76-year-old Beijing rights defender and military wife Guo Likun stripped of pension and medical insurance by authorities; the Chinese Communist authorities “weaponize” pension security for rights defenders

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On November 1, 2026, this outlet learned that 76-year-old Beijing rights defender and military wife Guo Likun has had her pension suspended by the Beijing authorities since July 2026, and her medical insurance has also been canceled, leaving her without a source of income and unable to obtain medical care despite being beset by illness. The authorities cite Guo Likun’s 2021–2023 prison sentence for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” in connection with her rights defense.

Pensions and medical insurance are supposed to be retirement security that citizens build up for themselves through decades of work, but the Chinese Communist authorities have now “weaponized” them as tools to suppress and retaliate against citizens who defend their rights. Guo Likun is not the only case: many other rights defenders, including Xu Yonghai, an elder of a Beijing Christian house church, and Xu Qin, a human rights defender from Jiangsu, face the same predicament.

Profile of Guo Likun: Female, born July 27, 1950, a native of Beijing; formerly a resident of No. 5 Dongdajie Compound, Fengtai District, Beijing (Navy); Mongolian; retired doctor; rights-defending Navy military wife.

In 2011, corrupt Navy officials seeking to profit turned housing in the “retirement home” for retired military cadres (the Navy Wanquansi residential compound) into a shoddy construction project. As a result, Guo Likun and her husband could not move into the unsafe building, which had cracked walls, electrical leaks and water seepage, and was full of hazards. They were then forced out by various means: water, electricity, gas and heating were cut off, and their home and belongings were damaged and destroyed.

On July 9, 2015, the home where Guo Likun and her husband had lived was forcibly demolished. During the demolition, Guo Likun’s husband, Ji Zhuotu (former head of the Navy Aviation Corps Logistics and Technology Department, who had taken part in the Korean War in his early years and was a senior military cadre who had made outstanding contributions to national defense science and technology), was beaten by those carrying out the demolition at the age of 80. He suffered injuries to bones and internal organs in multiple parts of his body, and four teeth were knocked out. He was seriously injured and lost consciousness at the scene, and was taken to the Navy General Hospital for emergency treatment. The hospital issued critical condition notices several times afterward, until he died in grief at the hospital on January 5, 2018.

For 15 years, Guo Likun exhausted all the official channels set up for defending her rights. But these government posts, established at great expense to the people, and these government agencies, written grandly into reports and touted by bureaucrats under the slogan “serve the people,” all became mere window dressing once ordinary people turned to them for help. When Guo Likun went to them to present her demands, she not only received no response, but instead became a target of the authorities’ “stability maintenance” efforts and was subjected to retaliation by corrupt officials in collusion with these departments.

On June 15, 2020, Guo Likun went to the Beijing Jinghai Building, where the Central Military Commission inspection team was based, to petition and was severely beaten, injuring her neck, lower back and thighs. In September 2021, Guo Likun was again criminally detained by Fengtai District police for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” because of her petitioning, and was held at the Fengtai District Detention Center in Beijing. She was not released until a year and a half later, on March 15, 2023. On July 29, 2026, Guo Likun was detained for 37 days because she went to Beidaihe for a vacation.