In a recent development, the leader of the 1989 student movement in Guizhou and poet, Jifeng, has been forcibly taken back to Guizhou from Hebei and is currently in a state of “disappearance”. Speculation suggests that Jifeng’s arrest this time may be related to a poem he wrote not long ago.
According to a report on August 25 by a human rights website, Jifeng, a leader of the 1989 student movement, independent thinker in Guizhou, and poet living in Yanjiao, Hebei, has been forcibly returned to Guizhou by the Guizhou Zunyi Political and Legal Affairs Commission. Jifeng is currently unreachable and is in a state of forced disappearance.
Friends of Jifeng revealed that he was taken away on the morning of August 20, his belongings were packed and taken away, and the landlord has cleared out the house. Many people, including special police, were present at the time, causing quite a commotion, and many neighbors witnessed the incident. It is reported that the directive mainly came from Beijing and may be related to his online comments.
The report also mentioned that Jifeng was put under investigation for provocation and troublemaking back in March.
According to “Citizen Observation,” speculation suggests that the trigger for Jifeng’s recent arrest may be a poem he wrote not long ago, involving anti-corruption remarks related to the coffin of the late former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji who passed away in August. The full text of the poem reads as follows:
“The Last Coffin
By Jifeng
Today, I saw an era
A coffin stored for over twenty years
Finally closed with the last piece
That coffin filled with corrupt officials
Still in high demand but no one dares to snatch
Reserved for the last one
Inside lies
A tale or tragedy of an era
Stirring online discussions
No one dares to deny
He was a capable servant
Good or bad
Yet to be laid to rest
Those who were laid off early
Becoming grandparents now
Still scrolling their phones
Concerned about their children and grandchildren
Only he and his
Children who succeeded and filled their pots
Still believe their father was an honest official
Unswervingly
August 18, 2026, in Yanjiao
Jifeng, born in the 1960s, in Luoshanguan Town, Tongzi County, Guizhou, is a poet, senior planner, and private consultant. He was a Chinese major student at Guizhou University in the Class of 1986. During the 1989 student movement, he served as the chairman of the “Gao Zi United Front” at Guizhou University and was subsequently imprisoned for over two years. He has been closely monitored and suppressed by the Chinese Communist authorities ever since, prohibited from leaving the country. He has temporarily lived in Shenzhen, Beijing, and other places, enduring expulsion by national security guards.
On the eve of the June 4th incident in 2023, Jifeng was forced to leave Beijing. At that time, he told a reporter from Epoch Times that the national security guards in Beijing drove him out and prevented him from staying in Beijing. The same treatment was given by the national security guards in Guiyang, not allowing him to stay there, thus forcing him back to his hometown in Tongzi County, Guizhou. He had no choice but to wander to Hunan.
Jifeng once described himself on Twitter (now renamed X) as “a contemporary prisoner of the state, a leader of the 1989 and 1986 student movements, a thinker in the night, a poet, and a lonely night walker in contemplation. For over thirty years, I have lived elsewhere, in other parts of this country, writing to earn a living with my left hand and nurturing my emotions with my writings in my right. Having temporarily resided in Shenzhen for 10 years without being a local, and in Beijing for over 20 years without being recognized as a resident, I have been under long-term surveillance and control, unable to speak out or leave the country, exiled from most of China, moving homes over 30 times, still without a stable source of food or place to reside.”