Wife Seeks Help for Blogger Husband Secretly Sentenced to 7 Years in Chinese Jail

Well-known blogger “Program-Think” is said to have been sentenced to seven years in prison by Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People’s Court on February 10, 2023. (Twitter screenshot)

A Chinese blogger famous for promoting free speech and offering tips to work around the Chinese firewall had been missing for nearly two years. Recently, however, it was revealed that he had been arrested and incarcerated by China’s communist regime before being sentenced on Feb. 10 to seven years in prison under charges of “inciting subversion of state power.”

Ruan Xiaohuan is believed to be the owner of the blog site “Program-Think,” which was last updated on May 9, 2021.

Since 2009, Program-Think has posted information on how Chinese internet users can evade the communist regime’s internet firewall to access information, as well as reports on topics forbidden on the Chinese internet—such as the Chinese regime’s brainwashing tactics, or the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

His wife—who Chinese internet users refer to as “Ms. Bei”—said she did not even realize that her husband was the owner of the blog site until a year after he had been arrested. The authorities demanded that she keep the recent verdict confidential after it was announced, according to a Radio Free Asia report.

Activist Zhou Fengsuo, executive director of Human Rights in China, believes Ruan’s wife may be in danger. “Since he was arrested, his family has not made a public statement until now,” Zhou told The Epoch Times on March 22.

Many Chinese netizens regard Program-Think’s continued existence as something akin to a miracle. The owner had long managed to remain anonymous, and the blog site has remained online since 2009—despite the censorship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Ruan’s Wife Asks For Help

On March 21, Ruan’s wife sent a text message to neighbors to inform them that she had been harassed by the police, and asked them to inform her family and her lawyers if she too were to be abducted.

She said she sent the text message out of concern for her own safety.

In the message, she also indicated that after two years of detention, Shanghai’s No.2 Intermediate People’s Court had passed the verdict on her husband on Feb. 10. She is now in the process of launching an appeal against her husband’s sentence, but the police have harassed her about her intention to hire her own lawyers.

She revealed that the Shanghai People’s Court appointed the maximum number of two legal aid lawyers for Ruan. His wife, however, said she views this as a kind of “blocking maneuver,” as she had hoped to hire lawyers of her own.

On March 22, the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times contacted Ruan’s wife, but she declined to give an interview at that time.

The Epoch Times also contacted the Yangpu District Police Detention Center in Shanghai. A staff member said that the external inquiries for Ruan Xiaohuan are only available to lawyers.

A Chinese lawyer who has followed the case closely (but who did not wish to be named) told The Epoch Times that there is currently no legal regulation that the detention center can only accept inquiries from legal counsel. He suspects that staff had been specifically instructed not to divulge any information about Ruan.

Anti-CCP Programmer

Program-Think was launched on January 15, 2009. The posts are arranged in categories, such as evading the so-called “Great Firewall of China,” IT security, psychology, brainwashing and counter-brainwashing, politics, history, programming, career and personal development, etc.

In February 2016, posts providing information on the corrupt practices of the communist regime’s so-called “princelings” and the networks of Communist Party elites were posted on the site.

To date, the website has hosted at least 1,700 posts, including detailed records of historical events such as the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition movement, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and so on.

Specifically, Program-Think concentrates on teaching viewers how to circumvent the Chinese Communist Party’s online censorship, free themselves from its brainwashing propaganda, and join its anti-dictatorship campaign via secure and anonymous IT technology.

Activist Zhou said Program-Think has had widespread influence in China in recent years. Referring to Ruan’s charge of inciting subversion of state power, Zhou said “it’s a trumped-up charge”—an arbitrary charge routinely used by the communist regime to target and imprison political activists, human rights campaigners, and dissidents.

The crime of “inciting subversion of state power” (pdf) has been described as “a legal tool for prosecuting free speech” by the NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Even though the owner last updated the website in 2021, it remains active and continues to accept readers’ comments.

Hong Ning contributed to this report.