Christians sentenced for inciting subversion
On July 24, 2024, elder Zhang Chunlei (张春雷) of Guiyang Ren’ai Reformed Church was convicted of inciting subversion—an ESS crime—and fraud and sentenced to five years in prison.
Zhang was detained on March 16, 2021, after going to a local police station to inquire about Christians who had been in custody for holding a retreat on a privately rented property, following a police raid.
Zhang was initially detained on suspicion of fraud. However, the authorities levied an additional charge of inciting subversion against him in January 2022. Despite being diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, Zhang has been denied release on medical grounds. He has one and a half years to serve before completing his sentence in March 2026.
Not long after Zhang was sentenced, unofficial news media sources reported that another Christian in Jiangxi had been sentenced to four years and six months in prison for inciting subversion. Detained by Interpol in Malaysia at the behest of the Chinese government on June 17, 2020, Shi Junwei (⽯俊伟) was repatriated to China on September 23 of the same year. Shi is currently held in Ji’an Prison and is due for release on March 22, 2025.
After disassociating himself with the state-sanctioned Three Self-Patriotic Church in 2010, Shi began proselytizing and wrote online articles about Christianity, many of which are critical of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2019, Shi met with Christians from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States in Malaysia, where he was detained and subsequently repatriated.
Hubei independent journalist sentence revised upon appeal
The Ezhou Intermediate People’s Court reduced the sentence for independent investigative journalist Shangguan Yunkai (上官云开) to 11 years’ imprisonment, down from 15 years, in the appellate trial concluded in September.
Shangguan was convicted of multiple charges and sentenced to a combined imprisonment of 15 years by the Echeng District People’s Court on January 5, 2024. He was accused of PQPT, illegal confinement, selling counterfeit medicines, and bigamy.
Shangguan made his name known for exposing corrupt officials when he worked for a state newspaper and continued his investigative work as an independent journalist, focusing on corruption in the Wuhan region.
Shangguan is reportedly serving his sentence in Huangshi Prison.
Taiwanese political activist sentenced in Zhejiang
Yang Chih-yuan (杨智渊) is the first Taiwanese resident to have been convicted of splittism on mainland China. On September 5, Yang was sentenced to nine years in prison by the Wenzhou Intermediate People’s Court.
The sentence came a few months after the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security, and Ministry of Justice jointly issued a legal opinion to severely punish “die-hard” Taiwan splittists in May.
Yang founded a small political party—the Taiwan Nationalist Party 台湾民族党—in 2011. He was also once affiliated with the now defunct pro-independence Taiwan Action Party Alliance. But his acquaintances said Yang’s political views have changed. In 2018, he established a citizen alliance to reach out to pan-blue (pro-unification) groups in Taiwan. He traveled to the Mainland in January 2022 to explore business opportunities and was detained by the Wenzhou State Security in August 2022 for splittism and inciting splittism. State media also accuses Yang of supporting Hong Kong protesters in 2019.
Artist detained for insulating martyr and hero
Well-known modem artist Gao Zhen (高兟) was reportedly detained on August 26, 2024, by Hebei police and charged under the Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law. The police also raided his art studio in Yanjiao, a Hebei town near Beijing, on August 30 and confiscated some art projects.
Gao created satirical sculptures. His brother and artistic collaborator Gao Qiang speculated that his detention stemmed from a project in 2009, when he created artworks critical of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.
Gao, now in his 60s, is a permanent resident of the US and has lived in New York since 2022. He went back to China to visit family and friends. In 2018, China passed a law prohibiting the defamation of martyrs and heroes. China amended the Criminal Law in the revision in 2020. Maximum punishment can be imprisonment for less than three years.
Gao is in custody at the Sanhe Detention Center in Hebei. His wife, despite not having been detained, has been prevented from leaving China on the grounds of “endangering state security.”
More updates in Prisoner Updates 2024 #7, Part I