Chinese journalist Wang Ganlin was detained in November 2020, and was sentenced in December 2022 to four years in prison on the charge of operating an “illegal business.” CPJ has been unable to determine whether he was released on schedule in November 2024.
Police in Pizhou, in Jiangsu province, arrested Wang, founder of the news sites Pangbo News and Xie Fa, and his colleague Zhang Zhongmin on November 16, 2020, and held them incommunicado for at least four months.
On December 20, 2022, a court in Pizhou sentenced Wang to four years in prison and a fine of 500,000 renminbi ($70,188), concluding a prolonged closed-door trial that began on June 16 of that year.
According to the indictment cited by news reports, Wang wrote articles on Pangbo News via WeChat in April 2019 detailing the Jiangsu police's alleged mishandling of an assault case involving a local tycoon, and local corruption. After publication, a local party official and the tycoon mentioned in the articles pressured Wang to remove them, and he deleted some parts of the articles. A court judgment cited by the news site Chuanmei Jianwen revealed that the tycoon testified to bribing Wang with 40,000 renminbi ($5,615) and 40 cartons of cigarettes to secure the articles’ removal. Wang denied accepting any bribe. CPJ was unable to independently verify the allegations.
Wang is known for his investigative reports, which likely angered numerous officials over the years. According to his family, his articles interfered with the interests of some officials, leading to his arrest.
In the court, Wang and Zhang said they had been tortured while held incommunicado, including being forced to sit on a “tiger chair”—an iron chair that immobilizes a suspect during interrogation by cuffing and shackling them—for up to five days and denied food for 36 hours.
Wang’s family posted on May 11, 2022, on Chinese microblog Weibo that Wang has diabetes and they fear that his health condition is life threatening without proper medical treatment.
CPJ could not determine whether Wang was released as scheduled on November 17, 2024, after the completion of his four-year sentence. Chinese-language human rights news website Weiquanwang listed Wang on a database of political prisoners as of November 30, 2024.
CPJ did not include Wang in its 2023 prison census because it was not aware of his arrest at the time.
As of late 2024, the Pizhou Public Security Bureau had not responded to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.