Over the past several months, Dui Hua has received updates from sources in China about several of the more obscure cases of political crime that the foundation has uncovered in its research. Among the updates received is word of several recent sentence reductions and other new information:
In Gansu, Chen Shiqing (陈世清) was released from Linxia Prison on December 20, 2006, just under nine months before his original eight-year sentence for subversion was set to expire. Chen, who is now 53 years old, was a leading member of an opposition group called the “Chinese People’s Democratic Party” (中华人民主党), which at its height reportedly had nearly 1,000 members in the province.
The same response from the Chinese source states that Li Wenshan (李文山), who received a 13-year sentence for subversion alongside Chen, has so far had no change to his sentence and is due for release in May 2013. According to the Gansu Public Security Yearbook from 2001, 13 other unnamed leading party members were formally charged and 10 additional members punished with “re-education-through-labor” for their participation in the political party.
From Chongqing, Dui Hua has recently learned more about the status of leading members of the “Southwest Yangtze Column of the Chinese Anti-Corruption Army” (中国人民农工反腐败大军西南长江纵队). According to Chinese newspaper accounts, this organization was established by a group of farmers from rural Chongqing Municipality in 1998 and promoted itself as a democratic alternative to the Communist Party.
Three of the group’s leading members—Yang Jiahua (杨家华), Xiang Xingheng (向兴恒), and Luo Haiyuan (罗海元)—each received sentence reductions ranging between one year and 15 months in 2006 and 2007 after their cases were raised with the Chinese government. Dui Hua was also told the status of four other members of the organization: Song Bukun (宋步坤) and Tan Daqin (谭大琴) are each serving 12-year sentences for subversion; Pi Daming (皮大铭) is serving a prison term of unspecified length; and Zhang Dingfu (张定富) passed away after being released on medical parole in May 2002.
One of the largest cases involving an illegal political party ever uncovered by Dui Hua is the “Chinese Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought Communist Party” (中国马列主义毛泽东思想共产党), from Henan Province. Opposed to what they believed to be a “degenerate” and “corrupt” Communist Party, Wang Wuzhou (王五州), Zang Yongqin (臧永钦), and Dong De’an (董得安) founded the “Marxist-Maoist Party” in December 1991 in hopes of returning to a pre-reform, more orthodox socialism.
By the time that police began making arrests in 1999, membership in the party had expanded to nearly 2,800 members from Dengfeng City and the surrounding area. Dui Hua recently learned the status of these three leading party organizers, who were imprisoned on charges of subversion: Wang Wuzhou is still serving a 15-year sentence, but Zang Yongqin and Dong De’an were released in July 2007 and December 2006, respectively, with each having received two sentence reductions to their original 10-year sentences.