Various online media outlets reported on Friday (April 23) that Sun Dawu, a well-known Chinese farmer-entrepreneur, was formally arrested by the Chinese authorities on April 21.
All of Dawu Group’s leadership in prison
According to the arrest notice, the authorities have filed eight charges against Sun Dawu: the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits, the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, the crime of illegal mining, the crime of gathering a crowd to storm state organs, the crime of illegally occupying agricultural land, the crime of forced trading, the crime of disrupting production and business operations, and the crime of obstructing official business. Experts have analyzed that if all these charges are found guilty by the court, the entrepreneur will receive a heavy sentence.
Those arrested in the same case include almost the entire leadership of the Dawu Group, such as deputy supervisors Sun Dehua and Sun Zhihua, chairman Sun Meng, group general manager Liu Ping, group deputy general manager Jin Fengyu, and group office secretary Ji Wei Lian. These seven were already under residential surveillance before their arrest. They were charged with illegal mining, forced trading and fraud.
Sources said that the local government sent 29 working groups to take over Sun Dawu’s company.
Sun Dawu is the founder of the Hebei Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group, once known as the “top chicken farmer” in the country. He resigned as chairman of the company in 2005 and served as chairman of the group’s supervisors before his arrest.
Dawu Group is one of China’s top 500 private enterprises, with more than 9,000 employees, fixed assets of 2 billion yuan and an annual output of more than 3 billion yuan.
According to Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, Yang Bin, legal director of the Dawu Group, confirmed the news in a post on Weibo on Thursday. Sun Dawu’s arrest notice was issued by the Hebei Gaobeidian City Public Security Bureau. Judging by this, Sun Dawu should be currently being held in Gaobeidian.
Sun Dawu was taken away by the local public security on November 11 last year for investigation. He was accompanied by his wife, Liu Huiru, and 29 other managers, 25 of whom are still in custody, including Sun and his son and daughter-in-law.
It’s all the trouble with the speech
Public security arrested executives of the Dawu Group nominally over a land dispute between the group and a state-run farm in Baoding, Hebei, but in reality, those familiar with the case believe that the authorities could not tolerate Sun’s “outlandish” comments. The “thoughtful” and “outspoken farmer-entrepreneur” has been outspoken on camera, saying that he shares similar ideas with prominent public intellectuals in Beijing. Sun Dawu said, “Conceptually, I agree with their views and statements.”
However, in terms of action, Sun describes himself as a “conservative. He believes that “the world will always move toward democracy and the rule of law, and China will not be an exception, but there is no hurry.”
Sun’s publicist friends include the liberal economist Mao Yushi, Yao Jianfu, Du Runsheng and Li Rui of the magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu, and the independent journalist Gao Yu.
Sun Dawu is one of China’s rare peasant entrepreneurs with a good head on his shoulders. In 2003, the Dawu Group was warned by police for publishing three articles on its website: “The Construction of a Well-off Society and the Difficulties”, “In Memory of Li Shenzhi”, and “A Dialogue between Two Private Businessmen on China’s Current Situation and History”.
The police said the articles “seriously damaged the image of state organs” and ordered the website to be reorganized, suspended for six months and fined 15,000 yuan.
No truth in the sunny day; no dissenting voices in the hustle and bustle
In addition, Sun Dawu’s praise of Xu Zhiyong, a human rights lawyer who had helped him, caused discomfort among the authorities. In May last year, Sun praised those lawyers in the social media, saying that they had shown victims a little light, kept a little faith in the law, and brightened their hopes for survival.
However, none of the eight crimes that Chinese authorities have proposed to Sun apparently relate to these statements. Netizens have criticized this, calling it “a sin to be added to the crime”.
Yang Bin, the legal director of Dawu Group, wrote in a microblog post, “There is no involvement in the triads, and there are no legendary hostile forces outside of China. Of course, this is only the charge of approved arrest. All signs indicate that the reconnaissance authorities are speeding up the pace of the case.”
In an article last October, Sun Dawu gave a vivid description of the current darkness in China: “Some people say, what do you mean by social darkness? On a clear day, you can not see the truth of the matter; bustling, you can not hear different voices; the powerful and powerful rampant bullying, justifiable inch difficult to walk; live to see ghosts in the daytime, dead to see people at night.”
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