Chang Zheng (常铮), born July 19, 1972, is a Falun Gong practitioner from Hushuguan, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. She began practicing Falun Gong in 1997 and was repeatedly detained over two decades for her practice. In May 2021 she was arrested in a mass detention of thirteen Falun Gong practitioners in Suzhou and was subsequently sentenced to four years and six months in prison, with a fine of 4,000 yuan, according to Minghui reporting cited by the CHRD prisoner database. The CHRD database records that she returned home on February 5, 2026. Note: the Rights Defense Network’s Issue 131 roster (August 31, 2026) still lists her as currently in custody — see “Status” below and the Media Archive for this discrepancy.
Repeated detentions before 2021
Minghui’s victim library documents a long record of persecution. In 2001, Chang and her mother, Chang Guifeng (常桂凤), were taken by Suzhou “610” personnel and Hushuguan police station officers to a brainwashing facility at Shangfang Mountain in Suzhou; her mother was held for fifteen days and Chang for eight days. On January 24, 2010, Chang and her mother were seized while distributing Falun Gong materials in Huangqiao, Xiangcheng District; Chang was held at the Suzhou No. 1 Detention Center for thirty days. Her mother, frightened and harassed by police, collapsed and died on June 19, 2010.
In November 2012, Chang was again seized — police from the Suzhou “610” and state-security units, with Hushuguan officers, ransacked her home, taking at least three laptop computers and a mobile phone, and held her at the Shangfang Mountain brainwashing facility for over a month before releasing her. On March 30, 2016, Chang and four other practitioners were detained overnight by Jinfeng police in Zhangjiagang while distributing materials; Chang and another practitioner were then held at the Suzhou Huangdai No. 4 Detention Center for a month before being released on bail on April 20, 2016.
The 2021 arrest and sentence
Between 6:00 and 10:00 a.m. on May 10, 2021, Suzhou state-security and “610” officers, working through local police stations, carried out coordinated raids on Falun Gong practitioners’ homes across Suzhou’s districts. Thirteen practitioners were seized, including Chang Zheng. Minghui reported that all thirteen were taken to a secret detention site in Changshu, Suzhou, and held incommunicado.
Chang’s aunt, Jiao Donglan (焦东兰), hired a lawyer for her. On August 5, 2021, the lawyer’s meeting application was rejected by Changshu officers, who first claimed the paperwork was non-compliant and then questioned whether Jiao was genuinely Chang’s relative; the local police station refused to certify the relationship. The lawyer stated that no law requires a retained lawyer to be a relative. Chang is unmarried and has no immediate family in the area, and little was known publicly about her situation while she was held.
The CHRD prisoner database records that Chang was subsequently sentenced, and cites Minghui’s figure of four years and six months’ imprisonment plus a 4,000-yuan fine. (Weiquanwang’s Issue 131 roster places her in its “sentences unknown” group, consistent with the sentence length not having been reflected in that roster’s data.)
Release
According to the CHRD database, citing Minghui’s February 17, 2026 mainland-news summary, Chang Zheng returned home on February 5, 2026. This would correspond to completion of a sentence running from mid-2021.
Status — read before treating custody as current
There is a genuine discrepancy in the sources. The CHRD prisoner database, updated June 11, 2026, records Chang Zheng as released, with a release date of February 5, 2026, citing Minghui reporting. The Rights Defense Network’s Issue 131 roster, dated August 31, 2026 — later than the CHRD update — lists “Chang Zheng” in its “sentences unknown” group of people currently in custody. The best available reading is that the Issue 131 entry is stale (its sentence data was never updated), but re-detention after release cannot be ruled out on the evidence available. Her current status should be independently verified before any public claim that she is either free or detained. Do not infer release, continued detention, residence, or current condition.
Sources: Rights Defense Network / 维权网 Issue 131 monthly report, August 31, 2026 (Chinese and English editions); CPPC profile no. 01146, May 2022 (cppc1989.blogspot.com); CHRD / tenchu 中国大陆良心犯数据库 record for 常铮 / CHANG ZHENG; VOA Mandarin, September 1, 2021 (Hong Kong activists jailed for illegal assembly in 2019 protests — cited by tenchu). See the Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, provenance, conflicts, and evidentiary limits.
Source reporting, documents and evidence chronology for this profile are preserved in the Chang Zheng Media Profile & Archive.