Translation:People v Ruan Xiaohuan (2023)
Prosecution Authority: No 2 Branch of the People’s Procuratorate of Shanghai (the ‘Prosecution’).
The Defendant, Ruan Xiaohuan, male, born in Quanzhou, Fujian, on 10 June 1977, Han Chinese, university dropout, unemployed, resides at No 558, Minjing Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai. The Defendant was criminally detained on 11 May 2021 for the present case, and formally arrested on 17 June of the same year. He is now detained in Shanghai Yangpu Detention Centre.
Defence counsel: Lu Peiyu, a lawyer with Shanghai Ruifa Law Firm.
The Prosecution filed the present case with this Court by the Indictment [2021] Hu Jian Erfen Erbu Xingsu No Z18 against the Defendant for committing the crime of inciting subversion of state power. Given that this case involves state secrets, this Court then formed a collegial panel in compliance with the law and held a closed hearing of the case. Assigned by the Prosecution, Prosecutor Xu Jing appeared in court on behalf of the People to present the case. The Defendant and his defence counsel appeared before the court to attend the proceedings. The trial of the case has now been concluded.
The Prosecution has charged the Defendant as follows:
Between June 2009 and May 2021, out of his long-standing discontent towards the political system and social governance patterns of our country, the Defendant, while residing at his aforesaid residence, used his own computer to compose over one hundred (100) seditious essays of rumours and libel which involved the attacking and smearing of the current political system of our country, inciting subversion of the state power, and attempting to overthrow the socialist system. The Defendant then posted these essays on a web platform overseas, driving a significant number of internet users to browse, leave comments, repost, and emulate him, and causing other vile consequences of such.
On 10 May 2021, the Defendant was apprehended at his residence by public security officers, with the computer he signed in to and was using seized on-site. Upon apprehension, the Defendant confessed without reservation to the aforesaid criminal facts.
To substantiate the aforesaid factual charges, the Prosecution has proclaimed and presented pertinent evidence in court, including the confession of the Defendant, in which the Prosecution holds that, by ways of fabrication, libel, smearing, and such, the Defendant has incited the subversion of the state power and the overthrow of the socialist system; the crime he committed is grave, his acts have thus violated the provisions set out in Paragraph 2 of Article 105 of The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, and therefore, he shall be held criminally responsible for the crime of inciting subversion of state power. The Defendant has truthfully confessed to the crime upon apprehension, for which a lighter punishment may be given, and the Prosecution, thereby, pleads for a judgement according to law.
The Defendant holds no objection to the basic facts and the name of the offence charged in the Indictment, only arguing that the purpose of his writing those politically-related essays was that he wanted to make the country a better place, and the number of the essays he posted of an inciting and subversive nature is less than one hundred (100).
The defence counsel holds no objection to the facts and the name of the offence charged in the Indictment. Meanwhile, the defence counsel raises that the ideological mindset of the Defendant had already changed prior to the detection of the case to be less radical than it initially was, and the number of essays of an inciting and subversive nature requires further verification. And given that the Defendant has truthfully confessed to the criminal facts upon apprehension, pleaded guilty and expressed remorse, the defence counsel, therefore, pleads that a lighter punishment be given to the Defendant.
The Court, upon trial of this case, ascertains that, beginning from June 2009, out of the discontent towards the political system and social governance patterns of our country, the Defendant, by using the computer, composed over one hundred (100) seditious essays of rumours and libel, attacked and smeared the current political system of our country, incited subversion of the state power, and attempted to overthrow the socialist system. He then posted these essays on a web platform overseas, driving a significant number of internet users to browse, leave comments, and repost, and causing other vile consequences of such.
On 10 May 2021, the Defendant was apprehended at his residence by public security officers, with the computer he signed in to and was using seized on-site. Upon apprehension, the Defendant truthfully confessed to the main criminal facts stated above.
The evidence that substantiates the aforesaid facts is listed as follows:
1. Documents of ‘Decision on Case Filing’, ‘Case Registration Form’, ‘Course of Apprehension’, and ‘Course of Capturing’, provided by the public security organ, confirm the course of detection of this case and the process of apprehension of the Defendant.
2. Documents of ‘Search Warrant’, ‘Search Record’, ‘Inventory of Distrained Articles’, ‘Record of the Distrainment of Articles’, ‘Record of On-Site Inspection’ with related photos, and ‘Electronic Data On-Site Extraction Record’, provided by the public security organ, confirm that an inspection and a search were lawfully conducted at the residence of the Defendant. An Acer laptop was discovered on the desk in the second bedroom of the site, which was connected to a monitor and an external keyboard. Judged from the power indicator, the laptop was powered on; and by moving the mouse, the screen lit up. The process of digital data extraction was then begun on-site. As the processing required a longer time to complete, the laptop was, therefore, moved to the public security organ without turning off the power, to finish the extraction. Meanwhile, Apple mobile phone(s), Xiaomi mobile phone(s), Huawei laptop(s), Toshiba external hard drive(s), USB drive(s), and keyboard(s) were seized and distrained by the public security organ.
3. The ‘Record of Remote Inspection’, provided by the public security organ, confirms that, in a remote internet inspection conducted by public security officers, hundreds of blog posts were extracted from the blog site of the Defendant, of which over one hundred (100) were essays related to politics.
