Li Qiaochu: Day 508 since Xu Zhiyong and I failed to secure approval for our marriage application: Suing the Shandong Provincial Government over its decision not to accept the application

On November 5, I submitted an application to file an administrative lawsuit through the electronic litigation platform, suing over the Shandong Provincial Government’s decision not to accept my application for administrative reconsideration. I also applied to add Shandong Province’s Lunan Prison as a third party to the lawsuit. I sent the paper materials at the same time; the court signed for them at noon on November 6.

I. Why a request for government information disclosure matters so much to me

Xu Zhiyong and I submitted our marriage application in June 2025, and more than 500 days have passed. Marriage registration requires both parties to appear in person, and he is serving his sentence at Lunan Prison and cannot go there on his own. This matter depends on the prison’s assistance.

For more than a year, various departments have been passing me around:

At the end of March this year, Lunan Prison told me the application had been reported to the prison administration bureau as early as June last year;

In May, the prison administration bureau said both that this matter was outside its remit and that it had already been handled, but it would not tell me the result. It also said the marriage application should be handled by Lunan Prison and the civil affairs department;

In July, the Shandong Provincial Government’s administrative reconsideration office rejected my application for reconsideration, on the grounds that marriage matters fall under “education and management of prisoners serving sentences” within the scope of prison sentence enforcement;

In August, I went to the marriage registration office of the Donggang District Civil Affairs Bureau to ask about the matter. A staff member said the civil affairs department was only responsible for verifying documents, and that the prison had to bring the prisoner to the site for the registration to be completed.

That leaves only one way to register the marriage: Xu Zhiyong must appear in person at the registration office. Whether he can appear depends on Lunan Prison.

After going around in circles, I returned to Lunan Prison on August 25 to speak with them in person. A staff member surnamed Li from Xu Zhiyong’s prison unit said verbally: “If he leaves the prison to go to the site, the only provisions in the current system are a Ministry of Justice document and the Prison Law’s rules on home visits for prisoners outside prison. Xu Zhiyong clearly does not meet the conditions for leaving prison.” I asked for the specific reason. He said: “Go back and look at the Prison Law yourself.”

This means that, in practice, there is no longer any way for our marriage application to succeed. In my view, this is no different from a decision rejecting the marriage application. A rejection should be in writing and state the reasons; only if I receive it can I seek legal remedies.

So on September 6, I wrote to Lunan Prison warden Liu Xiaodong, asking the prison to issue a written notice rejecting the application. I heard nothing after that. On the same day, I also submitted a government information disclosure request to Lunan Prison, seeking the identities of the four staff members present on August 25 and information about whether the audio and video from that day’s body-worn cameras had been preserved.

I took this step because that day the four staff members had me stand at the prison gate to talk, and none wore work identification or proactively showed their badge numbers. They only told me which departments they belonged to. I explicitly asked the staff member surnamed Li for his name and badge number. He only said “Li” and added, “I can’t tell you my badge number.”

So, were these four people prison staff? And who exactly was the staff member surnamed Li who said Xu Zhiyong “clearly does not meet the conditions for leaving prison”? Did his words represent the prison’s official position on our marriage registration? Only after confirming these things can I complain about that statement, seek reconsideration, or bring a lawsuit. If the prison later denies that this conversation took place, how can I prove that what I say is true? The only evidence is the body-worn camera that was recording that day. If the footage is not confirmed and preserved in time, it may be deleted when its retention period expires. It can be said that this procedure should never have been necessary. It arose because prison staff failed to identify themselves in accordance with the law and regulations, adding to the cost for an ordinary citizen of defending her basic rights.

