Zhang Ping (张萍) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Qingyang City, Gansu Province, who was reported in May 2023 to have been sentenced to six years in prison. Before that sentence she had already been subjected to a labor-camp term and an earlier prison term for her religious practice.
Background
According to the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a Falun Gong-affiliated monitoring organization, Ms. Zhang is a woman who was 61 years old in 2023 and formerly worked at the postal bureau of Qingcheng County in Qingyang City.
Arrest and sentencing
The organization reports that on November 22, 2021, Ms. Zhang was seized by police in Waxie Township, Ning County, Qingyang, while distributing Falun Gong materials, and was detained at the Ning County Detention Center. Police raided her rented residence on November 28. A fellow practitioner, Yao Lishu, a 43-year-old former middle-school teacher in Qingcheng County, was arrested for supplying her with the materials. Both were tried by video link at the Zhenyuan County Court, where their lawyers entered not-guilty pleas. In May 2023, both were sentenced to six years in prison; Yao Lishu appealed. These accounts come from a Falun Gong-affiliated source and have not been independently verified.
Prior detentions
The same source reports that Ms. Zhang had previously been sent to one and a half years of reeducation through labor in 2002 and to a three-year prison sentence in 2014, serving that term at the Gansu Provincial Women’s Prison from 2014 to 2017. She and Yao Lishu had both been detained multiple times before, according to the organization.
Current status
维权网 (Rights Defense Network), a civil-society group that tracks reported political and conscience prisoners in mainland China, lists 张萍 in its August 31, 2026 monthly report in the group of prisoners reported as sentenced to six years, among individuals the report classifies as reported political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in custody. No official Chinese government statement or court record for this case has been located.
A separate person
A different Falun Gong practitioner also named 张萍, from Lanzhou City, was sentenced to five years in 2023 by the Chengguan District Court in Lanzhou. The incompatible cities, courts, and sentences establish that this is a different person; the two cases must not be merged.
Media profile & archive: Zhang Ping (张萍), Qingyang — Media Profile & Archive
Sources: 追查迫害法轮功国际组织 (WOIPFG), July 28, 2023; 维权网, Issue 131 monthly report, August 31, 2026.