Chinese freelance journalist Zhang Zhan is serving a four-year prison sentence in Shanghai on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” She was convicted and sentenced on September 19, 2025, according to media reports and a CPJ source who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Zhang was arrested on August 28, 2024, just three months after completing a four-year prison term on the same charge.
The United Nations’ Human Rights Office issued a statement expressing concerns about the conduct of Zhang’s trial, noting that independent observers were not allowed to attend her hearing. The U.N. described the second sentencing of Zhang “deeply disturbing” and demanded her immediate and unconditional release.
Anitta Hipper, the European Commission’s lead spokesperson for foreign affairs and security, said the verdict was deplorable. She called on China to immediately release Zhang and provide reliable information about her health condition.
Zhang was first arrested on May 14, 2020, for reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. Beginning in early February 2020, Zhang covered the pandemic on Twitter, later renamed X, and YouTube from Wuhan, the center of the COVID-19 outbreak.
She was sentenced to four years in prison in December 2020 and released in May 2024.
According to U.S.-Congress funded Voice of America, Zhang remained under close surveillance following her release. She launched a new YouTube channel, where she posted interviews with petitioners and activists, and documented social and livelihood issues. On August 28, 2024, she was arrested by Shanghai police while traveling to the northwestern province of Gansu to report on the case of a young activist who had also been arrested.
During her first imprisonment from 2020 to 2024, reports stated that Zhang went on intermittent hunger strikes to protest her detention, and at one point was put on a feeding drip; she was also hospitalized in 2021, according to news reports. In January 2025, detention center authorities subjected her to forced nasogastric feeding after she began another hunger strike to protest her second arrest.
In May 2025, CPJ and 58 other organizations issued a joint statement demanding Zhang’s immediate release and condemning the Chinese government for her continued arbitrary detention.
The Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.