BAODING, China — One night in late October, a college student namedChen Xiaofeng was in-line skating with a friend on the grounds of HebeiUniversity in central China. They were gliding past the campus grocery when a Volkswagen sedan raced down a narrow lane and struck them head-on.

The impact sent Ms. Chen flying and broke the other woman’s leg. The22-year-old driver, who was intoxicated, tried to speed away. Securityguards intercepted him, but he was undeterred. He warned them, “Myfather is Li Gang!”

“The two girls were motionless,” one passer-by that night, a studentwho identified himself only by his surname, Duan, said this week.“There was a small pool of blood.” The next day, Ms. Chen was dead.

Chen Xiaofeng was a poor farm girl. The man accused of killing her, LiQiming, is the son of Li Gang, the deputy police chief in the Beishidistrict of Baoding. The tale of her death is precisely the sort ofgripping socio-drama — a commoner grievously wronged; a privilegedtransgressor pulling strings to escape punishment — that sets off alarmbells in the offices of Communist Party censors. And in fact, partypropaganda officials moved swiftly after the accident to ensure thatthe story never gained traction.

Curiously, however, the opposite has happened. A month after theaccident, much of China knows the story, and “My father is Li Gang” hasbecome a bitter inside joke, a catchphrase for shirking anyresponsibility — washing the dishes, being faithful to a girlfriend —with impunity. Even the government’s heavy-handed effort to control thestory has become the object of scorn among younger, savvier Chinese.

“There was a little on the school news channel at first,” one HebeiUniversity student who offered only his surname, Wang, said in aninterview last week. “But then it went completely quiet. We’re reallydisappointed in the press for stopping coverage of this major news.”

In many ways, the Li Gang case, as it is known, exemplifies how China’spropaganda machine — able to slant or kill any news in the age ofprinting presses and television — is sometimes hamstrung in the age ofthe Internet, especially when it tries to manipulate a pithy narrativeabout the abuse of power.

“Frequently we’ll see directives on coverage, but those directivesdon’t necessarily mean there is no coverage,” said David Bandurski, ananalyst at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. “They’renot all that effective.”

“Censorship is increasingly unpopular in China,” he added. “We know howunpopular it is, because they have to keep the guidelines themselvesunder wraps.”

A gadfly blog, sarcastically titled Ministry of Truth, has begun topuncture the veil surrounding censorship, anonymously posting secret government directivesleaked by free-speech sympathizers. According to the blog’s sources,the Central Propaganda Department issued a directive on Oct. 28, 10days after the accident, “ensuring there is no more hype regarding thedisturbance over traffic at Hebei University.”

On that same day, censors prohibited reporting on six other incidents.One involved another girl’s death in police custody. Others included aninvestigation of a Hunan Province security official, the sexualdalliance of a Maoming vice mayor, the abandonment of closed pavilionsat Shanghai’s World Expo and the increasing censorship of Internet chatrooms.

But the Li Gang case was hard to suppress, partly because itpersonified an enduring grievance: the belief that the powerful canflout the rules to which ordinary folk are forced to submit.Increasingly, that grievance focuses on what Chinese mockingly call the“guan er dai” and “fu er dai” — the “second generation,” children ofprivileged government officials and the super-rich.

Realizing the delicacy of the matter, the government tried to shapepublic reaction in more ways than by simply restricting coverage. AfterInternet bulletin boards began buzzing with outrage, China’s nationaltelevision network, CCTV, broadcast an Oct. 22 interview with Li Gangand his son, filled with effusive apologies for the accident. On Oct.24, the news media reported that Li Qiming, who had been detained bythe police the day after the accident, had been arrested.

Police regulations ostensibly bar interviews with detainees. A Baodingpolice spokeswoman who identified herself as Ms. Zhou said in an e-mailthat the network obtained the interview because it had been approved bythe local party propaganda office.

Ms. Chen’s survivors were not afforded the same access. In earlyNovember, Fenghuang Satellite Television, a news channel based in HongKong that is available to some in mainland China, broadcast an angryinterview with Ms. Chen’s brother, Chen Lin. On Nov. 4, the CentralPropaganda Department banned further news of the interview.

But censorship officials were seeking to control a message that had already spread widely.

On Oct. 20, a female blogger in northern China nicknamed Piggy FeetBeta announced a contest to incorporate the phrase “Li Gang is myfather” into classical Chinese poetry. Six thousand applicants replied,one modifying a famous poem by Mao to read “it’s all in the past, talkabout heroes, my father is Li Gang.”

Chinatopix, via Associated Press

Copycat competitions, using ad slogans and song lyrics, sprang upelsewhere on the Internet. In the southern metropolis of Chongqing, anartist created an installation based on the phrase.

On Nov. 9, Internet chatter on the case abruptly withered. But somehave continued to dodge Web censors: starting in early November, theBeijing artist and activist Ai Weiwei posted on his Web site an interview with Ms. Chen’s father and brother, who said he had rejected appeals to negotiate a settlement.

“In society they say everyone is equal, but in every corner there is inequality,” Chen Lin said.

“How can you live in this country and this society without any worry?” he added.

Censors repeatedly blocked the interview. Mr. Ai has played acat-and-mouse game, moving it to a new Web site every time.

Finally, last Thursday, the Chens’ lawyer, Zhang Kai, received atelephone call from his clients. “They thanked me for all the efforts Iput into this case,” he said, “but they told me they have resolvedtheir dispute with Li Gang’s family. Half an hour after the call, theycame to my office and handed in a termination contract. And after that,they just disappeared.”

Mr. Zhang said many of his cases involving conflicts between ordinarycitizens and powerful people had ended the same way. “In currentChinese society, people put an emphasis on power more than onindividual liberty,” he said.

If the settlement was intended to quash chatter about the Li Gang case,it, too, seems to have accomplished the opposite.

In Baoding, Hebei students questioned at random this week uniformlydenounced the handling of the Chen case. “I’d see the case to the end,”said one man who gave only his surname, Zhang. “Go through the legalprocess and seek justice.”

A second student, Zhao, was unsparing. “This is the kind of society welive in,” he said angrily. “People who have power, they can cover upthe sky. We want this settled according to the law.”