Kang Shumei (康淑梅) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Gujiao, a county-level city under Taiyuan in Shanxi Province. She was about 60 years old in early 2023.
On October 31, 2022, police took Kang Shumei and her son Zhang Gu (张嘏), then about 33, from their shared home in Gujiao, according to accounts from The Epoch Times, Minghui, and the Falun Dafa Information Center. The family says their home was ransacked and a vehicle, a computer, and a printer were confiscated. The reporting links the arrests to the pair’s Falun Gong practice and to their distribution of materials exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong. The Falun Dafa Information Center reported that the two were later secretly sentenced to prison without the family being notified; their exact sentences have not been publicly confirmed.
Kang Shumei was last reported to be held at the Gujiao City No. 4 Detention Center, and family visits have been denied. Her son has been reported at different Taiyuan detention facilities at different times. No official charge document, judgment text, or court record for the case has been located.
Her younger sister, U.S. citizen Karen Kang (康淑芝), who lives in the Los Angeles area, has publicly campaigned for the family’s release since late 2022. In September 2023, U.S. Representative Linda Sánchez wrote to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to contact Shanxi authorities about the case. An older sister of the two, Kang Shuqin (康淑琴), served an 11-year prison term for practicing Falun Gong and died in 2020. Their nephew Hou Lijun (侯利军) was detained in April 2023 in a related case.
Rights Defense Network’s Issue 131 (August 31, 2026) lists Kang Shumei among reported current-custody political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. What is not known from public sources: the exact charges, the sentence she received, the court that sentenced her, and where she is currently held.
Media coverage and source documents for this case are collected in the Media Profile & Archive for Kang Shumei, where news reports and primary-source records are gathered as they are verified.