A gathering in support of the Chinese government in downtown Manhattan that China’s official news agency termed a “huge rally” was anything but, observers are saying.

Anti-China activists and impartial bystanders were among those who disputed the Chinese estimate that 10,000 people attended the rally on Sunday afternoon, putting the number at much less.

Members of the Tibetan Youth Congress of New York and New Jersey who watched the rally and are critical of the Chinese government said they counted at most a few thousand people on a traffic island in the center of Foley Square.

Indifferent passersby put the number even lower.

“It was 250 — max,” Gordon Waite, 47, said. He said he works in the area and watched the rally from start to finish.

“It was loud, but they never even went into the park,” Mr. Waite added, referring to the small green space on one half of the traffic triangle.

The Tibetan group, which has been participating in anti-China rallies in front of the consulate every day for the past 53 days to protest the Chinese reaction to recent Tibetan riots, criticized the crowd estimate as propaganda.

“It’s a lie,” a spokesman for the congress, Karma Yeshi, 30, said. “There were about 2,000 or 3,000.”

Mr. Yeshi said he and several other members of his group went to the rally to hand out pamphlets about Tibetans who he says are being tortured by the Chinese government in the wake of the riots.

The size of the rally was reported yesterday by Xinhua News, China’s government-run news agency. In the article, titled “Huge rally held in New York in support of Beijing Olympics,” the news agency reported that “nearly 10,000 Chinese students, scholars and Chinese Americans held a peaceful rally here Sunday to support the Beijing Olympics and denounce attempts to sabotage the sporting event.”

In recent weeks, the Olympic torch’s journey across the globe has been marked by skirmishes between China supporters and activists protesting human rights violations in China, the Chinese government’s relationship with the Sudanese government, and recent crackdowns in response to riots in Tibet.

Sunday’s rally follows large-scale demonstrations that have been organized in China to welcome the torch and support the Olympics, a reaction to the anti-China protests along the torch’s path. The Xinhua article reported that the rally had been independently organized by Chinese students studying in America, adding that the action had “won widespread support among Chinese communities around the United States.”

The focus of the rally was on combating what the Xinhua article called “distorted coverage” of the Tibetan riots by Western media outlets. The China supporters were also drawn downtown to denounce a commentator on CNN, Jack Cafferty, who referred to China as “a bunch of goons and thugs.” The comments, which aired last month on “The Situation Room,” have provoked a swell of anger among Chinese immigrants across the country.

CNN has since apologized.

Representatives for Xinhua and the Chinese consulate in New York could not be reached for comment. Police officials, citing department policy, declined to estimate the size of the crowd.

Despite questions about the crowd count, no one disputed the rally’s boisterousness. Chinese anthems blasting out of loud speakers for several hours were nearly drowned out by the enthusiastic chanting of the red-clad protesters clustered on the traffic island. A group of several dozen members of the rally also stood in rows on the steps of the Supreme Court building.

One of the China supporters who joined the rally, Thong Yan, 62, who spoke in a phone interview yesterday from his Bronx home, bolstered Xinhua’s account. He said he had not read the Xinhua article, but offered up his own estimate: 10,000 people.