Xue Deyun Ma Zhe

A leader of the Guizhou cultural revival movement, which called for increased literary freedom in China, Xue was jailed from 1987-90 and again from 1998-2001 for attempting to overthrow… More

Liu Jingshen

A key figure in the Democracy Wall movement, Liu was arrested as one of the Beijing Fifteen dissidents in 1992 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for counter-revolutionary… More

Writers at Risk Database

Huang Jinqiu Qing Shuijun

Following his rise as a pro-democracy essayist and blogger in the early 2000s, Huang was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for writing 'reactionary' articles… More

Writers at Risk Database

Shi Tao

In 2005, Shi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for leaking a Communist Party document to an overseas Chinese website over Yahoo email. Yahoo was criticized by the… More

Xu Zhiqiang Shengguan

Xu was arrested on national security charges after holding a seminar to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement. After his conviction, he was imprisoned for… More

Hu Shigen

A freelance writer, Hu was detained arbitrarily in July 2015; police did not answer his family’s enquiries as to his whereabouts. He was formally arrested in January 2016 on… More

Jin Andi

After assisting between 2000 and 2010 in the editing and publication of articles critical of Jiang Zemin, the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Jin was sentenced to… More

Li Tie

Li was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2012 for ‘subversion of state power’ after writing critical online essays and pro-democracy leaning works. He did not have a… More

Wang Jianmin

Wang, a U.S. national, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2014 on business-related charges for publishing two political gossip magazines. He was released in March 2019 upon… More

Xu Lin

Xu, an active democracy activist, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 for, according to the court, causing serious public disorder by repeatedly posting “false information” online… More