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Fu Zhenghua (1955– )

Executive Deputy Minister of Public Security (2015–2016), director of the Central 610 Office (2015–2016), Minister of Justice (2018–2020). In the early hours of July 9, 2015, he commanded the nationwide "709" roundup of rights lawyers — more than 300 lawyers and family members detained, seized, or interrogated. As 610 chief he continued the suppression of Falun Gong; Falun Gong human-rights groups placed him on perpetrator lists and reported him to 29 governments. Investigated in October 2021, he was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on September 22, 2022. An operator of the persecution machine, ultimately crushed by it.

Born

March 1955, Luanxian, Hebei; career criminal investigator

Key positions

Director of the Beijing Public Security Bureau (2010–2013); Deputy Minister of Public Security (2013–2018), Executive Deputy Minister (2015–2016); Director of the Central 610 Office (January 2015–April 2016); Minister of Justice (March 19, 2018–April 29, 2020); Vice chairman of the CPPCC Social and Legal Affairs Committee (2020–2021)

Key episodes

The "709" mass arrest of rights lawyers (July 9, 2015) — nationwide roundup of 300+ lawyers and relatives, with Fu as overall commander; continued Falun Gong suppression as 610 chief; investigated October 2, 2021; sentenced September 22, 2022 to death with reprieve for bribery (117 million yuan) and perverting justice — life imprisonment without parole or commutation

1. Career: from detective to "Beijing's top cop"

Fu Zhenghua was born in March 1955 in Luanxian, Hebei — a career detective through and through. He worked his way up Beijing's criminal-investigation system, famous for cracking major cases, and in February 2010 became director of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, a post he held for over three years. The press called him "Beijing's top cop."

Early in the job he laid down a much-praised disciplinary code, the "three absolutes": anyone tipping off a suspect would be fired, no exceptions; anyone leaking police secrets, handling cases illegally, or trading favors would be punished up to dismissal; anyone prying into cases, pulling strings, accepting banquets, or taking money would be punished. A 2013 People's Daily profile quoted colleagues saying he "doesn't smoke or drink, loves reading and studying problems, and is passionate about detective work." He cultivated a man-of-the-people image, repeatedly photographed patrolling the streets with a pistol — the New Year's Day 2014 photos went viral.

In August 2013, Fu was promoted to Deputy Minister of Public Security. In 2015 he took on two key posts at once: Executive Deputy Minister and director of the Central 610 Office. From that year on, his name would be bound to two large-scale persecutions.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Fu Zhenghua"; People's Daily profile, August 2013; Beijing Public Security Bureau public records.

2. In office: the ministry, the 610 Office, the justice ministry (2013–2021)

Fu's power curve rose steeply: Deputy Minister of Public Security in August 2013; director of the Central 610 Office (ministerial rank) in January 2015; Executive Deputy Minister — the ministry's number two — in May 2016; Minister of Justice on March 19, 2018; out as justice minister on April 29, 2020, shifted to the CPPCC Social and Legal Affairs Committee — an unmistakable sidelining.

The 610 Office needs explaining. Created on June 10, 1999, specifically to crush Falun Gong, it operated under the cover name "State Council Office for Preventing and Handling Cult Issues" while functioning in practice as a second power center above the police, prosecutors, and courts. Its directors included Wang Maolin, Liu Jing, Li Dongsheng (purged in 2013, sentenced to 15 years in 2016), and Liu Jinguo; Fu was the fifth (January 2015–April 2016), followed by Huang Ming. The office was abolished in the March 2018 institutional reforms and folded into the Political and Legal Affairs Commission and the police ministry.

The justice-ministry post dripped with irony: the man who commanded the roundup of lawyers became the national supervisor of the legal profession. In July 2018, on the third anniversary of "709," the New York City Bar Association wrote directly to Justice Minister Fu Zhenghua demanding an end to the repression of lawyers — the recipient and the perpetrator were the same person.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Fu Zhenghua," "610 Office"; New York City Bar Association, Letter Marking the Third Anniversary of the "709 Crackdown" (July 2018); Xinhua personnel announcements, March 2018 and April 2020.

3. The 709 crackdown: causes

To understand "709," start with the "rights lawyers." From the 2000s, a cohort of Chinese lawyers began taking sensitive cases — Falun Gong practitioners, eviction victims, petitioners, dissidents. The confrontational ones, the "die-hard" (sike) faction, fought hard in court and publicized cases online: Pu Zhiqiang, Wang Yu, Zhou Shifeng, Li Heping and others. Their existence challenged the unwritten rule that police, prosecutors, and courts could rule however they pleased.

