Chen Fanghua (陈方华), a Falun Gong practitioner from Lanzhou, Gansu Province, is serving a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence handed down in 2025, according to Falun Gong-affiliated reporting and a prisoners-of-conscience database record. A rights-defense roster dated August 31, 2026 lists him among reported current-custody cases in its three-year-six-month sentence group; the database, last updated August 19, 2025, lists him as in prison with a listed release date of January 17, 2028.
Chen, described as 71 years old in July 2025, originally lived in Pingchuan District, Baiyin, but moved to Lanzhou with his daughter after repeated harassment by local authorities, the reports say. On the morning of July 18, 2024, plainclothes officers from the Huaping Xincun police station seized him near his home, forced him back inside, and searched the home — taking two of his Falun Gong books — without, according to the report, showing identification. He was first held in a detention facility for fifteen days, then transferred to the Lanzhou No. 1 Detention Center, where criminal detention, arrest, and indictment followed.
On March 21, 2025, the Chengguan District Court tried his case; the report says the family was not notified of the hearing, learned of it only through an aid lawyer, and was refused entry to observe. On June 27, 2025 the lawyer telephoned the family to say Chen had been sentenced to three and a half years, the report says; the family asked to see the judgment and was told none was available. An appeal was reported as pending at that time; its outcome is not publicly documented. The family has not been permitted to see him since his seizure, the report says.
The harassment that drove him from Pingchuan continued after the move, according to the report: police from the Pingchuan public-security sub-bureau and staff of the Pingchuan social-governance center traveled to Lanzhou to press him — and his daughter, son-in-law, and in-laws — to sign so-called “zeroing” pledges renouncing the practice.
Sources: Rights Defense Network / 维权网 Issue 131 monthly report, August 31, 2026 (Chinese and English editions); CHRD / tenchu 中国大陆良心犯数据库 record 4281 / poc_c_00495 (updated August 19, 2025); Minghui, July 14, 2025 report. See the Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, provenance, and evidentiary limits. The character form 陈芳华 is unsupported and is not used.
View the Chen Fanghua Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, reporting chronology, and provenance.