Advocacy Commentary: Justice in His Writing—What Crime Has He Committed? Questions the Yin Jiangen Case Raises for the Rule of Law

Guest commentator: Bao Pingshan

“To guard against people’s mouths is worse than guarding against a river. When a river is dammed and bursts, many are sure to be hurt.” With the second-instance ruling issued, Yin Jiangen, a self-media writer from Zhuzhou, Hunan, who writes under the pen name Bigeng, has gone to Fuyang Prison to begin serving a sentence of two years and three months. This writer, who has long spoken out on behalf of vulnerable people at the bottom of society, saw his fate take a sharp turn after he refused to delete a post: an arrest across provincial lines, a prolonged detention in a detention center, a conviction at first instance, and the verdict upheld on appeal. An article pleading the case of people seeking to defend their rights ultimately became the shackles that bound him. The case has shaken people. It raises a question that cannot be avoided: Is there no room for even a trace of sharpness in citizens’ outspoken oversight?

The starting point for Yin Jiangen’s writing was a long-standing debt case involving Chen Dezhen, a peasant woman from Hexian County, Anhui. A longstanding dispute over payment for red bricks had gone unresolved for years. With nowhere else to turn, the woman sought out Yin Jiangen, who was willing to organize her documents and describe her grievances. He runs the public account “Sunshine Under the Pen.” For years, all he has done is take up appeals that ordinary people have nowhere to submit, and make public in writing the grievances that people at the bottom of society cannot voice and the disputes that have dragged on unresolved. He does not profit from breaking stories. What sustains him in taking up his pen is a simple compassion and ordinary people’s longing for fairness and justice.

After the critical article was published, local officials found him and demanded that he delete the post. Yin Jiangen flatly refused. In his eyes, the article carried the claims the complainant had accumulated over many years; it was a citizen’s lawful expression of oversight. How could it simply be erased without a trace on the strength of a single demand? His refusal to bow brought an arrest across provincial lines. An ordinary home in Zhuzhou suddenly became the scene of an arrest; a writer who documented the hardships of ordinary people was branded as having picked quarrels and provoked trouble. Investigators sifted through dozens of pieces he had written over several years, bundling together articles written in different places over a long period and using them as evidence for a conviction. They equated sharp criticism outright with fabricating false information and disrupting public order.

What is most lamentable here is the arbitrary blurring of the boundaries of speech. As the ancients said, “Listening to all sides brings clarity; believing only one side leads to darkness.” The Constitution states plainly that citizens have the right to criticize and make suggestions to state organs and their staff. Criticism is not meant to be mild praise; writing that confronts deep-rooted ills will inevitably have an edge. Sharp language does not amount to spreading rumors, and outspoken criticism does not amount to picking quarrels. Yin Jiangen based his articles on original materials submitted by the complainant and organized them into written accounts. Even if some details differed from the official investigation’s findings, was this a reasonable imperfection in citizens’ efforts to defend their rights, or false information deliberately fabricated in the sense of criminal law?

The crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble has a strict threshold: it must be proven that the person knew the information was false and deliberately fabricated it, and that this caused serious disruption to public order. Looking at this case, all the articles originated in the complainant’s own experiences and the materials she submitted. A complainant’s one-sided account cannot automatically be equated with a rumor made up out of thin air. If, merely because the writing stung those it criticized, authorities bypass clarification, private civil lawsuits, and public-order penalties, and directly invoke the catch-all provisions of the Criminal Law to convict, that is an improper expansion of the offense.

The essence of governance lies in channeling, not blocking. When faced with public complaints and oversight by self-media, the right path has never been to seal people’s mouths. In response to the long-standing case described in the article, the proper course is to investigate the facts and resolve the dispute, not to take away the person who wrote on the complainant’s behalf and end the questions with criminal punishment. The source of the conflict is public resentment that has gone unresolved for years, not a single online article. If the root cause remains and only the person who spoke out is punished, public opinion may appear to have been calmed, but deeper estrangement and distrust will in fact take hold.

In the past, Zichan did not destroy the village school; he allowed ordinary people to discuss the merits and failings of government, using their views to correct flaws in governance. “Water can carry a boat, but it can also capsize it.” Good governance should make room for different voices and treat public oversight as a mirror that reveals what needs fixing. Criticism is an early warning signal for governance, not an obstacle that must be eliminated. When a pen that speaks up for the vulnerable leads its writer to prison simply for doing so, every writer willing to speak for people at the bottom of society will feel a chill. If this continues, when people suffer injustice, who will dare to step forward and speak a word of justice for them?

Of course, freedom of speech does not mean unbounded license. Deliberately spreading rumors and maliciously framing others should be dealt with according to law. But accountability must follow a graduated approach: minor inaccuracies can be corrected and clarified; violations of reputation can be addressed through civil lawsuits; only when clear malicious intent and serious disruption of public order are present should criminal punishment, the state’s most severe instrument, be used. Criminal punishment is the last line of defense and must never be used lightly to suppress public oversight.

Yin Jiangen has already begun serving his sentence, but in the eyes of the many people following the case, this is a wrongful conviction in a case of injustice. A written judgment can confine his body, but it cannot lock away people’s questions about right and wrong. The clumsy pen in his hand recorded only the suffering of little people who had nowhere to voice it. It held no violence of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, no ambition to incite confrontation; he only wanted the claims buried beneath the water to be seen by the world.

The original purpose of the rule of law is to protect the vulnerable and uphold justice. If the price of pleading the people’s case and speaking up in the name of justice is imprisonment, that betrays the rule of law’s founding purpose. “The road ahead is long and far.” Though the road to appeal is full of thorns, the pursuit of justice will not stop. We await an opportunity for a retrial, hope this wrongful conviction can be corrected, and hope those who speak for the people will no longer suffer unjust accusations; we hope the channels for public oversight will never be blocked by those in power.