Four years. That is the number a Shanghai court added to Zhang Zhan’s record, and it is the same number she was handed the first time.
The ruling came on a Friday in September 2025 from a court in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the 42-year-old citizen journalist was convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” the catch-all charge Chinese authorities routinely use against people who criticise the government. Prosecutors had recommended four to five years.
A trial behind closed doors
The hearing ran four hours. Diplomats and reporters were kept out. Outside the courthouse in Shanghai, police tried to stop reporters from covering the case, and officials there would not even confirm that a trial was under way. A friend of Zhang’s, identified only as Pei, told broadcaster NTDT that nobody but Zhang’s father and mother got in. “The public was kept in the dark. I think this is inappropriate. There was no public trial,” she said.
The UN Human Rights Office called the proceedings “deeply disturbing” and raised concern over the lack of transparency. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry replied that the matter concerns China’s judicial sovereignty and that “no external forces have the right to interfere.”
How she got here
Zhang went to Wuhan in February 2020 and pointed her camera at hospitals, the lockdown and the limits officials placed on people. She uploaded 122 videos to X, YouTube and WeChat. Police detained her that May, and in December 2020 a court gave her four years.
Her term ended with a release on May 13, but the freedom did not last. Human rights groups say she lived under close surveillance and had limited contact with supporters. Amnesty International says police summoned her repeatedly in the months before detaining her on Aug. 28, and the formal arrest came in November, again on that charge. This time the indictment pointed to her posts on YouTube and X, which prosecutors said had “seriously damaged the country’s image.”
Reaction from rights groups was blunt. RSF advocacy manager Aleksandra Bielakowska put it this way: “Zhang Zhan sacrificed everything to expose abuses and human rights violations by the Chinese regime.” Sarah Brooks, Amnesty’s China director, called the second conviction a “betrayal of China’s stated priority of upholding the rule of law” and demanded that it be quashed. Her lawyer has said Zhang believes she is being persecuted for exercising free expression.
The wider ranking tells the same story. RSF counts 124 media workers in Chinese custody and places the country 178th out of 180 on its 2025 World Press Freedom Index.
Sources
- Covid whistleblower in China sentenced to 4 more years in jail for 'picking quarrels'
- Christian Woman and COVID Whistleblower Sentenced to Four More Years in China (Christianity Daily)
- Chinese Journalist Zhang Zhan Sentenced to Four More Years for COVID-19 Reporting (Mezha)
