Sun Dawu (孙大午) is a rural entrepreneur from Hebei Province and the founder of the Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group, one of northern China’s largest private agricultural conglomerates. In July 2021, a court in Hebei sentenced him to eighteen years in prison on charges including “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
Born in June 1954 in Langwuzhuang, Xushui District, Baoding, Sun started his business in 1985 with 1,000 chickens and 50 pigs. He built the Dawu Group into a conglomerate employing about 9,000 people, with interests spanning poultry, animal feed, real estate, education, and health care. He established a self-contained company town — “Dawu City” — providing subsidized hospital, school, and other services to employees and their families. Over the years he became known as an outspoken advocate of farmers’ rights and rural land reform, hosted political activists and human rights lawyers at his company headquarters, and helped cover legal costs for human rights lawyers facing pressure.
In November 2020, Sun was detained along with more than twenty relatives and employees, following a land dispute between his company and a state-run farm in Hebei. According to NPR’s reporting, the detainees were held for more than five months in a form of secret house arrest before being formally charged. In April 2021, prosecutors announced the charges; on July 28, 2021, the Gaobeidian District People’s Court convicted him on eight charges — “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” illegal fundraising, illegal mining, gathering crowds to attack state agencies, illegally occupying farmland, forcing transactions, sabotaging production, and obstructing public duties — and imposed the eighteen-year sentence plus a fine of 3.11 million yuan (about US$478,697). Nineteen relatives and employees received sentences ranging from fifteen months to twelve years; Sun’s eldest son, Sun Meng, was sentenced to twelve years, and his brothers Sun Dehua and Sun Zhihua to twelve and nine years respectively.
Sun’s defense team maintained that the case was politically motivated, saying he was targeted for his outspoken views, and alleged that investigators had extracted confessions through mistreatment — a claim the court rejected. The 18-year sentence was widely reported internationally as one of the harshest punishments imposed on an outspoken private businessman in recent years. As of September 2024, Reuters reported that Sun was continuing to fight his conviction from behind bars.
Sources: NPR, “Chinese Billionaire Sun Dawu Is Sentenced To 18 Years For ‘Provoking Trouble’” (July 28, 2021); Reuters via The Business Standard (July 29, 2021); Chinese Human Rights Defenders statement (July 2021); Wikipedia, “Sun Dawu” (accessed 2026-09-26).
Media profile & archive: Sun Dawu (孙大午) — Media Profile & Archive.