II. Administrative reconsideration: I applied for information disclosure, but the reason for refusing to accept my application concerned marriage

On October 15, I applied to the Shandong Provincial Government for administrative reconsideration over Lunan Prison’s failure to respond by the deadline to my government information disclosure request. On October 22, the reconsideration office decided not to accept the application, on the grounds that marriage matters involving prisoners serving sentences fall within the scope of sentence enforcement and are outside the scope of administrative reconsideration. But I was not seeking reconsideration of the marriage matter; I was seeking reconsideration because the prison had not responded to my government information disclosure request by the deadline.

In September this year, I also received a “Notice that the Information Is Not Government Information” from Lunan Prison regarding outdoor exercise. In other words, the prison’s own document shows that even when it considers the requested information not to be government information, it still responds in writing in accordance with the Regulations on Open Government Information and informs the applicant of the available legal remedies. Why was this no longer the case less than a month later?

I also dug out a notice of acceptance of an administrative reconsideration application from last November. On that occasion, Lunan Prison had likewise failed to respond by the deadline to my government information disclosure request, which concerned communications. The Shandong Provincial Government’s reconsideration office decided to accept “the application for administrative reconsideration challenging Shandong Province’s Lunan Prison for failing to respond to a government information disclosure request.” Similar matters were accepted last year, but this year they were deemed outside the scope of reconsideration. What is the difference between the two applications in terms of the scope of reconsideration? What is the basis for the Shandong Provincial Government’s reconsideration office changing its determination?

What I ultimately want to ask is: “Who stopped this marriage, and on what basis?” Yet at the acceptance stage, the provincial government’s reconsideration office has also closed off the information disclosure route. Every channel that could answer this question is avoiding me.

III. Why was the communications matter accepted, but the marriage matter rejected? Or is it that they do not want to say outright that they are depriving us of our right to marry?

It is the procedure after acceptance that formally protects an applicant’s rights. After the application for reconsideration was accepted last year, the prison had to respond in writing and submit evidence to the reconsideration authority, including the notice, mailing receipts, screenshots of tracking information, and call recordings.

When an application is not accepted, none of this happens: the prison does not have to respond or provide evidence, the response deadlines set out in the Regulations on Open Government Information become meaningless, and the reconsideration authority does not need to establish any facts.

The Shandong Provincial Government’s reconsideration office extended the premise of “sentence enforcement” from the marriage application itself to the government information disclosure request. As a result, no authority has ever made a substantive determination about the prison system’s failure to act.

The question I am asking the court to review is simple: Can a lawfully submitted government information disclosure request that receives no response by the deadline be kept outside all oversight with the words “sentence enforcement”?

In closing

Since Xu Zhiyong submitted a marriage application to the prison last June, I have gone through 27 legal procedures, large and small: cooperation with the application by the non-incarcerated party, information disclosure, administrative reconsideration, inquiries, requests for oversight, complaints, administrative lawsuits…

I am a very meticulous person. For every legal document, I repeatedly check the legal provisions, consult lawyers, speak with various departments by phone or in person, and explain again and again the difficulties we face in registering our marriage and the sincere feelings between us. I even have to trace and preserve the postal information for every item sent and received, because I am so familiar with the way things are handled as if I “do not exist.” I have to keep proving: I really did go there, I really did submit it, I really did apply, I really do exist…

This workload, together with the experience of constantly being passed around and refused, is not easy for someone with depression.

So I also hope that more friends who are going through an emotional low point can see this process itself: It is not only people with good mental resilience, strength, and abundant energy who can survive in desperate circumstances.

Sometimes a trauma flashback takes your strength away in an instant; sometimes a depressive episode makes the light in your eyes disappear; sometimes you are ill and even getting out of bed is difficult; sometimes something triggers you again, and you lose control of your emotions and have nightmare after nightmare… But can you still speak and act? Yes, you can.

The foundation for persevering comes from taking each of your basic rights seriously. As soon as you regain some strength, you can send out one more legal document and take one more step in the process.

Do you say hardship changed you? In fact, in the midst of hardship, you did not abandon yourself, again and again. You are not what happened to you; you are the person you choose to become.

Wishing us well.