856 Days of Political Framing and Judicial Double Standards: The Case of Jing Shuren and the "Stability Maintenance" Business of Gansu's Political and Legal System

856 Days of Political Framing and Judicial Double Standards: The Case of Jing Shuren and the "Stability Maintenance" Business of Gansu's Political and Legal System

Gansu public interest figure Jing Shuren was detained for 856 days for helping migrant workers claim their wages and now faces a heavy sentence of seven and a half years. The Lanzhou procuratorate forcibly politicized normal civilian mutual assistance, framing it as "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". In contrast, Jiangsu's Wu Yun was sentenced to just over a year for armed robbery and theft of over 100 million yuan, exposing extreme judicial double standards. This is not a case of governing by law, but rather a case of the local political and legal system using "stability maintenance" intimidation and political persecution to cover up regulatory dereliction of duty and eliminate horizontal connections.

A long-term volunteer who helped migrant workers claim their wages and was enthusiastic about public welfare in his hometown, after being detained by local political and legal organs for over two years, not only did not receive late justice, but also faced a heavy sentence of seven years and six months imprisonment and a fine of 50,000 yuan.

The case of Jing Shuren, a Gansu public interest figure, is not only a typical human rights disaster, but also a judicial mirror that tears apart the Chinese Communist Party's "comprehensive rule of law". On July 20, 2026, this case, which has attracted widespread attention at home and abroad, will be tried in the Chengguan District Court of Lanzhou. The defendant who will sit in the dock is an innocent citizen who has been deprived of his freedom for 856 days; the ones who should be in the dock are the Lanzhou political and legal system, which uses the law to carry out political persecution.

Opening the case files and the information publicly disclosed by the defense lawyers, this political framing, which was carried out by the public security organs, maintained by the procuratorate, and cooperated with by the court, is absurd. It not only has loopholes in its legal reasoning but also exposes the underlying darkness of the local power's attempts to cover up its dereliction of duty and maintain "false stability".

I. "Picking Quarrels and Provoking Trouble" without Extortion or Violence: Where is the Legal Basis for the Heavy Sentence?

According to the Lanzhou procuratorate's sentencing proposal, Jing Shuren faces a heavy sentence of seven years and six months. In the Chinese Communist Party's judicial practice, the usual statutory sentence for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" is generally less than five years. If the procuratorate wants to propose a heavy sentence of more than five years, it must cross a very high legal threshold: proving that the defendant "mobilized others, repeatedly committed picking quarrels and provoking trouble, and seriously disrupted social order".

However, upon examining the Lanzhou procuratorate's core allegations, there are seven defendants in this case, six of whom, including Zhou Lubao, are charged with both "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" and "extortion". Only Jing Shuren is charged with "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". The procuratorate's indictment does not accuse Jing Shuren of "illegally obtaining property" through the wage claim event, and there is no evidence in the entire case that Jing Shuren committed or organized any "violent behavior".

Without the subjective intention and objective fact of illegal possession of property, economic crime is excluded; without the use of violence or violent threats, the substantive harm to social management order is excluded. So, where is the legal basis for this heavy sentence of seven years and six months?

The Lanzhou authorities used a very low-level "framing" technique. They forcibly combined different defendants and different types of behavior into the same case. Because Jing Shuren has a kinship relationship with the online rights activist Zhou Lubao and was in some rights protection WeChat groups, and had helped victims transfer rights protection materials, the authorities politicized these normal interpersonal relationships and civilian mutual assistance, distorting them as "gang relationships" and "division of labor".

In modern rule of law civilization, kinship cannot be equated with joint crime, and chat records cannot be equated with criminal conspiracy. The procuratorate's so-called "repeatedly" refers to the number of times Jing Shuren forwarded wage claim information; their so-called "mobilization" refers to the weak groups' gathering in WeChat groups. The Lanzhou procuratorate's attempt to emphasize the "seriousness" of the other defendants to bind and support the heavy sentence proposal for Jing Shuren completely deviates from the fundamental judicial principle of "guilt by oneself".

II. From "Warm-hearted Self-media" to "Prisoner": The Anxiety and Fear of Local Governments' Stability Maintenance

What kind of person is Jing Shuren? Ironically, the Chinese Communist Party's official media has provided the answer.

