Li Zhongyuan (李忠元) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Suiling County, Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province. On the morning of May 10, 2025, he was arrested together with four other local practitioners — Wang Yu, Xiu Zhongchen, Zhao Shuquan, and Jiang Ming — in a coordinated police operation. On October 16, 2025, the Hailun City People’s Court sentenced him to five years in prison and fined him 10,000 yuan. He is serving the sentence in Bei’an Prison, with the recorded term ending on May 9, 2030.
The May 2025 group arrest
On May 10, 2025, Li and the four others were seized in the early hours in an operation directed by the Heilongjiang provincial public-security apparatus, with the Suihua, Hailun, and Suiling police taking part, according to the case reports. The stated trigger was that Suiling practitioners had been distributing Falun Gong materials in the Hailun area, where plainclothes officers followed, filmed, and photographed them. The detainees were taken to the Hailun City detention center that day. Zhao Shuquan was later released on bail for medical reasons. The accounts state that police showed no credentials or legal documents and gave no notice to the families. Criminal detention, arrest approval, and prosecution followed.
The October 2025 sentencing
On October 16, 2025, the Hailun City People’s Court handed down the sentences: Li Zhongyuan, five years in prison and a 10,000-yuan fine; Wang Yu, four years and six months and a 10,000-yuan fine; Xiu Zhongchen and Zhao Shuquan, two years and six months each with four years’ probation and 10,000-yuan fines; Jiang Ming, two years with three years’ probation and a 10,000-yuan fine. The formal criminal charge was not disclosed in the available records.
Current status
Li Zhongyuan is currently imprisoned in Bei’an Prison in Heilongjiang, where he and Wang Yu were transferred for the initial phase of their sentences, according to the case reports. His recorded term ends on May 9, 2030. No official court verdict or state-media coverage of his case has been located; the case record rests on the CHRD Prisoners of Conscience database entry, the Falun Gong–affiliated case report, and the monitoring organization’s investigation notice.
Identity note: Li Zhongyuan (李忠元) is a different person from co-arrestee Wang Yu (王玉), who was sentenced in the same case to four years and six months and has her own published profile. He is also not the same person as any of the earlier unrelated web results for the name “Li Zhongyuan” found during research; those have not been merged into this record. The release date of 2030-05-09 is the term end as recorded in the CHRD database, presented as recorded rather than independently verified. The characterizations of the arrest and sentencing as unlawful reflect the case sources’ accounts and are presented as attributed claims, not independently verified findings.
Sources: CHRD Prisoners of Conscience database (record entered 2026-01-12); Minghui (2025-12-17); World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (2026-01-13).
Media and documentation archive: Media and documentation archive for Li Zhongyuan (李忠元)