In late April 2024, a lengthy special report titled “The Future is Bright, the Twists are Ours” spread rapidly on the internet, consisting of over 12,000 words.
The author, Li Yuchen, detailed three malignant cases that occurred in Hebei Province, China, with a focus not on the victims but on how Hebei’s judiciary framed and convicted suspects, persisting in sentencing individuals to death and immediate execution through dark processes. The vicious methods employed shocked many.
Described by Li Yuchen as bearing the mark of “Hebei Made”, these three cases are like thorns stuck in the throat of Hebei’s judiciary, unable to be swallowed or spat out, becoming labels of forced confessions and miscarriages of justice, even being used in law school classrooms in certain Chinese universities as typical examples of suspicious or wrongful cases.
Currently, both Li Wen and another related article “The Reverse Flow of Rule of Law in Hebei” have been banned by NetEase.
In the late night of July 30, 1994, a taxi driver in Chengde was stabbed to death with a sharp weapon in the car, and his belongings disappeared. On August 16, another taxi driver was killed in almost the same manner in a similar location.
Despite the deployment of a large number of police forces, Chengde authorities made no progress in the case for months.
According to a report by the local party media “Chengde Daily”, by November, the police had arrested Chen Guoqing, a villager from Zhuangtouying Village in Dashimiao Township, Chengde City.
The party media claimed that investigative personnel used excellent interrogation tactics, leading Chen Guoqing to subsequently confess to over a dozen criminal suspects, ultimately pinpointing Chen Guoqing and three young villagers from the same village, He Guoqiang, Yang Shiliang, and Zhu Yanqiang.
The police then announced the resolution of the two taxi driver robbery and murder cases. The key evidence was a blood-stained knife found in Chen Guoqing’s home.
The police stated that the blood on the knife matched the blood type of the first victim.
Another forensic report stated that a cigarette butt was found in the second victim’s car, and the saliva on it compared to Yang Shiliang’s saliva had a 99.06% match rate.
However, the Hebei High People’s Court found in the case file that the date of the bloodstain identification report on the knife found in Chen Guoqing’s home actually preceded his arrest.
In other words, key evidence convicting Chen Guoqing was prepared in advance before he was apprehended.
Similarly, the date of the saliva sample analysis report on Yang Shiliang was August 23, 1994, while Yang Shiliang was only arrested in October of the same year.
Could saliva samples be obtained for analysis two months before the arrest?
Based on these two “identification reports” as key evidence, the Chengde Intermediate People’s Court sentenced the three to death four times, with immediate execution. The rationale was that the robberies and murders were brutal and had an extremely negative societal impact that could only be quelled by death.
However, the Hebei High People’s Court rejected the three sentences on the grounds of “unclear facts, insufficient evidence” each time and requested Chengde to conduct supplementary investigations and retrials.
Yet, Chengde did not budge to the High Court’s demands, with almost no changes made to the initial evidence in the four reports submitted and no new evidence provided.
It was not until the third recall for retrial from the Hebei High Court, where a hint was given to Chengde in the “Return Outline”: if there were no new developments in the investigation, there was room for mitigated sentencing.
After receiving the fourth judgment report from Chengde, on March 26, 2004, the Hebei High Court did not recall the case and directly upheld:
Chen Guoqing, He Guoqiang, and Yang Shiliang were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. Zhu Yanqiang was sentenced to life imprisonment.
In 2001, the Criminal Committee of the China Bar Association and prominent defense attorney Tian Wenchang, along with other top experts, specifically analyzed and spoke out on this case: Chengde’s public prosecutor and judicial entities exhibited clear and serious procedural legal violations, severely violating the principle of judicial fairness with unclear facts and insufficient evidence, and the accused should be acquitted.
However, experts could not prevent the final guilty verdict manufactured in Hebei.
Li Yuchen lamentably pointed out that although the four young men temporarily preserved their lives, they were forever stamped with the label of “murderer”, facing a lengthy term in prison.
When Zhu Yanqiang was released on August 25, 2021, he had already served 25 years in prison. He Guoqiang and Yang Shiliang were also released subsequently.
Only Chen Guoqing, who never admitted guilt, had been in prison for a total of 31 years as of 2025.
This case broke the record for the “longest time for appeals from convicted inmates” in recent years. The Chinese media had also reported on this case under the headline “Four Death Penalties, Four Instances of Staying Execution”.
This wrongful case that devastated four families across generations has yet to be overturned.
