Rights advocates say Chinese authorities’ recent detention of dissident artist Gao Zhen and prominent citizen journalist Zhang Zhan are the latest sign of an escalating crackdown on dissent in China.
Gao, a prominent artist known for creating provocative sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, was detained by Chinese police on August 26 for “slandering Chinese heroes and martyrs.” More than 30 police raided his studio and confiscated several pieces of artwork related to Mao and the Cultural Revolution, a tumultuous period that China’s founding leader launched in the 1960s and lasted until 1976.
Mao launched the movement to reassert ideological control with attacks on intellectuals and so-called counterrevolutionaries, which scholars estimate led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
His brother and main artistic collaborator Gao Qiang told VOA Tuesday that Gao’s wife received a notification from northern Hebei province’s Sanhe public security bureau on August 27. The notification said Gao had been detained under the charge of insulting and slandering Chinese heroes and martyrs, a law passed in 2018 that carries a maximum sentence of three years.
“The police mainly targeted artworks critiquing the Cultural Revolution, but these works were created more than 10 years ago, which predate the law that came into effect in 2021,” Gao Qiang said in a written response.
Gao said his brother returned to China to visit family with his wife and son in June, but before his departure, he and other friends urged him to consider the potential security risks of returning to China.
“He also thought he could run into some trouble, but he still decided to go back to China in the end,” he said.
Since the 1990s and into the early 2000s, the Gao brothers have been known for expressing grief toward Mao and his time in power. While Chinese police had shut down their exhibitions and confiscated some of their sensitive artworks in the past, they hadn’t run into major problems before.
The two brothers obtained permanent residence in the United States in 2011, and Gao Zhen moved to New York with his family in 2022. Unlike the earlier phase of their career, the Gao brothers’ recent works have been less politically sensitive and less critical of China’s leadership.
Gao Qiang said that while the motivation for his brother’s arrest remains unclear, he believes the incident shows the space for free expression has further shrunk in China.
“He is nearly 70 years old and is naturally prone to melancholy, so I’m very concerned about his physical and mental health in detention,” he told VOA, adding that the lawyer mentioned his brother had complained about persistent back pain.
Gao’s wife and children were also banned from leaving China when they tried to fly back to New York from Beijing on Tuesday. Gao’s son is an American citizen, and his family members are seeking help from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
Several prominent Chinese writers and artists, including Ma Jian, have written an open letter, urging the Chinese authorities to release him and set his family free.
Meanwhile, Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was released in May after serving a four-year sentence for covering the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020, has reportedly been detained by Chinese authorities at the Pudong Detention Center in Shanghai, according to Chinese news site Weiquanwang and supporters with knowledge of the arrest.
Zhang went to Gansu Province to meet the mother of a recently detained activist but was arrested by police when she returned to her hometown Shaanxi. It remains unclear whether she has been put in administrative detention, which usually lasts 15 days, or criminal detention, which carries a much longer sentence.
Zhang’s latest detention has renewed concerns about her physical well-being. During her four-year prison sentence, Zhang staged a months-long hunger strike that caused her weight to drop to under 40 kilograms at one point.
Since her release in May, Zhang has been speaking up for other detained Chinese activists while criticizing some policies implemented by the Chinese government on Western social media platforms such as X and YouTube, which is banned in China.
Zhang wrote on the Chinese social media platform WeChat in June that local authorities in Shanghai had threatened to re-arrest her if she “crossed the red line” and said in a YouTube video in July that she possibly had been followed.
Some analysts say other dissidents’ experiences suggest that Chinese authorities tend to impose harsher prison sentences on them if they were arrested for a second time. They worry Zhang could face a similar fate.
“If Chinese activists continue to stand up for freedom after their releases, the Chinese government definitely won’t tolerate that,” Yaqiu Wang, research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House, told VOA by phone, adding that she has an “ominous” feeling about Zhang’s situation.
In her view, the arrests of Gao and Zhang represent an escalation in the Chinese government’s repression against dissidents. “Gao was merely visiting China, and the works used as evidence against him were created more than a decade ago,” she said.
“This symbolizes a step further in terms of Beijing’s crackdown on dissident community, and I remain extremely worried about the fate of other Chinese dissidents,” Wang said.
Some human rights advocates say the detention of prominent dissidents fits Beijing’s usual practice of increasing pressure on the dissident community when they face serious domestic challenges.
“The arrests are part of the larger trend of Beijing adopting more forceful measures to control civil society and this situation will indeed increase the risks that Chinese activists face,” Zhou Fengsuo, a former Tiananmen student leader and executive director of New York-based organization Human Rights in China, told VOA by phone.
VOA reached out to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Pudong Detention Center for comments. In a previous response to VOA, the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., said China is “a country ruled by law and liberty is protected and respected” in the country.
