Hao Jinsong (郝劲松) — Person Profile
Hao Jinsong (郝劲松, born October 13, 1972), a legal scholar and civil-rights activist from Dingxiang County, Xinzhou, Shanxi Province, was one of China’s best-known public-interest litigators before his detention in December 2019; on July 20, 2023, the Dingxiang County Court sentenced him to a combined nine years’ imprisonment — eight years for fraud plus one year and nine months for picking quarrels and provoking trouble — and a 350,000-yuan fine. The Rights Defense Network’s (维权网) monthly political-prisoners report (Issue 131, August 31, 2026) lists him as in custody, confirming he remains in custody serving his term as of that date.
The case
On December 17, 2019, after being repeatedly summoned by the Jinchang Town police in Dingxiang, Hao was placed under 15 days of administrative detention for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” When that term expired on January 2, 2020, he was criminally detained on the same charge and moved to the Wutai County Detention Center. On November 15, 2020, prosecutors indicted him on three charges: picking quarrels and provoking trouble (for social-media posts about current events), defamation (for derogatory comments about Chinese leaders), and fraud (relating to two cases he had represented). He was tried at the Dingxiang County People’s Court on December 10, 2020.
On July 20, 2023, the Dingxiang County Court sentenced Hao to eight years’ imprisonment for fraud plus one year and nine months for picking quarrels and provoking trouble, for a combined term of nine years’ imprisonment and a fine of 350,000 yuan. By that point he had already spent more than 1,200 days in pretrial detention. The verdict details are reported via Phoenix TV online and Weiquanwang (as summarized in reference entries); the court judgment itself has not been located online, and the verdict facts are presented as reported by these outlets, not as independently verified court records.
Between 2004 and 2010 Hao filed a string of high-profile public-interest suits. As a graduate student in 2004 he sued the Beijing Subway for charging for restroom use without issuing receipts and won; he won a similar case against Beijing Railways over food-service receipts. In 2006 he sued the Ministry of Railways for raising Spring Festival ticket prices without a legally required public hearing — the court ruled against him, but two days after he published an open letter to the railway minister, the ministry announced it would abolish the annual holiday-season price hike. He challenged the Shaanxi Forestry Department over the 2007 fake South China tiger photographs, and in 2009 he represented victims of the Shanghai traffic police’s “fishing law enforcement” sting entrapments, winning one case in Minhang District court and prompting a public apology from the Pudong authorities over another. His work earned him recognition including China’s Top Ten Consumer Rights Defenders (2006), Southern People Weekly’s “50 Most Charming People of China” (2008), and the Times Weekly’s “100 People Who Effected Progress in Contemporary China” (2010). Around 2009 he returned to Dingxiang and ran the Jinsong Legal Consultancy Co.
Status and evidentiary limits
Hao is serving his sentence. No independently verified information about his current place of detention or condition after the 2023 verdict has been located; the page carries a “last verified” qualifier. Detention start is reported as December 17, 2019 (China Change and contemporaneous English-language sources) versus December 18, 2019 (Chinese Wikipedia); both agree criminal detention began January 2, 2020. He held a law degree but was not a licensed lawyer — he acted as a citizen or citizen proxy rather than practicing under the management of the judicial authorities — and must not be called a licensed lawyer. No consular or diplomatic attention and no UN or government statements on the case were found. This record must not be merged with Dong Guangping (董广平), a different person forcibly returned from Thailand in 2015, or with the 2025 Ministry of State Security publicity case about an employee “surnamed Hao” convicted of espionage — both are different people and different facts.
Media Profile & Archive: Hao Jinsong (郝劲松) — Media Profile & Archive