### Cheng Xiaofeng (程晓峰)
Cheng Xiaofeng is a civic activist from Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, who is serving a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence after being detained in July 2024. Before becoming an activist, he worked as a criminal police officer with the Zhuzhou Public Security Bureau.
**From police officer to activist**
Cheng, who used the online name “David,” left the police force after exposing corruption within its ranks, drawing retaliation from the department, according to Radio Free Asia’s reporting. He went on to devote himself to civic causes in Zhuzhou: helping disadvantaged residents and the families of detained dissidents — including Xu Lin — seek accountability from the authorities for injustices they had faced.
After the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, Cheng publicly questioned the authorities’ nucleic-acid testing and vaccine programs and was warned and intimidated. In August 2021 he filed a formal application to organize a public protest. Later that year, he accompanied the detained human rights lawyer Xie Yang to support an elementary school teacher who was facing state threats of forced psychiatric treatment.
**The 2024 detention**
In the days around June 4, 2024, domestic security personnel warned Cheng not to leave Zhuzhou. He nevertheless traveled to Shuangfeng County, Loudi, to pay tribute at the grave of the late rights defender Ouyang Jinghua and attended a small June 4 commemoration gathering. The rights group Weiquanwang later reported that the immediate triggers for his arrest were that memorial visit and an online tribute he posted to Hu Youping, describing the case as the authorities “settling accounts” for his years of dissent.
On July 6, 2024 — on the eve of the Chinese Communist Party’s Third Plenum — police raided Cheng’s home and the tea house he ran, and the Hetang District Branch of the Zhuzhou Public Security Bureau placed him under criminal detention on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” The procuratorate formally approved his arrest on August 9, 2024, and he was held at the Zhuzhou Detention Center. His lawyer Li Guisheng attempted to visit him; his father refused to sign the arrest notice, after which the authorities declined to provide the notice to the family at all.
**Trial and sentence**
Cheng was tried in a Zhuzhou court in November 2025. In December 2025 he was sentenced to three years and six months in prison; the verdict was read aloud in court but the written judgment was never delivered to his father, who still does not know the exact charge against his son, according to RFA’s sources. (An alert by Chinese Human Rights Defenders dated January 22, 2026 instead places the sentencing in January 2026; both accounts agree on the 3.5-year term for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” See the case file for the discrepancy.)
Cheng has a young son, who is being cared for by the child’s grandfather. His exact place of detention after sentencing is not publicly known.
**Status:** Imprisoned — serving a 3.5-year sentence (sentencing reported December 2025 per RFA / January 2026 per CHRD; discrepancy noted). UNVERIFIED: current facility, lawyer access.
**[INSERT RECIPROCAL LINK: “Related case file: Cheng Xiaofeng — Media Profile & Archive” linking to the Media page]**
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Media archive: Cheng Xiaofeng — Media Profile & Archive (程晓峰) — Media Archive