A court in southern China on Friday sentenced a prominent feminist journalist to five years in prison for endangering national security, the latest blow to civil society by Beijing. A labor activist convicted of the same crime was given a three-and-a-half-year sentence.
The activities that led to their arrest and conviction, Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, included hosting forums, supporting other activists, and attending training abroad. The subversion charges and sentences handed down by the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court have been confirmed by Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The cases against Huang and Wang are harsh even by Chinese standards, experts say, and reflect a shrinking space for independent debate on social issues.
“There is almost zero tolerance for even the most mild forms of civil society activism in China,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of Georgetown University’s Asia Law Center. “This case is one example of that.”
Ms. Huang, 35, a former independent journalist, became a prominent voice in China’s #MeToo movement, helping women report sexual harassment. She later visited Hong Kong and wrote an essay about the anti-government protests there. Ms. Wang, 40, has long been a spokesperson for workers and people with disabilities, and has helped #MeToo victims speak out.
Huang and Wang were arrested in 2021 and endured an unusually long two-year detention. Their trial in September last year lasted just one day.
The verdict was not handed down for nine months, despite China’s Criminal Procedure Law providing for a maximum waiting period of three months, with an additional three-month extension allowed in exceptional cases.
Experts say the charge — “inciting subversion of state power,” a national security crime that carries a stronger penalty than other charges typically applied to activists — marks an aggressive new move to stifle debate on issues such as women’s and workers’ rights. Forums on such topics were tolerated and even encouraged more than a decade ago, said Ya-kiu Wang, research director for Hong Kong, China and Taiwan at the Washington-based nonprofit Freedom House.
“Anything the government doesn’t like is seen as a challenge to the Communist Party and a crime against national security,” Wang said.
Details of the case have not been made public. But many legal documents related to the case have been posted on a GitHub webpage run by advocates and reviewed by the China Human Rights Defenders Association, a coalition of rights groups. Reached by phone on Friday, a spokesman for the Guangzhou Intermediate Court declined to provide any information.
According to an indictment unsealed by their supporters, the charges against the pair are based on a number of actions, including hosting social gatherings and participating in online courses abroad on “nonviolent activism,” which were often issue-focused. Friends of the defendants criticised the #MeToo movement, gay rights and working conditions for workers.
Huang became a central figure in China’s #MeToo movement in early 2018 after setting up an online platform where people could post their experiences of sexual harassment, and also conducted research that revealed the pervasiveness and impunity of sexual harassment in universities and the workplace.
Since then, the movement has been driven underground as state censors have sought to silence online discussion and stifle public support. The party has accused feminists of supporting “hostile foreign forces” and authorities have warned activists that they will be branded traitors if they speak out.
Wang has focused on providing education and legal support to workers with occupational diseases or physical disabilities, and recently hosted a forum for activists to share their struggles and support each other.
Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the Communist Party has punished activists, lawyers, intellectuals and even business tycoons who have spoken out for freedom of speech and political rights, with dozens of activists facing lengthy pretrial detention and harsh prison sentences.
But Friday’s ruling marks an expansion of the concept of what is dangerous to public order.
“In the past, people charged with inciting subversion of state power would usually talk about democracy and the rule of law,” Freedom House’s Wang said. “Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing were very committed to supporting victims and cultivating a community for the marginalized. They didn’t talk about politics.”
Authorities detained the pair at Wang’s home in Guangzhou a day before she was scheduled to leave China to begin a master’s degree in gender studies in the U.K. They were held for 47 days without access to lawyers before formal notice of their arrest was given to family and friends, according to a Chinese human rights group.
Chinese human rights groups say dozens of Wang and Huang’s friends were interrogated after their arrest, and many were forced to sign testimonies against them.
Shortly after Wang was arrested, his father made a video appealing to the authorities.
“My son is not a bad boy,” Wang’s father, Wang Zhixue, said in a video posted online by supporters of Wang and Huang. “He has made great contributions to society through his public welfare work. What harm can he do to society?”
In late 2019, Huang was detained by police in Guangzhou on suspicion of “picking fights and stirring up trouble” — a less serious charge that the government has used in the past to silence activists like him.
She was detained for three months. “This is Xue Qin. I’m back,” she wrote in a message to a friend after her release in 2020. “One second of darkness does not make a person blind.”