He comes from a rural area in Longxi County, Dingxi City, Gansu Province, and is an ordinary migrant worker. In 2018, he carried out the "New Year's New Clothes" and "Enlightenment Bookstore" donations in his hometown, sending warm winter clothes to over 200 poor elderly people and donating over 400 books to the village women's federation; in 2019, he single-handedly rescued his fellow villagers who were deceived by a pyramid scheme; in 2020, he repeatedly reported the public safety hazards of the Lianhuo Expressway to the provincial transportation department and prompted a solution. The Chinese Communist Party's Gansu Provincial Committee's official media, China Gansu Net, once publicly promoted Jing Shuren as a positive example, calling him a "warm-hearted self-media person".

However, a few years later, the same Jing Shuren became a thorn in the side of the Lanzhou police. The 180-degree turn in the official attitude stems from the fact that Jing Shuren's focus on and advocacy for wage claims, false advertising of agricultural products, and various accidents' civil compensation touched the local bureaucrats' vested interests

• he has long been concerned about and helped migrant workers claim their wages.

When Jing Shuren donated clothes and books, the local government was happy to include him in their "poverty alleviation achievements" and public welfare propaganda, as this embellished the peace. But when Jing Shuren began to spread information about wage arrears and accident compensation, the political consequences were completely different. The exposure of specific cases forced the public to constantly ask: Why did the companies involved dare to blatantly violate the law for a long time? Why did the labor supervision departments and local government agencies turn a deaf ear and shirk their responsibilities?

What's more, the local stability maintenance officials are terrified that as Jing Shuren spreads more cases, the originally isolated and unrelated victims begin to establish horizontal connections and civilian mutual assistance networks through him. The information is no longer a one-time vent, but has become a public opinion pressure demanding that the government fulfill its duties. In the logic of the authoritarian system, once civilians form embryonic horizontal connections across regions, regardless of how legitimate their demands are, they will be seen as a potential threat to the regime's security.

Therefore, the true purpose of the Lanzhou police's criminal detention of Jing Shuren in March 2024 was not to maintain social order, but to "physically eliminate" the civilian information relay station, cut off the contact channel between victims, and achieve the stability maintenance goal of making the weak lose their voice and making local power immune to public inquiry.

III. The Extreme of Judicial Double Standards: The Contrast between the Wu Yun Case and the Jing Shuren Case

To cover up the essence of political persecution, the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine often argues that "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" is a "pocket crime" in judicial practice, and heavy sentences are "striking according to law". However, by comparing the Jing Shuren case with the recent "Wu Yun case" in Jiangsu Taixing, we can see the extreme double standards and corruption in the judicial system.

According to public reports and case records, Wu Yun in Jiangsu Taixing received a huge sum of 5 million yuan, organized dozens of released prisoners, and held knives to rob a ship worth over 100 million yuan. This case has clear and massive property crime targets, has an organized and sinister gang, and has violent behavior such as holding knives and controlling crew members. According to Chinese law, this is a very serious gang robbery crime.

However, under the Taixing local political and legal system, this case was "downgraded" to a light "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" crime, and the main culprit Wu Yun was sentenced to only one year and four months in prison. Even after the case was supervised by the central government, Wu Yun was still able to obtain bail and go on a luxury cruise to Sanya the next day.

The two cases side by side reveal an extremely absurd and cruel judicial landscape:

The rich and powerful, with relationships and backgrounds (Wu Yun): organizing armed robbery of assets worth over 100 million yuan, the law shows them extreme "leniency", reducing heavy sentences, and using "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" as a protective umbrella and green channel to escape heavy punishment.

The powerless, without background or influence (Jing Shuren): without taking a single penny of illegal benefits, without using a single finger of violence, simply because he forwarded a few wage claim information posts on the internet, the same "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" crime is infinitely expanded and applied, and the procuratorate directly proposes a heavy sentence of seven years and six months.

The legal provisions have not changed, but the judicial scale is vastly different. This reveals the most fundamental political truth: under the "party controlling the law" system, the severity of the law is not determined by the severity of the crime, but by who the case involves and whether you challenge the interests and dignity of the official clique.

