China: Release Journalist Zhang Zhan and Protect Freedom of Expression

(Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders—August 27, 2025) Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the most recent arrest of Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan for her online writing and activism, CHRD is calling for her immediate and unconditional release, and for the Chinese government to end its restrictions on journalism and free expression.

On August 28, 2024, police arrested Zhang Zhan and later charged her with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” This charge is commonly used to target activists, and the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk last year called on the government to revise it in line with international legal standards and release all activists detained under the charge.

“Through her reporting Zhang Zhan fearlessly speaks truth to power—and pays a high price for it,” said Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director of CHRD. “Every time Chinese authorities target a journalist for exercising guaranteed rights to free speech they show their disdain for domestic and international legal obligations. At the upcoming September session of the UN Human Rights Council, High Commissioner Türk and Council member states should condemn Beijing’s charges and call for Zhang Zhan’s release.”   

Background

Police seized Zhang in August 2024 while she was visiting her hometown in Shaanxi. Shaanxi authorities quickly transferred Zhang to Shanghai, where she resides, and Shanghai police criminally detained her the next day on charges of “picking quarrels” and then formally arrested her on November 18. Shanghai Pudong New District Procuratorate indicted her on January 26, 2025. In the indictment, prosecutors accused Zhang Zhan of posting a large amount of “false information that seriously damaged the country’s image” on “X” (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, and requested she be sentenced to four or five years in prison. She will stand trial at Pudong New District Court, though no hearing date has been set. Chinese law requires a verdict be announced within two months of the court accepting the case.

Zhang was previously convicted on December 28, 2020 and sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels” for reporting from Wuhan during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. She was released from Shanghai Women’s Prison in May 2024 at the end of her sentence and arrested again merely three months later.

Zhang Zhan is currently being held at the Pudong New Area Detention Center. In January 2025, she went on a hunger strike to protest her detention and has been force fed by authorities, a practice that may amount to torture, in violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the Chinese government ratified in 1988. Zhang Zhan had gone on hunger strikes during her previous imprisonment and had to be hospitalized twice in 2021.

Zhang has received inconsistent access to a lawyer. Chinese law allows detainees access to a lawyer within 24 hours of being taken into custody, but available information suggests she has only had one meeting, in October 2024, and that the lawyer was warned not to speak about her case. In September 2024, a lawyer was briefly detained by police while meeting with Zhang’s mother about representing her. Zhang Zhan’s mother was also taken away by police and then put under police control to prevent her from speaking out about Zhang’s situation.

For more information on the background of Zhang Zhan’s case and prior imprisonment, see CHRD’s website.

For more information, please contact:

Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, sophierichardson@nchrd.org, +1 917 721 7473

Angeli Datt, Research and Advocacy Coordinator, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, angelidatt@nchrd.org, +1 934 444 6155

Shane Yi, Researcher, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, shaneyi@nchrd.org