4. The ‘Forensic Identification’, provided by the public security organ, confirms that, upon identification, the biological substances collected with cotton swabs from the keyboard of the Acer laptop and the external keyboard connected to it cannot be ruled out as being left by the Defendant.
5. The ‘Forensic Evaluative Opinions’ and the accompanying photocopies of the politically-related essays, provided by Shanghai Honglian Digital Forensics Institute, confirm that upon identification, more than ten (10) virtual machines and hundreds of blog posts were detected in the Acer laptop of the Defendant; also, ‘.XML’ files were discovered in the computer.
6. The ‘Record of Investigative Experiment on Electronic Data’ and the accompanying CDs, provided by the public security organ, confirm that blog template files, wherein contents of all the published blog posts and the configuration information of the blog site are saved, are able to be generated using the ‘backup’ function that comes with the blog site and be downloaded as ‘.XML’ files after signing in as the blog holder. In comparison, average internet users who browse the blog site as visitors are unable to generate and download the aforesaid template files.
7. The testimony of witness Bei [redacted] confirms that in the residence where she, the witness, and the Defendant live together as husband and wife, the northern room was used as the study of the Defendant, and the study with all the items therein was used by the Defendant himself.
8. The Defendant, upon apprehension, has confessed without reservation to the fact that he had long used his personal blog site to post a large number of politically-related essays, inciting the subversion of the state power and the overthrow of the socialist system. The Defendant has also thoroughly examined the over one hundred (100) politically-related blog posts seized and signed to confirm that they were indeed composed by him.
All of the aforesaid evidence has been cross-examined in court and is thereby confirmed by this Court.
This Court holds that the Defendant has incited the subversion of the state power and the overthrow of the socialist system by ways of spreading rumours, libel, and such; his acts have thus constituted the crime of inciting subversion of state power. Moreover, the criminal activity of the Defendant spanned a protracted period of time, and the volume of the essays he published is large. The impact he caused is thereof pernicious, and the offence constituted is therefore grave. The charges filed by the Prosecution are established. Given that the Defendant has truthfully confessed to the criminal facts upon apprehension, a lighter punishment can be given according to law. The opinion of the defence counsel that a lighter punishment be given can be adopted. In accordance with Paragraph 2 of Article 105, Paragraph 2 of Article 113, Paragraph 3 of Article 67, Paragraph 1 of Article 56, Paragraph 1 of Article 55, and Article 64 of The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Court hereby rules that:
I. The Defendant committed the crime of inciting subversion of state power and is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of seven (7) years, with two (2) years of deprivation of political rights and a confiscation of property of twenty thousand (20,000) Chinese yuan;
(The term of imprisonment shall be counted from the date of execution of the judgement. Where the Defendant is detained on remand prior to the execution of the judgement, one day of such detention shall be credited as one day of the sentence, that is, the term of imprisonment begins on 10 May 2021 and ends on 9 May 2028.) and
II. The seized instruments of crime, including computers and such, are to be confiscated.
If the Defendant refuses to accept the present judgement as final and binding, a petition for appeal may be submitted through this Court or directly to the Shanghai High People’s Court within ten (10) days commencing on the day following the day of receipt of this judgement. In case of a written appeal, one (1) original copy and one (1) duplicated copy of the petition shall be submitted.
| This copy is verified to be identical to the original document. |
| Presiding Judge: | Dong Wei |
| Judge: | Sun Ye |
| Judge: | Wang Zheng |
 Decided on 10 February 2023
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| Court Clerk: | Xia Jing |
The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China (excerpts)
Article 105 …
Whoever incites the subversion of the political power of the state and overthrows the socialist system through spreading rumours, libel, or other ways is to be sentenced to not more than five (5) years of fixed-term imprisonment, limited incarceration, probation, or deprivation of political rights; the ringleaders and those whose crimes are grave are to be sentenced to not less than five (5) years of fixed-term imprisonment.
Article 113 …
Whoever commits the crimes in this chapter may also be punished with confiscation of property.
Article 67
…
A criminal suspect who truthfully confesses to his crime may be given a lighter punishment even though there is no voluntary surrender, as mentioned in the preceding two paragraphs, and may be given a mitigated punishment if any especially serious consequence is avoided for his truthful confession.
Article 56 Anyone who commits the crime of endangering national security shall be sentenced to deprivation of political rights as a supplementary punishment; anyone who commits the crime of seriously undermining public order by murder, rape, arson, explosion, poisoning or robbery may be sentenced to deprivation of political rights as a supplementary punishment.
…
Article 55 The term of deprivation of political rights is not less than one year and not more than five years, except as otherwise stipulated in Article 57 of this Law.
…
Article 64 All money and property illegally obtained by a criminal shall be recovered, or compensation shall be ordered; the lawful property of the victim shall be returned without delay; contraband and articles of the criminal’s own property that are used in the commission of the crime shall be confiscated. All the confiscated articles and fines shall be turned over to the state treasury, and no-one may misappropriate or privately dispose of them.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work is in the public domain because it is exempted by Article 5 of Chinese copyright law. This exempts all Chinese government and judicial documents, and their official translations, from copyright. It also exempts simple factual information, and calendars, numerical tables, and other forms of general use and formulas.
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| Translation: |
I, Boreas Sawada, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible: I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
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