“After his arrest in late 2019, Li Xinde, founder of the China Public Opinion Monitoring Network, was recently sentenced to five years in prison by a Jiangsu court for “illegal business operation,” and his son, Li Chao, was sentenced to one year in prison. Analysts say it is a consistent practice of the Chinese Communist Party to suppress dissidents under various names, including “illegal business operation” and “provocation and nuisance.
Li Xinde was sentenced by a court in Pizhou City, Jiangsu Province, on Jan. 7. The news was reported by China’s Peng Peng News on Jan. 10, but the report was quickly pulled for unknown reasons.
Li Xinde was placed under residential surveillance by the Pizhou City Public Security Bureau in Jiangsu Province in October 2019 on suspicion of “illegal business operation,” then transferred to criminal detention, and at the end of the same year was arrested with the approval of the local prosecutor’s office and detained in Pizhou City Detention Center.
He was arrested at the end of the same year with the approval of the local prosecutor’s office and detained in Pizhou City Detention Center. Li Xinde’s sentence ends on October 9, 2024, and his son, Li Chao, was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 50,000 RMB.
Li Xinde founded the China Public Opinion Supervision Network on Oct. 1, 2003, which revealed the corruption of Li Xin, then vice mayor of Jining, Shandong Province, and Wang Yachen, mayor of Fuxin, Liaoning Province. Since then, China Public Opinion Monitoring Network has received attention and has been blocked by the authorities several times.
Beijing-based rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan tweeted on Jan. 10, “In today’s society, it is very dangerous to speak out for people who have suffered injustice and to use public opinion to monitor public authorities.” Liu Xiaoyuan said there are many other similar cases.
Liu Xiaoyuan said on his WeChat public website that Li Xinde’s son Li Chao had no choice but to “plead guilty and plead guilty” because Li’s mother died last October and he was advised to plead guilty or else he would not be released on bail to see his mother one last time.
On January 13, Radio Free Asia quoted Zhang Yu, secretary-general of the Independent Chinese PEN, as saying that the “illegal business crime” is one of the ways the Chinese Communist Party uses to suppress criticism of the authorities, and has nothing to do with the legality of the business he runs.
Zhang Yu said, “The most important crime to suppress freedom of expression in China is incitement to subvert state power, and they need to state in writing what is incitement and subversion of the state. For those who can’t do that, it’s two other crimes, one is illegal business. Either his speech is very sensitive or he can’t pick many charges out of this speech, and then the economic approach is used to combat illegal operation of the book.”
In September 2020, Geng Xiaonan, a Beijing-based cultural and publishing figure, and her husband Qin Zhen were arrested by the Chinese Communist Party on charges of “illegal business operation,” which was analyzed as a result of Geng’s solidarity with Xu Zhangrun, a former professor at Tsinghua University.
Zhang Yu also said that another charge often used by the CCP is that of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, which is used when economic charges are not available.
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