IV. Using Detention as a Substitute for Judgment and Political Framing: The Procedural Deception under the "Party Controlling the Law"

In a case where evidence is highly controversial and even the basic facts of the crime are not established, Jing Shuren has been deprived of his freedom for over two years. The case was prosecuted to the court a year ago, but the defense lawyer only received a notice of a pre-trial meeting at the end of March

1. During this period, the lawyer never received a legal notice from the court to extend the trial period, and the family's right to appoint a lawyer was repeatedly blocked by the case-handling authorities, who even tried to forcibly appoint a "court-appointed lawyer" to replace the real defense lawyer.

This intentional delay and black-box operation in the procedure exposes the most stubborn implicit rule in China's judicial system

• "using detention as a substitute for judgment".

Before the first-instance judgment is made, the 856 days of detention have already become a de facto punishment imposed on Jing Shuren. Within the political and legal system, the longer the detention, the higher the cost for the public security and procuratorate organs to admit their mistakes. If the court judges Jing Shuren not guilty according to law, it means that the previous arrest, prosecution, and long-term detention were all serious "misjudged cases", which would inevitably lead to internal tracing and high national compensation. Therefore, to maintain the "face" and interests of the political and legal organs, the court can only "persist in error", and Jing Shuren has been detained for as long as he has, and he must be sentenced accordingly.

This kind of "persisting in error" comes from the "party controlling the law" authoritarian system. From the public security stability maintenance system controlled by Wang Xiaohong, to the Supreme People's Court led by Zhang Jun, to the disciplinary system controlled by Li Xi, the core KPI of the entire machine's operation is always "political security" and "overall stability", rather than "judicial justice".

The promotion and assessment of local political and legal cadres look at whether they can suppress the rights defense voices within their jurisdiction, whether they can avoid "causing trouble" for their superiors. In this distorted political ecology, the legal responsibility for misjudged cases is far behind political loyalty. The public security is responsible for arresting and framing, the procuratorate is responsible for mechanically maintaining the indictment, and the court is responsible for providing a judgment with a national emblem, which puts a legal cloak on this political persecution.

V. Ending Civilian Mutual Assistance: The Threat to the Entire Society

The absurdity of the Jing Shuren case has reached its peak in the recent political show of the Gansu Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security. On July 8, 2026, the department publicly announced to the media a new working mechanism for "governing wage arrears of migrant workers", claiming to promote the treatment of wage arrears from post-event handling to pre-event prevention.

On the one hand, the provincial human resources department is loudly proclaiming its concern for migrant workers on the podium; on the other hand, Jing Shuren, who truly helped migrant workers spread wage claim information, is being held in the Lanzhou No. 1 Detention Center, awaiting a heavy sentence.

This extremely ironic conflict reveals the true "priority" of the system in the face of social crises. Pursuing and punishing those powerful enterprises that owe wages, which would shake the local interest chain and even expose the government's serious dereliction of duty, is not the priority; arresting a grassroots information spreader with no background, which can quickly clear the embarrassing voices on the internet at a low political cost, is the priority.

Local governments cannot solve the problem of wage arrears, but they can solve the problem of those who raise the issue of wage arrears.

The Lanzhou political and legal system's insistence on heavily sentencing Jing Shuren has already exceeded the scope of individual behavior and criminal prosecution; it bears the "deterrence and intimidation function" of stability maintenance. They are trying to send a clear and terrifying signal to the entire Chinese society: when encountering injustice at the grassroots level, any civilian mutual assistance that exceeds official channels, any attempt at horizontal connection and collective expression, will be met with devastating blows. Today, they can use seven years and six months to punish Jing Shuren for helping people claim their wages; tomorrow, they can use the same "pocket crime" to punish every ordinary citizen who forwards, likes, and appeals for the weak on the internet.

The trial on July 20 in the Chengguan District Court is not only a trial of Jing Shuren, but also a strangulation of the remaining civilian conscience and mutual assistance space in China. If the public stops paying attention, this violent power will complete its black-box operation. Only by continuously recording and speaking out can we nail this 856-day injustice to the pillar of historical shame and make those sitting on the judges' bench and behind the scenes feel the true tremble of justice and public opinion.