FreeChina.live News & Analysis | September 24, 2026
The detention of Guizhou entrepreneur Fu Guoyan (付国艳) is drawing renewed attention to a broader problem that PRC authorities themselves now acknowledge: profit-driven law enforcement (趋利性执法) and so-called “deep-sea fishing” enforcement (远洋捕捞式执法), in which local agencies cross jurisdictions, detain business owners, freeze or seize assets, and pursue fines or forfeitures in ways that can create direct financial incentives for enforcement.
Free China Movement (FCM) warns that the danger becomes especially acute when financially stressed local governments are under pressure to replace declining tax, land-sale, or other revenue. The concern is not that every prosecution is financially motivated. It is that the structure can create a cash-extraction incentive: entrepreneurs with operating companies, bank deposits, real estate, or transferable assets can become unusually vulnerable when criminal, supervisory, administrative, and fiscal powers overlap.
Fu Guoyan: repeated detention, changing legal mechanisms, and an alleged RMB 9 million demand
Public reporting says Fu Guoyan, founder of the Guizhou ethnic-handicraft business 黔粹行, was taken away by Guizhou supervisory authorities in November 2024. Her family later received a detention notice from Luodian County. After the first six-month period, a second detention notice was reportedly issued under Xifeng County while she remained at the same provincial detention facility.
According to reporting by journalists Wu Yingjiao and Liu Hu, Fu’s family said investigators pressured her to admit that she had helped conceal RMB 9 million in alleged criminal proceeds. The same reporting says her company’s revenue collapsed during her absence, from an annual range of roughly RMB 6–10 million in previous years to RMB 440,000 in the first half of 2025, and that the 37-year-old business ultimately shut down operations. These are allegations and reported figures, not findings by an independent court. Source.
Fu was later reportedly released from the supervisory detention but again lost her freedom in April 2026. Public reports say Cen’gong County police then placed her under residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL) on suspicion of “gathering a crowd for sexual promiscuity,” while her family and lawyers challenged the process, venue, and access restrictions. A September 2026 follow-up published a statement from Fu’s son concerning the continuing dispute over responsibility for her detention and legal status. Source.
The sequence — supervisory detention, a second detention under a different county, later RSDL under a different criminal accusation, restrictions on counsel, severe damage to an operating business, and an alleged RMB 9 million pressure point — does not by itself prove fiscal extortion. It does, however, present exactly the combination of coercive power and valuable private assets that warrants independent scrutiny.
PRC authorities already acknowledge “profit-driven enforcement”
This problem is not merely a claim made by critics of the PRC system. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) has publicly identified profit-driven enforcement and illegal cross-jurisdictional enforcement as major rule-of-law problems affecting private enterprises. In 2024, procuratorial authorities said they issued more than 6,500 written notices correcting unlawful investigative activity in market-order cases and supervised the withdrawal of more than 400 enterprise-related criminal cases. SPP source.
In February 2025, the SPP reported that it had received more than 1,500 leads concerning profit-driven enforcement and selected 31 key cases for special handling. The issues described included unlawful case filing, use of criminal procedure to intervene in economic disputes, cross-regional arrests, and unlawful seizure, detention, and freezing of enterprise property. SPP interview.
An SPP publication in March 2025 quoted National People’s Congress delegate Zhu Zhengfu describing “deep-sea fishing” enforcement as involving illegal cross-regional arrests of private entrepreneurs and the seizure, freezing, or transfer of enterprise and personal assets. He argued that the problem cannot be solved without severing the financial interest linking local authorities and case proceeds, including by removing local access to criminal forfeiture revenue. SPP source.
Documented cases show the pattern is broader than one province
Zhejiang/Jiangsu solicitation case. China Economic Weekly, published by People’s Daily, reported that Zhejiang procuratorial authorities disclosed a case in which county police officers traveled to Zhejiang and Jiangsu with police equipment and allegedly hinted to entrepreneurs that paying money could make their problems disappear. The publication explicitly described the case as profit-driven, “deep-sea fishing” enforcement. Source.
Guangdong One Health Group and the Xing Yanjun case. A 2025 article published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ newspaper identified the Guangdong One Health Group case and the death of Xing Yanjun during “designated residence” as publicly reported examples of “deep-sea fishing” enforcement. The article defined the pattern as local criminal or administrative agencies expanding jurisdiction, expanding criminalization, and expanding fines or forfeitures against private enterprises. Source.
Wang Xing (王醒). Wang Xing, a 1989 NAFUS secretary-general and author of NAFUS and the 1989 China Democracy Movement, has publicly described repeated imprisonment and long-term interference with his businesses after 1989. Reporting on the 2026 NAFUS symposium says he was monitored, subjected to account inspections and other pressure while doing business, and later imprisoned twice more, serving about seven and a half years in total. Source. FCM is separately documenting Wang Xing’s first-person account concerning alleged coercive confession, medication/drugging and a large payment connected to his later release; those specific allegations should be treated as testimony pending publication of the underlying primary-source record.
The fiscal dimension: why the incentive matters
The institutional concern becomes more serious when enforcement revenue grows while ordinary fiscal revenue weakens. A 2025 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences article noted that PRC tax revenue fell 3.4% in 2024 while non-tax revenue rose 25.4%, and connected the figures to public concern about “deep-sea fishing” enforcement. That correlation does not prove motive in any individual case. It does show why transparent accounting of fines, confiscations, asset transfers, and law-enforcement proceeds is necessary. Source.
FCM’s institutional warning is therefore broader than the Fu Guoyan case: when local fiscal distress, weak judicial independence, detention powers, cross-jurisdictional enforcement, and access to enterprise assets converge, private property can become exposed to revenue-seeking enforcement.
What should be disclosed
For Fu Guoyan, FCM calls for publication of her current legal status and place of detention; meaningful access to independent counsel; disclosure of the legal and evidentiary basis for all coercive measures; preservation and independent accounting of all company and personal property affected by the investigation; and disclosure of any requested payments, transfers, sales, forfeitures, settlements, or asset dispositions.
More broadly, FCM calls for locality-by-locality publication of fine and confiscation revenue; mandatory judicial review of enterprise asset freezes and seizures; public disclosure of enterprise-related forfeitures; an auditable separation between law-enforcement budgets and case proceeds; and meaningful remedies for entrepreneurs subjected to unlawful cross-jurisdictional or profit-driven enforcement.
Bottom line: fiscal deficits should be addressed through transparent budgeting and economic reform. Criminal procedure, detention, and confiscation should never become substitute taxation or a mechanism for extracting assets from private businesses.