Internet users in China are hailing a student who claims to have thrown a shoe at the architect of the country's so-called "Great Firewall" of Internet controls during a university appearance.

Police in central China yesterday refused to comment on the alleged attack on Fang Binxing at Wuhan University by a student who identified himself online only as Hanunyi.

But the student has been hailed by web users posts that were later deleted by authorities under the very system that Fang designed to snuff out information that the government considers a threat to its authority.

Supporters immediately offered the student cash, plane tickets, buffet dinners at five-star hotels, pornography and a virtual private network, or VPN, to help him scale the "Great Firewall".

"When I think of the shoe hitting Fang right in the face, I'm so happy," wrote one Twitter user identified, who was presumably using a VPN to access the site which is officially blocked in China.

Some reports said eggs were thrown at Fang but missed their mark. No photos or videos of the reported shoe attack were immediately available.

Thousands of Chinese Internet users vented their anger at Fang in December when he opened a microblog account on web portal Sina.com, which operates a tightly-managed Twitter clone. Fang closed the account within days.