Chen Deguang (陈德广), a retired employee of the now-defunct Northwest Branch of the No. 4 Metallurgical Construction Company in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, is a Falun Gong practitioner who has been detained repeatedly since 2001. He was arrested again on March 20, 2023, and sentenced in early April 2024 to three years and eight months in prison. A rights-defense roster dated August 31, 2026 lists him among reported current-custody cases.
Around 2001, Chen traveled to Beijing to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong and was subsequently sent to the Pingantai Labor Camp in Lanzhou for eighteen months without legal procedure, according to Falun Gong-affiliated reporting. His wife, Sheng Chunmei, and their daughter, Chen Shenghua, were also sent to labor camps — his wife for two years and his daughter for one year — for distributing Falun Gong materials.
On July 6, 2011, Chen and his wife were arrested in Lanzhou’s Honggu District while distributing Falun Gong DVDs. After six months in detention, both were sentenced to nine years in prison; their appeal was upheld by the Lanzhou Intermediate Court without a hearing, according to the same reporting. Sheng Chunmei’s health deteriorated in the Gansu Province Women’s Prison — she suffered gallbladder infection, hypertension, and diabetes — and she was released only when critically ill; she died on October 12, 2017, seven weeks after her release, at age 65. Chen served his full term and was released on July 6, 2020, after which he learned his pension had been revoked in 2012; the local social security bureau refused to reinstate it.
Chen was arrested again on March 20, 2023. In early April 2024 he was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. A January 2025 report listed him, then about 78, among at least seventeen Falun Gong practitioners still jailed at Lanzhou Prison. The charge for this term was not stated in the reporting reviewed, and his present whereabouts beyond the dated listings are unconfirmed.
Sources: English Minghui reports (2014, 2017, 2020, 2024, 2025); Falun Dafa Australia Information Centre; Rights Defense Network / 维权网 Issue 131 monthly report, August 31, 2026 (English edition). See the Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, provenance, and evidentiary limits.
View the Chen Deguang Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, reporting chronology, and provenance.