Human rights lawyer Zhang Wenpeng, sentenced to 4 years and 6 months, transferred to Hainan Meilan Prison to serve his sentence
(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On September 28, 2026, this website learned that human rights lawyer Zhang Wenpeng, who was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months, had once again been transferred to Hainan Meilan Prison to serve his sentence. The mailing address for Zhang Wenpeng at his new prison is as follows. Please call to confirm his prison unit before mailing: Recipient: Zhang Wenpeng c/o New place of imprisonment: Hainan Meilan Prison. Telephone: 0898-65677021.
Because Zhang Wenpeng reported the lawyers' association, he was unable to obtain a lawyer's practising certificate after seven years as a trainee. On September 24, 2024, he was criminally detained on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking trouble after representing a client in the Haiyun Group case and speaking out online on the client's behalf. He was tortured while in detention. He was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months at his first-instance trial. After the verdict, Zhang Wenpeng appealed. On May 26, 2026, Zhang Wenpeng's appeal was rejected, and the second-instance court upheld the original sentence.
Zhang Wenpeng's biography: Born in 1993. After graduating from university at age 23, Zhang Wenpeng passed the bar qualification examination. Under Chinese law, a person can obtain a lawyer's practising certificate after a one-year traineeship, but he has been a trainee for seven years and has still been unable to obtain a practising certificate. The reason is that he has consistently opposed the “officially run lawyers' association” and was placed on the Ministry of Justice's blacklist, so the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Justice has continually made things difficult for him and refused to issue him a practising certificate, stringing him along for seven years. Zhang Wenpeng is hailed by the legal community as a famous trainee lawyer. He exposed corruption in the lawyers' association and denounced lawyers who offered bribes, thereby offending some vested interests, to the extent that he was permanently barred from practising.
In 2022, Zhang Wenpeng posted a real-name report online accusing Wan Zhendong, head of the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Justice, of three major offenses: bribery, squandering public funds, and dereliction of duty.
On March 21, 2024, Zhang Wenpeng, who was a trainee at Shandong Xiaolin Law Firm, posted on Weibo that on March 20 he had been summoned across provincial boundaries in Shenzhen by the Shinan Branch of the Qingdao Municipal Public Security Bureau. His clothes were stripped off, and he was not even allowed to wear underwear. He was questioned for eight hours. The stated reason was disrupting the order of a work unit. Zhang Wenpeng went to a local police station in Shenzhen to inquire and learned that the reason for the cross-provincial summons was that he had “once entered the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Justice without authorization.”
On September 24, 2024, Zhang Wenpeng was again criminally detained by Sanya police on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking trouble because he represented the Haiyun Group case and helped the client speak out about their grievance. Just before his criminal detention, the case's defense lawyer, Peking University PhD Zhang Qingfang, was notified that his lawyer's licence would be revoked. This was clearly retaliation by Sanya police, using public power to target the representatives of Haiyun. Zhang Wenpeng was sentenced on March 16, 2026, to 4 years and 6 months. His sentence runs until: March 22, 2028. In September 2026, it was learned that Zhang Wenpeng had been transferred to Hainan Meilan Prison to serve his sentence.
This website will continue to follow Zhang Wenpeng's situation in prison.
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