Zhen Jianghua: The double lives of a young Chinese activist

Rebels of China
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

To some of his friends, this young man of early 30s is a person who loves cats, enjoys photography, is always willing to help, has a wide range of interests; basically a young man brimming with sunshine and love.

Yet to others, he is one who travels in the dark, a loner who is harsh on himself and leads an almost ascetic life. He journeys wide and far for the cause of the downtrodden, has strict rules on deleting phone messages, and has all kind of encryption and security measures on his electronic devices. He seldom makes contact unless absolutely necessary, and keeps his living standard — clothes, food and other amenities — to a minimum. The reason is as simple as it is brutal: he is always preparing himself for jail.

He had carefully kept his double lives apart, until he was finally arrested.


When he left school, he was just a simple programmer working at a data centre. Yet as a person who dealt with the internet every day, he inevitably encountered the all-pervasive censorship system. Sometimes, the Internet Security Department would ask them to close down certain websites; at other times, it would be their customers coming to seek help when their websites were shut down.

He began to question, why must those content be removed, why can’t people say certain things. He did not know then, in China, such line of thinking would easily lead one to jail.

He wanted to help those who voices were taken from them, those petitioners and the marginalised. He began to use his technical knowledge to help people circumvent internet censorship, and eventually left the IT industry and became a social worker. However, he soon discovered that social workers within the institution could do little; their tasks, as mandated by the power that be, were to maintain the “emotional stability” of their service users and to sing praise of the Party. They could not even uphold the rights of the weak, let alone address any institutional problems.

He began to get involved in the support of prisoners of conscience in his personal capacity. He initiated signature campaign, processed case information, sent in postcards, and fundraised for families. He then started to get summoned for questioning, was harassed, was forced out of his home, and had his freedom of movement restricted. Instead of backing down, he stepped up. In late 2015, he resigned from his job as a social worker and took up the post of executive director of Human Rights Campaign in China (“HRC”). Unlike his previous jobs, this was a not a position he could make public or talk about with friends. On this platform, he continued to voice out for the marginalised, recorded all kind of “sensitive” information slated for removal by the authorities, and helped organised communities of victims and families using his knowledge as a social worker.

In December of the same year, the authorities launched the “1225 Special File”, an investigation targeting him and HRC. The net would be closed within two years.

As time passed, he saw that others who have been doing similar work went into prison one by one; he knew full well that he may be next.

In September 2016, he was briefly detained after he went to Wukan to follow up with the villagers’ protest. After he was released, he divorced his wife.

At home, his double lives inevitably clashed. He could not tell his wife what he was doing, yet unavoidably she would also be affected by his dangerous life. She had to suffered harassment by national security, had to move around with him when they were forced out from their home, and had to endure endless worries when he went off without telling her any details, not knowing if he was safe or if he had been arrested. The only thing he could do for her, was to leave her altogether.

In July 2017, he wrote on his Facebook, “You know you would lose before you even began, yet you still do it, and persist till the end. It is rare that you would win, but sometime you could.”

Two months later, he was again arrested and charged with “inciting subversion of the state”; only after his arrest did the existence of the 1225 Special File came to light. Now a year had passed and he has not yet been able to see the lawyers he appointed. The legal papers he had prepared in advance ended up being useless before the brutality of the state. The HRC websites was attacked half a year after he was arrested, and eventually stopped completely.


His friends published his video statement which he had prepared prior to his arrest. In the video, he was in his using black outfits, sitting beside his favourite lighthouse, enjoying the breeze of freedom.

(中文版

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Stories of activists in China 中国不是没有抗争者,只是,他们的故事很少被看见。 这个专页,就是这样一个小小的努力,希望大家能看见中国的抗争者们。 每周,我们会给大家带来一位抗争者的故事。

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