Famous Henan essayist Min Liangchen, sentenced to 3 years for his speech, transferred to Henan No. 2 Prison in Xinxiang, Henan Province

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On July 24, 2026, this outlet learned that Min Liangchen, a famous Henan essayist sentenced to three years for his speech, has been transferred to Henan No. 2 Prison in Xinxiang, Henan Province.

In April 2024, Min Liangchen was suddenly arrested by police from Zhongyuan District, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, and disappeared from public view. It was later learned that he had been accused of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" because he had previously published 290 articles overseas; on May 8, 2024, he was arrested for publishing commentaries overseas and accused of "fabricating false information, defaming information, slandering our country's party system, political system, and party and state leaders in his articles, damaging the country's image, and seriously disrupting social order." His case was subsequently prosecuted by the Zhongyuan District Procuratorate of Zhengzhou City and transferred to the court. In January 2026, Min Liangchen was sentenced to three years in prison. Min Liangchen had previously been detained at the Zhengzhou No. 3 Detention Center. He has now been transferred to Henan No. 2 Prison in Xinxiang, Henan Province to serve his sentence.

Min Liangchen's résumé: Born in August 1956, he is from Shangcheng County, Xinyang City, Henan Province. His pen name is Xie Tian. He was formerly an editor at the newspaper of the Henan No. 2 Textile Machinery Factory, an editor of supplement and commentary sections at several newspapers and media outlets, a noted writer of essays, prose, and current-affairs commentary, and a Chinese political prisoner.

He left school at an early age and began making a living during his adolescence; during the Cultural Revolution, after the Chinese Communist government launched the "Down to the Countryside and Up to the Mountains" movement (also known as sending educated youth to the countryside, settling in rural villages, and so on; it was a political movement launched nationwide between the 1950s and 1978 by the Chinese Communist government under Mao Zedong), he worked as a farmer in the countryside and also served as a community-run teacher;

In June 1980, he was recruited as a worker by a state-owned enterprise; beginning in 1986, he started publishing numerous articles in newspapers and periodicals, including the prose piece Why I Especially Like Reading Lu Xun, the essay "Someone's" Self-Statement, and the prose piece Sending My Thoughts from Afar; in 1993, he transferred to the enterprise's newspaper, Henan No. 2 Textile Machinery Newspaper, as an editor;

In 1998, because the performance of his workplace was extremely poor and his wages for August and September had not been paid, he left the enterprise and headed north to make a living; he initially worked as a periodical editor at Essay World under the Hebei Daily (later renamed Monthly Essays), and in the spring of 1999 he became a supplement editor at the newly launched City Morning News under the Henan Daily, primarily editing essays, prose, stories, and commentaries;

In July 2002, because City Morning News was merged into Dahe Daily under the Henan Daily, he became an editor of the commentary and news sections at Dahe Daily; in the spring of 2003, he became a commentary-section editor and commentator at Zhengzhou Evening News, where he remained until taking early retirement at the end of August 2013 because of an eye condition (he completed the formal retirement process in 2016);

Since the mid-1980s, he has published approximately two million Chinese characters of essays, prose, current-affairs commentary, academic criticism, cultural prose, poetry, and other works in roughly 300 newspapers and periodicals in China and overseas. He has also run columns in City Morning News, China Economic Times, Youth Times, Zhengzhou Evening News, Quality Miles Magazine, and numerous newspapers and websites including Consensus Net, Aisixiang, BlogChina, and "Dongwang," operated by Hong Kong's Oriental Daily; his articles have been reprinted by hundreds of newspapers, periodicals, and websites, including Newspapers and Periodicals Digest, Writers Digest, Chinese and Foreign Periodicals Digest, New Xinhua Digest, Selected Essays, Readers, Humanistic Prose, and overseas Boxun. To this day, a large number of his manuscripts remain scattered across online forums, mainly consisting of "social prose"; because in recent years he has mostly published social and cultural prose in Hong Kong newspapers and overseas, and because the critical nature of his articles displeased certain senior figures in the Chinese Communist Party authorities, he repeatedly angered the relevant departments and was summoned for admonishment twice within two years, nearly causing him to lose his job; in 2007 and 2012, he edited and published Why Is Yu Dan So Popular and self-published three collections of prose, Hu Shi and Tolerance, History and Truth, and Singing Freely; reportedly, his computer files still contain a large amount of prose criticizing society that has been difficult to publish in collected form for political reasons;

In April 2024, he was suddenly arrested by police from Zhongyuan District, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, and disappeared from public view. It was later learned that he had been accused of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" because he had previously published 290 articles overseas; on April 11, 2025, it was learned that his case had been prosecuted by the Zhongyuan District Procuratorate of Zhengzhou City and transferred to the court, and he was soon tried at the Zhongyuan District Court of Zhengzhou City. In January 2026, he was sentenced to three years in prison. His sentence runs until April 2027. He had previously been detained at the Zhengzhou No. 3 Detention Center (northeast of the intersection of Hanqi Road and Weiyi Road, Huiji District, Zhengzhou, Henan Province; postal code: 450043). In July 2026, it was learned that he had been transferred to Henan No. 2 Prison in Xinxiang, Henan Province to serve his sentence.