From the town secretary Liu to Xi Jinping, the irony of the rule of law is that Hunan is about to be sentenced in the first instance for the crime of Yoon Jiangen, a journalist who said he was guilty.

In response to the publication of a letter criticizing Liu, Secretary of the party committee of Anhui Province and Lianyang Township, and disclosing the situation of local people in the defence of their rights, Hunanjio was arrested and charged with “the crime of stalking” across the province by the mediaman Yoon Jiangen and the county police. After nearly a year of detention and trial, the sentence will be delivered in first instance on 6 August 2026 at the Anhui Provincial and District People's Courts.

The article refers directly to the 30-year Red Brick Case between the Secretary of the Town Party, Liu Zhuang.

On 11 August 2025, a Japanese journalist, Yoon Jiangen, born in 1965, published an article entitled Anhui and the County Re-emergence of the Wang Li Peace edition, which is “Most than the other”. The article directly targeted the focus of public opinion in Anhui province and in the district of Luyang town, Secretary of the Party Liu, and opened up a 30-year-long tragic process of rights defence for the local law-abiding farmer Chen Deok-jin.

As early as 1995, Chen De Gen had been pushed forward by the long-term rights struggle over the debt dispute with the local Second Crib, which had resulted in the illegal transfer of claims to a rubber company by the Luyang Town Government. Until 2021, Chen Deok-jin finally reached an agreement with the town government for compensation, but the town government subsequently failed to honour it. The desperate Chen De Jin was sentenced to one year in prison for visiting the capital; After his release, Chen wrote in Weibo accusing Secretary Liu Xian of the Luyang town party of “calling the police and reporting false police”, again being held in administrative detention by the police for 18 days.

As a journalist and defender of human rights on the rule of law online, Yoon Jiangen, who was saddened and dishonoured by the plight of Chen Deok-jin, decided to write a statement calling for a voice for the helpless farmer and publicly criticizing the practices of the town secretary Liu and the local government.

He was taken across the province after refusing to remove the strike.

The day the article was published, the incident quickly triggered a rebound with the district authorities and the officials involved.

On 11 August 2025, the city and county police of the Ramayama city of Anhui province drove across the province to the house of Yoon Jiangen, Hutong town, Chiuzhou city, Hunan province, and forced him to remove the critical articles against Liu Xian, the Secretary of the Town Party. In the face of pressure from the police, Yoon Jiangen maintained his monitoring position and refused to do so on the spot. Subsequently, the police of the county were forced to take Yoon Jiangen away, leaving him in a state of disconnection.

After 20 days of multiple visits, family members and interested netizens were informed that Yoon Jiangen had been detained with the police on criminal charges of “silent crime” and held in the county detention centre.

Relief blocked, “tired trial” and over 450 articles

The scope of criminal prosecution of Yoon Jiangen has been dramatically expanded after the case has entered judicial proceedings.

On 3 September 2025, after a meeting with Yoon Jiangen in the detention facility, the lawyer submitted to the county police and the prosecutor ' s office an application for bail pending trial, an application for designated jurisdiction and an application for non-application of the arrest, all of which were officially rejected. On 15 September, the District Attorney ' s Office officially approved the arrest of Yoon Jiangen. According to the interview with the lawyer, Yoon Jiangen reported that while in detention, he had been subjected to fatigue in the interrogation of the case officers and forced to confess guilt.

The prosecution eventually included in its indictment all the more than 450 articles previously published in Yoon Jiangen's account numbers “Sun in the pen” and “The Spring Light”, mostly on critical supervision of the village clerks, street offices, government departments, public security organs and courts, and public officials.

Despite the fact that dozens of cyber-friends had initiated a joint signature letter and a request from the District People ' s Procuratorate not to prosecute after the case was referred for review and prosecution in mid-December 2025, the case was still brought before the courts. In February 2026, the case was heard in the county court without a judgement being delivered in court.

The County Secretary Ma Yong condones the reality irony of the narrative of Xi Jinping “in a State governed by the rule of law”

How can a critical article facing a grassroots town secretary, Liu Xin, quickly use the police force to arrest and deny bail across the province and to add hundreds of surveillance articles to the list of crimes?

In the local political ecology, the hard-line tactics of the Secretary of the Town Party, Liu Xian, are not isolated. Such actions, which have been carried out using public security forces across the province to combat popular discourse, have been accompanied by the acquiescence, connivance and even endorsement of the main leadership of the local county council, headed by the Secretary of the county and district commissions, Maron. Under the “stable overstretch” appraisal mechanism, the leadership of the county and county councils will view the monitoring criticism of Liu Xuan, the grass-roots chief, directly as a threat to the overall local political image and the authority of the executive. The cover-up of Liu ' s illegal administration and false police reporting has evolved into a political directive to use the power of the county-wide public prosecution law to silence critical voices.

This case also completely dispels the so-called “full-fledged State of the Rule of Law” lie that the Xi authorities have long promoted. The Communist Party, at the highest level, has declared that “power is in the cage of the system”, “the right to guarantee citizens' oversight”, but in the real governance logic of Xi's Jinping system, the local public power can still arbitrarily label civil disputes, administrative disbelity and monitoring of speech as “settling”. “The rule of law has become “law to the citizens”, and the judicial system, under Xi Jinping, has not become a guardian of justice, but rather a tool for local officials to defend the image of individual authority and performance.

The crime of sedition is a vague application of the border in cyberspace, which gives local public security very low enforcement thresholds. The criticism of public power, such as that of Secretary-General Liu Xian, and the calls for vulnerable groups were directly characterized as “false information and the breakdown of social order”, which led to the easy escalation of normal monitoring of speech into a criminal attack, resulting in a very low cost of “public rights” (art.

From August 2025, when he was taken across the province, until 6 August 2026, when he was sentenced at first instance, Yoon Jiangen was deprived of his liberty for almost a whole year. This is the result of a case that was initiated by criticism of the Secretary of the Town Party, Liu Xian, and the first instance judgement is not only about the fate of Yoon Jiangen, but will also directly reflect the boundaries of the functioning of local public power and the real space for public opinion oversight. Focus China will keep track of the reports.