Research status: verified baseline established; birth year, pre-Ruikai firm history, and post-2021 activity remain unresolved.
Lin Qilei (蔺其磊) is a Beijing rights-defense lawyer. He founded Beijing Ruikai Law Firm (北京瑞凯律师事务所) in September 2009, according to his own published account.
Rights-defense work
Documented case work includes Li Yuhan (李昱函); one of the “Hong Kong 12” detainees (the specific client is not identified in the verified sources); Guo Feixiong; Qin Yongmin; Tibetan clients; Hao Jinsong; and a 2017 detention-center meeting with Li Xiaoling.
Targeting and professional restrictions
CHRD reported that in May 2013 Lin was detained for about 24 hours with other lawyers while investigating a black-jail case in Ziyang, Sichuan, and was beaten. The current record does not establish a formal criminal detention beyond that episode.
Front Line Defenders reported that on November 10, 2015 Lin was blocked from leaving China at Beijing Capital Airport after immigration officials said Beijing Public Security had prohibited travel because he “may harm national security”; no written documentation was provided to him.
Lin’s own account states that Beijing authorities refused Ruikai Law Firm’s annual-review materials in 2018, investigated the firm for two years, and terminated the firm on January 4, 2021. He reported that courts declined to file his challenges and that a Beijing firm later agreed to take him on but the Chaoyang District Justice Bureau did not complete the transfer. These administrative steps are presented as Lin’s account and are not independently verified in full.
License revocation
Lin stated that the Beijing Justice Bureau’s decision revoking his law license was dated October 30, 2021; CHRD recorded that he was informed on October 31. The one-day difference is treated as decision date versus notification date, not as a contradiction.
The bureau’s stated rationale, as relayed by the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, was that Ruikai had been deregistered and Lin had not joined another law firm. Lin’s own account describes efforts to transfer to another firm and challenges the administrative process. The bureau’s explanation is therefore carried as the bureau’s stated claim, not as an independently established fact.
Current status
Status: not currently known detained. No verified activity, whereabouts, or professional-status development after November 2021 was found in the current research record. Disbarment does not establish detention, exile, or continued activism.
Identity note: Lin Qilei (蔺其磊; traditional form 藺其磊) is distinct from Liang Xiaojun (梁小军), Lu Siwei (卢思位), and Ren Quanniu (任全牛), who were separately involved in the 2021 Hong Kong 12-related disbarment wave.
Evidence rule: FreeChina.live does not infer present custody, release dates, or the end of post-release restrictions from sentence arithmetic. Where current status remains uncertain, the record remains open for source recovery.
Related: Rights-Defense Lawyers & Legal Advocates in China · 709 Crackdown archive
Media and source archive: Lin Qilei 蔺其磊 — Media Profile & Archive