Zhang Lifang (张利芳)
Zhang Lifang is a Falun Gong practitioner from Guyuan City, in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, who has been repeatedly detained and sentenced over more than two decades for her religious practice. She was reported in 2025 to be serving a two-and-a-half-year prison term, her seventh recorded detention since 1999.
Background
According to Minghui.org, a Falun Gong-affiliated monitoring outlet, Ms. Zhang is about 65 years old (as of 2025) and took up Falun Gong in June 1998. The outlet reports that she suffered from gynecological disease and rhinitis that had blinded her in one eye before practicing, and that her health subsequently improved.
Record of detention
Minghui’s reporting describes a long pattern of detention: a one-and-a-half-year forced-labor term in November 2001, another in 2005, a brief detention in 2008, a two-year forced-labor term beginning in 2009, a three-year prison sentence handed down in 2020 (served at the Ningxia Women’s Prison), and her most recent case — arrest on March 29, 2025 in Yinchuan, where she had traveled to visit her daughter. The outlet reports that a bystander reported her for talking to people about Falun Gong, that the Xixia District Procuratorate indicted her, and that the Xixia District Court secretly sentenced her to two and a half years. Minghui says she was transferred from the Yinchuan City Detention Center to the Ningxia Women’s Prison; details of the indictment and trial were not reported.
Family
Minghui reports that Ms. Zhang’s three sisters and one niece were also targeted for practicing Falun Gong. Her oldest sister, Zhang Yufang, was left disabled by torture in a labor camp, according to the outlet; another two sisters, Zhang Shufang and Zhang Lanfang, died as a result of the persecution, and her niece Xu Yan was sentenced to three years in prison. These accounts come from Falun Gong-affiliated sources and have not been independently verified.
Current status
维权网 (Rights Defense Network), a civil-society group that tracks reported political and conscience prisoners in mainland China, lists 张利芳 in its August 31, 2026 monthly report among prisoners reported as sentenced to two years and six months, and classifies the report’s listed individuals as reported political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in custody. No official Chinese government statement or court record for this case has been located.
Sources
- Minghui.org, “After Eight Years of Incarceration, Ningxia Woman Sentenced to 2.5 Years After Seventh Arrest for Her Faith,” September 8, 2025 — https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2025/9/8/229737.html
- Minghui.org, “Ningxia Woman Sentenced to Three Years for Practicing Falun Gong,” July 20, 2021 — http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2021/7/20/194167p.html
- 维权网, 中国大陆在押政治犯、良心犯月度报告（2026年8月31日）第131期 — https://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2026/08/20268311311638.html