Wang Quanzhang

Legal career

Wang Quanzhang worked as a lawyer at the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm; his home town is Jinan, Shandong. According to Radio Free Asia, he represented a number of sensitive cases, including those of the Shandong journalist Qi Chonghuai and of Wang Dengchao, as well as Falun Gong practitioners. Fengrui's director Zhou Shifeng and its lawyers Wang Yu and Li Heping were among those taken away in the “709” crackdown that began in July 2015.

Detention

Wang was detained in the summer of 2015, though accounts of the date differ: a 2019 Central News Agency report says he was taken away on 3 August, while a 2016 Radio Free Asia report says he was held from 10 July and placed under criminal detention on 4 August on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” On 8 January 2016 the Tianjin Public Security Bureau formally arrested him on suspicion of subverting state power. For more than three years, lawyers hired by his family were repeatedly refused permission to see him; according to the lawyer Yu Wensheng, the authorities said Wang had declared in February 2016 that he did not want any lawyer, but requests to meet him to confirm this were denied. Radio Free Asia reported that eight lawyers withdrew from his case in succession.

Wang's wife, Li Wenzu, campaigned on his behalf throughout: she filed complaints with the top judicial authorities every week, walked about 100 kilometres over 12 days in 2018, and shaved her head with the wives of other convicted rights lawyers in a protest outside a court. In February 2018 Vice Minister of Justice Xiong Xuanguo, asked about the case at a press conference, said that “whoever commits a crime will receive a fair trial according to law”; in June that year Justice Minister Fu Zhenghua, pressed by reporters, said China was a society governed by law and that anyone's freedoms and rights would be “handled according to law.”

Trial

The Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People's Court tried the case on 26 December 2018. The court's website said it had decided to hold the hearing behind closed doors because the case involved “state secrets.” According to an indictment circulated online, he was accused of accepting foreign funding, training people in China and “fostering opposition forces.” Diplomats from Britain, the United States, Germany, Switzerland and other countries were refused entry, and Li Wenzu was stopped from leaving home that morning to attend; she said the defence lawyer who appeared had not been hired by her and that she knew nothing of what happened at the hearing.

On 28 January 2019 the court convicted Wang of subverting state power and sentenced him to four years and six months in prison and five years' deprivation of political rights. He was the last defendant in the “709” cases to be tried. After the verdict Li Wenzu issued a statement declaring that “Wang Quanzhang is innocent” and accusing the authorities of torturing him and others. Several international lawyers' and human rights groups criticised the trial as closed and opaque.

After prison

Wang was released on 5 April 2020 at the end of his sentence, but the authorities sent him to Jinan, Shandong, for 14 days of quarantine, citing the epidemic, rather than letting him return to Beijing. On 20 April the US State Department issued a statement urging China to allow him freedom of movement; that day he told Hong Kong media in a video interview that he hoped to rejoin his family in Beijing soon, and said of his time in prison that it was “hard to say.” On 27 April, after Li Wenzu was hospitalised with acute appendicitis, he was allowed to return to Beijing and the family was reunited.