On the morning of July 7, 2022, 34-year-old Bao Qinrui was taken from his bed by police in Shijiazhuang and transported to a hotel in Xinle City, where it was announced that he would be subjected to “Assigned Residency Surveillance” (ARS).
This is a distinctive form of detention invented by the Chinese Communist Party. Within its Criminal Procedure Law, ARS is a measure placed between bail pending trial and detention. It is applied to crimes involving endangering national security, terrorism, major bribery, and similar categories.
Unlike detention centers governed by regulations like the “Detention Center Regulations”, which have relatively standardized management and surveillance, with the theoretical possibility of meeting with lawyers, ARS becomes a de facto form of unregulated detention, making it difficult for lawyers to intervene and for family members to visit in closed interrogation rooms.
Due to the endorsement of the CCP’s laws, ARS has become a legally accepted form of detention.
Bao Qinrui, along with his father, brother, uncle, and ten others, were put under ARS. On July 20, 2022, Bao Qinrui died on the operating table of Xinle City Hospital, marking the 13th day of his ARS.
His father, Bao Jiye, was detained in the next room. That night, he heard his son’s room filled with bitter cries. Shortly after, he overheard the guards outside whispering: “It’s over, he’s dead.”
The official autopsy report concluded that he died from acute respiratory failure caused by a pulmonary embolism in his artery.
Forensic experts clearly stated that Bao Qinrui had been subjected to prolonged restrictive positioning, repeated mechanical trauma, and electric shocks before death – essentially tortured to death.
Following his death, five members of the Xinle City Public Security Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Detachment – Zhang Xuguang, Xingzichao, Wang Ziqian, Wu Weitao, and Ma Linxuan – were criminally detained and prosecuted.
The charges included that they shackled Bao Qinrui to a specially made iron chair for long periods, immobilizing him, repeatedly beat him, and used a hand-cranked telephone set to electrically shock him.
The hand-cranked phone has become a common interrogation tool used by Chinese police in the 21st century. By connecting two electrodes to the body and vigorously cranking the handle, the electric current passes through, causing the individual to tremble uncontrollably in pain.
After Bao Qinrui’s death, the “5.25 Gang Involved in Shady Business” special case abruptly stopped. Bao’s ten family members and villagers were released. The explanation provided by the police was that further investigation revealed they should not be held criminally responsible – essentially admitting they had made errors in apprehending them.
It was alleged that the case originated from a personal vendetta between Bao Zengqiang and Bao Jiye’s family and a fabrication of accusations against the latter’s family for criminal activities. Bao Zengqiang was later arrested under the charge of false accusation and framing.
To prevent their capture, the leading police officer Zhang Xuguang, who led the team when the crime occurred and the following day, deployed counter-surveillance measures: instructing his subordinates to destroy the evidence, establish an attack-defense alliance, organize rehearsals to handle interrogation by prosecutors, and threatened them by saying, “If you disclose anything, we all go down together.”
The Municipal Public Security Bureau chief Hu Wei instructed the investigating officers to leave the case’s WeChat group, advising those responsible for interrogating Bao Qinrui, Xing Zichao, and Wang Ziqian to withstand the pressure from the Prosecutor’s office.
Zhang Xuguang arranged for assistant Ma Shuai to handle the crucial evidence: the hotel’s surveillance hard drive, the iron chair used for interrogation, the hand-cranked telephone set, and even a metal cage.
Fortunately, Ma Shuai, who held moral integrity, did not fully comply and left behind critical evidence, leading to the prosecution of the perpetrators.
As per Li Yuchen’s special report, the case of Yuan Weidong in Langfang, Hebei, encapsulates all the typical elements of wrongful cases, reaching an appalling extent.
Spanning over five years, within the period of governance of Shengfang Ancient Town under Bazhou City, two brutal cases of family exterminations occurred.
On November 29, 1995, Yang Changlin, who earned a living by peddling a tricycle, and his two young sons were killed in their home. Yang’s wife, Zhang Jinping, had returned to her mother’s house at the time and thus escaped.
On December 22, 2000, Liu Decheng, the head of the Shengfang Tax Inspection Team, his wife Wang Junling, and their son Liu Gen, were all exterminated in their home.
Two cases with no leads. In 2001, a thief named Wei Chunjian was apprehended and implicated his brother-in-law Chen Ruiwu, along with a local resident Yuan Weidong and Yang Hongyi, in planning a robbery at the tax official Liu Decheng’s home while drinking.
The police suspected Yuan Weidong considerably due to his appearance and temperament. He was nicknamed “Old Black”, known for his straightforward and somewhat confrontational nature, having business dealings or disputes with the victims Yang Changlin and Liu Decheng.
