Canonical P1 person profile • Internet publishing / press-freedom case
Huang Qi (黄琦) is the founder and publisher of the human-rights news website 64 Tianwang. CPJ has documented his role as an early independent internet publisher in mainland China and his repeated detention and prosecution.
Early internet publishing
Huang and Zeng Li launched the Tianwang website in 1998. It began as a missing-persons service and later published material about abuses of power, petitions, protests and other sensitive subjects. Huang was detained in June 2000 and later sentenced to five years in prison.
2016 arrest and 2019 sentence
CPJ reports that police detained Huang on November 28, 2016. On July 29, 2019, the Mianyang Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him to 12 years in prison on charges of “deliberately leaking state secrets” and “illegally providing state secrets to foreign countries.”
Information-control significance
Huang’s case shows that internet information control has operated through more than technical blocking. It has also involved prosecution of publishers and contributors who gather and distribute human-rights information. CPJ reports that 64 Tianwang has been blocked in China since 2003.
Sources
Related FreeChina.live research
China Information Control & Circumvention History
Evidence note: Charges and official actions are described as documented by the cited sources; this profile does not independently infer motive.