Mao Shanchun (毛善春)
Mao Shanchun (毛善春), born April 7, 1974, is a human rights defender from Gong’an County, Jingzhou, Hubei Province, currently serving a 4-year sentence for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” (寻衅滋事).
Mao grew up in Maojiaping village, Zhangzhuangpu township, in Gong’an County. He joined the Chinese Communist Party during military service in Shandong in 1993, returned to civilian life, studied agricultural economic management at Hubei Agricultural College from 1995 under a county sponsorship arrangement, served at his home village committee, and resigned in 2003, working as a migrant laborer thereafter. From 2013 he became active defending legal rights, joined the China Human Rights Watch initiative associated with Qin Yongmin, and in March 2014 was delegated by its initiators to register the organization with the Beijing civil-affairs authorities — registration was attempted four times without success. In March 2020 he publicly declared his withdrawal from the Communist Party.
On January 31, 2024, state security officers detained him while he was visiting his home village for the lunar new year; his family received no written legal notice. His father died on February 15, 2024, days after learning of the detention. He was criminally detained by the Gong’an County public security bureau on January 31, 2024, his arrest was approved on March 7, and the case was transferred to the Gong’an County procuratorate for prosecution review on June 7, 2024. The indictment accused him of committing acts of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” in Gong’an County and in Qufu, Shandong between 2014 and 2024, and of fabricating and posting false information damaging national interests on domestic and overseas social-media platforms. A pre-trial conference was held on August 13, 2024, and the trial opened on August 28, 2024, in the Gong’an County People’s Court.
According to a January 2025 report, the court sentenced him to 4 years’ imprisonment. He was held in the Gong’an County Detention Center and transferred in April 2025 to the Fanjiatai Prison in Shayang, Hubei. His term ends January 30, 2028.
Sources and documentation
Biographical and detention details come from a February 17, 2024 report by the independent Chinese-language rights outlet 民生观察 (msguancha.com) and from the prisoner-of-conscience record of a Chinese human-rights monitoring database (entered March 14, 2024), which agree on the name, birth date, region, group affiliation, detention timeline, court dates, 4-year sentence, prison, and term. The indictment contents are as reported by those sources; the court judgment text is not publicly available. Media and Documentation Archive.