Yang Rongli (杨荣丽)
Yang Rongli (杨荣丽) is a pastor and co-founder of the Golden Lampstand Church, an independent Protestant house church in Linfen, Shanxi Province, that has refused to join the state-regulated Three-Self Patriotic Movement. She has led the congregation alongside her husband, Pastor Wang Xiaoguang, for more than three decades.
In June 2025 she was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on a charge of “fraud” — one of the heaviest sentences imposed on a house-church leader in China in recent years. The authorities treated the church’s collection of tithes and offerings from its members as a criminal act. She had been detained since August 7, 2021, when she was arrested with eleven other church leaders and co-workers, and spent nearly four years in detention before the verdict.
This was not her first imprisonment. In September 2009, Yang and her husband were arrested while traveling to Taiyuan to protest the demolition of church property in Linfen. After hundreds of police raided the church’s grounds on September 13, 2009 — seriously wounding dozens of believers and destroying church buildings, according to China Aid — the couple were convicted of “gathering a mob to disturb public order” for a prayer rally held the following day. Yang served a seven-year sentence and was released in October 2016.
The church’s large worship building in Linfen was demolished by the authorities in January 2018, and the congregation continued to meet outdoors under police pressure until the August 2021 detentions. Of the twelve arrested that day, six were later released on bail; Yang, her husband, and four others remained in detention.
Her case was heard separately from the other defendants. On April 28, 2025, the Yaodu District People’s Court heard her case without issuing an immediate verdict. On June 20, 2025, a judge came to the Yaodu District Detention Center and informed her that she had been sentenced to fifteen years. Her husband was sentenced to nine years and seven months and church co-worker Li Shuangping to nine years and two months; ten other church members received sentences of up to nine years in a separate proceeding.
From the detention center, Yang wrote a letter to her son, Wang Yunxiang, describing the verdict as “a great crown given to me by God” and saying the sentence was “too light.” She wrote that she had appealed the sentence but placed her hope not in the appeal — “the appeal is not where she places her hope,” China Aid reported — but in “God’s greater work.” No public report of the appeal’s outcome has appeared.
Yang is in her late sixties. During her earlier imprisonment she suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure, hepatitis, and kidney stones, and was denied medical treatment in prison, according to China Aid and the advocacy group PrisonerAlert. Her current place of custody beyond the detention center has not been publicly confirmed.
As of October 2026, Yang Rongli remains in custody. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom lists her as a religious prisoner of conscience, not released.
Media Profile & Archive: Yang Rongli (杨荣丽) — Media Profile & Archive