Although Yuan Weidong was proven to be in his hometown of Hulan County, Heilongjiang, hundreds of kilometers away, handling agricultural tax payments and providing a train ticket, along with certificates from the local police station when the 2000 Liu Decheng family extermination case occurred, the Langfang Police surprisingly claimed: they could not believe it.
This led to Yuan Weidong being held in custody and prison for a total of 23 years and 8,507 days from September 2001 to the end of 2024.
The judicial process experienced by Yuan Weidong and his co-defendant Tang Fengwu can be described as a spectacle in the history of Chinese justice: they were sentenced to death at least six times (including immediate and postponed execution).
This lengthy legal process that spanned nearly a decade involved the Langfang Intermediate People’s Court handing down a death sentence. The Hebei High Court found problems with the evidence and remitted the case for retrial.
Despite the rehearing in the Langfang Intermediate People’s Court, the original judgment was mostly upheld or slightly modified. The case would then proceed to the Hebei High Court, where it would be returned or upheld with modifications.
Finally, on November 12, 2009, the Hebei High Court issued an incomprehensible verdict in the second retrial:
In the case of the 2000 Liu Decheng family extermination, the entire case was declared innocent. All five defendants, including Yuan Weidong, were acquitted. The reason being insufficient evidence and the crime not being established.
However, concerning the 1995 Yang Changlin family murder case, the Hebei High Court upheld the guilty verdict for Yuan Weidong and Tang Fengwu. Yet, the previous immediate execution death sentences were commuted to death with a two-year reprieve.
Thus, the conviction of Yuan Weidong and Tang Fengwu for the Yang family extermination case now rested on two pillars:
1. The guilty confessions made by the two during the investigation.
2. The identification by Yang Changlin’s wife, Zhang Jinping.
Yuan and Tang insisted that their confessions were entirely due to police coercion, involving methods such as the tiger bench, electric shocks, beatings, and were the results of torture.
Their confessions were corroborated by the case file, injury photos, and testimonies from fellow inmates.
In a rare move, the Langfang Intermediate People’s Court excluded all of Yuan Weidong’s confession obtained during the investigation in 2020. This meant that the court acknowledged these confessions were unlawfully obtained.
Similarly, the credibility of Zhang Jinping’s identification was shattered by one fact: while she initially identified Zhao Minghui as the perpetrator, Zhao was completely ruled out as a suspect and even received compensation from the state.
The credibility of Zhang Jinping’s identification was highly questionable.
At this point, the two main supports for the guilt of Yuan Weidong and Tang Fengwu collapsed.
Other physical evidence, such as the murder weapon, which the police claimed was lost; the fingerprints, footprints, and other traces collected from the crime scene could not be matched to Yuan and Tang.
During the court trial in 2024, the defense lawyers argued that the evidence system accusing Yuan Weidong and Tang Fengwu of intentional murder had completely collapsed. According to the “Criminal Procedure Law” standard of “evidence being definitive and sufficient” for conviction and the basic principle of “innocent until proven guilty”, it seemed that this case had only one answer – declaring them innocent.
But the outcome once again overturned everyone’s expectations.
On October 29, 2024, the Hebei High Court made its final ruling on the retrial of Yuan Weidong and Tang Fengwu for intentional murder: the appeal was rejected, and the original verdict was upheld.
This perplexing outcome, which remained without explanation, seemed to confirm rumors indicating that many of the officials who handled the case at the time had since risen to higher leadership positions –
The former head of the Bazhou Municipal Public Security Bureau later became a leader in the Langfang Political and Legal Committee.
Some judges who presided over the case later became leaders within the Langfang Intermediate People’s Court and even the Hebei High Court.
If the case were to be overturned, acknowledging significant errors in the investigation, prosecution, and trial at the time, who would take responsibility? Would the officials who had since ascended agree to it?
On the last day of 2024, news of Yuan Weidong’s death emerged, occurring just two months after the Hebei High Court’s final decision to uphold the original verdict.
He passed away from late-stage stomach cancer, resulting in multiple organ failure. He was 55 years old.
The complex process of obtaining medical parole for death row inmates required approvals from prisons and judicial authorities at each level. He was not granted the chance for medical parole and was returned to the detention center only ten days after undergoing major stomach surgery.
Until his death, he was unable to clear his unjustified charges.
In China, allowing officials to correct their mistakes is too challenging; expecting a fair trial from public prosecutors and the judiciary is even more difficult; and persuading the CCP to relinquish its oppressive methods is an even greater challenge!