Zhang Wenbin （张文斌） — Shandong Student Detained After 2020 Protest Videos, Held Without Trial
Zhang Wenbin （张文斌） is a native of Shandong province who was a university student due to graduate in 2020. He has been held in custody since April 2020 after posting online videos calling for China’s top leader and the Communist Party to step down.
On March 30, 2020, as the COVID-19 outbreak spread, Zhang posted videos under his real name on WeChat calling for “习近平下课” (“Xi Jinping step down”) and “共产党下课” (“the Communist Party step down”). The videos drew about 88,000 views within eighteen hours; his WeChat account was permanently banned the same day.
Zhang described himself as a former “little pink” — a young nationalist supporter of the Communist Party — whose views changed after he began circumventing internet censorship and encountering overseas reporting. He said he had been influenced by the Hong Kong protests and Taiwan’s elections, and he called on people to unite and “push down the wall” in front of them. He was studying at a university in Shandong and worked as a programmer.
On April 1, 2020, Shandong police took Zhang away on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” （寻衅滋事）. After five days of administrative detention, he was subjected to enforced disappearance, and his whereabouts became unknown. The Chinese Human Rights Defenders’ Prisoners of Conscience database records his case (entered May 5, 2020) with no release date and an unknown place of detention; the Rights Defense Network’s political-prisoner case archive （中国政治犯关注， case CPPC00883) reports him as incommunicado and not released.
The Rights Defense Network （维权网） lists Zhang Wenbin in its August 31, 2026 monthly report on mainland political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, placing him among those “detained without trial” （羁押未判） in Shandong.
Status: Reported in detention without trial in Shandong as of August 31, 2026. No public record of a trial, sentence, release, or current whereabouts beyond the dated reporting cited here; none of these may be inferred.
Zhang Wenbin should not be confused with Zhang Wenpeng (张文鹏）, a different person detained in a separate case.
Sources: Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Prisoners of Conscience database record for 张文斌 (entered 2020-05-05; retrieved 2026-10-10); Rights Defense Network （维权网）, 中国政治犯关注 case CPPC00883, 张文斌 (2020-05-13); Radio Free Asia Mandarin Service, April 7, 2020 (via CHRD record citation); Rights Defense Network, Issue 131 monthly report, August 31, 2026 (Shandong detained-without-trial group).
Related records: Zhang Wenbin （张文斌） — Media Profile & Archive.