movement might undermine the control of the ruling Communist Party.

At least 20 members of the group, which is estimated to involve a few hundred people, have been detained over the past year.

At Monday's trials three of the activists, Ding Jiaxi, Li Wei, and Zhang Baocheng dismissed their lawyers, the attorneys told AFP, in a move previous activists have used to delay proceedings for 15 days.

One of Zhang's lawyers, Chen Jiangang, said that the case of a fourth defendant, Yuan Dong, was still being heard late Monday. Yuan's lawyer could not be reached.

Echoing the advocates for other activists, Chen expressed little hope of a fair trial in China's politically controlled courts.

"As lawyers we feel very constrained, there's nothing we can do," he said. "Our defence won't have any use."

On Sunday Xu Zhiyong, a central New Citizens figure and longtime rights lawyer, became the first member of the group to be jailed when he was sentenced to four years in prison. The maximum for the offence is five.

Lawyers for the other activists said that the verdict against Xu ensured that the other activists would also be punished.

Xu's wife Cui Zheng, who gave birth to their daughter this month, described her reaction to the verdict in a letter released by his lawyer Monday.

"The trial and the verdict came very fast, it was somewhat overwhelming," she wrote. "We were calm when we heard the result, but all our hopes and illusions have been extinguished."

Xu's jailing prompted immediate criticism overseas, with the United States saying it was "deeply disappointed" and the human rights group Amnesty International calling the decision "shameful".

Also Sunday, well-known dissident Hu Jia, who said he had taken part in several New Citizens Movement events, was taken away from his home in Beijing by security officers, he wrote on Twitter.

Hu's family were notified late Monday that he had been released from police custody, according to his lawyer Shang Baojun.

Outside the hearings on Monday, dozens of police in uniforms and plain clothes surrounded the courthouse, and one pushed an AFP reporter for several hundred metres before forcing him into a taxi.

"You cannot stand here," he said, accompanied by a colleague. "There is no 'why'."

Other foreign journalists reported similar rough treatment outside hearings over the past week, with officers tightly closing off courthouses and forcing bystanders to leave.

Diplomats from several countries attempting to attend the trials were told they were not permitted to do so, a European representative told AFP.

The causes embraced by the New Citizens Movement range from official graft to equal access to education.