China plans to make its highway tolls more affordable after an online outcry over the sentencing of a man to life in prison for dodging the charges.

Fees will be lowered on major highways and a network of free roads will be developed for those who cannot afford the tolls, Weng Mengyong, vice minister of transport was reported as saying on the ministry website Tuesday.

Toll fees for 90,000 kilometres (56,000 miles) of second-tier highways around the country were scrapped last year, he added, and others will follow.

Weng's comments were in response to the high-profile case of Shi Jianfeng, a driver in the central province of Henan who was sentenced to life in prison last week for dodging toll fees.

Shi used fake military licence plates on his trucks to avoid paying the toll fees. He should also have paid fines for his overloaded vehicles. The total amounted to more than 3.7 million yuan ($562,000) over an eight-month period.

The harsh sentence sparked widespread criticism on Chinese blogs and web forums, with Internet-users hitting out at high road costs and noting that Shi's 200,000-yuan income over that period was far lower than the road fees he would have paid.

The case highlights the growing power of the web in China -- which has the world's largest online population at 457 million users -- in a nation where ordinary citizens have few outlets to address perceived injustices.

After the outcry, judicial authorities in Henan announced they would grant Shi a retrial, saying they had found "new evidence".

In a twist at the weekend, Shi's younger brother, Shi Junfeng, turned himself in, confessing he was the real offender and that his sibling had taken the rap for him.

Shi Junfeng added he had offered 1.3 million yuan in bribes in a bid to get his brother released, the official China Daily newspaper said.

Three court officials, including the chief judge who jailed the elder Shi, have been suspended over the "dubious sentence" pending the results of an investigation into the new evidence, state media reported.

High toll fees have been a source of anger on the mainland for some time. In 2007, a World Bank report said that charges in China were similar to or higher than in developed nations.

Germany, where trucks pay an average of $0.15 a kilometre, was compared to China, which charges $0.12 to $0.21 a kilometre.

Chinese Internet-users reacted with suspicion to the transport ministry's promise to reduce road charges.

"That's nonsense, I haven't seen one fact to prove that," one said on the popular web portal qq.com.

"The transport ministry is joking again!" another web user said.