Beijing's characterization of these lawyers was political from the start: taking sensitive cases and talking to foreign media was branded "hyping hot-button cases to smear China." By the first half of 2015, the police ministry had internally listed rights lawyers as priority control targets. The proximate trigger, on multiple analyses, was the authorities' belief that the lawyers were becoming "organized" — the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm was treated as the organizational core that had to be smashed.

In the early hours of July 9, 2015, under Fu Zhenghua's unified command, police moved simultaneously in 25 provinces and municipalities. This was no ordinary law-enforcement operation but a carefully planned political campaign: arrest lists drawn up in advance, doors broken down in multiple cities at once, targets including not only lawyers and firm staff but their families and children.

Sources: Wikipedia, "709 crackdown"; Human Rights Watch China reports, 2015–2016; New York Times and BBC, July 2015.

4. The crackdown: the early hours of July 9, 2015

At dawn on July 9, 2015, Fengrui lawyer Wang Yu was taken from her Beijing home — the first "709" detainee. Her husband Bao Longjun and their 16-year-old son Bao Zhuoxuan were seized soon after. Over the following days the arrests cascaded nationwide like dominoes: Zhou Shifeng (Fengrui's director), Li Heping, Wang Quanzhang, Xie Yanyi, Xie Yang, Li Chunfu — one name after another vanished from the legal world.

The methods were brutal. Many lawyers were dragged from their homes in pre-dawn raids; families often heard nothing for days or weeks. "Residential surveillance at a designated location" — detention without family notification or access to counsel, effectively a black jail — was used on a massive scale. Released lawyers later described routine torture and abuse during interrogation: days without sleep, beatings, threats against families. Li Chunfu emerged with severe psychological damage; Xie Yang's detailed torture account, recorded in lawyer-visitation notes, was made public and shocked the international community.

Worse still were the televised "confessions." On July 11, 2015, state television aired "interviews" in which detained lawyers including Zhou Shifeng "confessed and repented," admitting to "hyping cases." In August 2016, Zhou "confessed" again at his Tianjin "open trial" and received seven years. These confessions, extracted after prolonged incommunicado detention, are regarded by the international legal community as worthless.

Fu's role was that of overall commander. As Executive Deputy Minister and 610 chief, he directly planned and ran the operation. His subordinate Sun Lijun — then head of the ministry's domestic-security bureau and its 610 office — organized the arrests and directed interrogations inside the ministry. Sun was himself purged in 2021 and sentenced to death with reprieve on September 23, 2022 — one day after Fu.

Sources: Wikipedia, "709 crackdown," "Fu Zhenghua," "Sun Lijun"; Xie Yang's visitation notes (published January 2017); Human Rights Watch statements; CCTV, July 11, 2015.

5. Results: the destruction of a profession

The scale and consequences of "709":

The deepest impact: China's rights-lawyer community was destroyed as a collective. The arrested were imprisoned, the released fell silent, and those never arrested no longer dared take sensitive cases. From 2016, justice-ministry rules made it punishable for lawyers to "use the internet or media to attack the Party and government" or "organize串联"; firms were ordered to set up Party branches. Never again would "die-hard" lawyers openly challenge state power — which was precisely the point of "709."

Wang Quanzhang was the last "709" lawyer freed: sentenced to four and a half years in January 2019, released in April 2020 into tight surveillance. Zhou Shifeng completed his sentence in November 2022. The CCBE counts at least 30 lawyers disbarred since 2017, with more stripped of practice rights through "non-renewal."

Sources: Wikipedia, "709 crackdown"; CCBE, "709 Crackdown 2.0" (2023); NYC Bar Association letter, July 2018; Human Rights Watch; BBC and Guardian follow-up reporting.

6. As 610 chief: continuing the Falun Gong suppression (2015–2016)

From January 2015 to April 2016, Fu headed the Central 610 Office. Created in 1999 to eradicate Falun Gong, the apparatus was 16 years old when Fu took over — and the persecution had never stopped: arrests, "re-education through labor" (until 2013), prison sentences, brainwashing sessions. The 610 system's machinery ran on schedule throughout Fu's tenure.

Falun Gong-affiliated human-rights groups (such as the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong) placed Fu on perpetrator lists, saying they had submitted reports on him to 29 governments seeking sanctions such as entry bans and asset freezes. A note on sourcing: the "29 governments" claim comes from Falun Gong-affiliated organizations; whether and how governments acted on it has no publicly confirmed record. This archive marks it as a Falun Gong-side claim, not independently verified.

Worth noting are his predecessor and his subordinate: former 610 chief Li Dongsheng was purged in 2013 and sentenced to 15 years in 2016; his deputy Sun Lijun was purged in 2021 and given a suspended death sentence in 2022. An agency built for persecution, its successive chiefs falling one after another on corruption charges — the finest epitaph the "persecution machine" could ask for.

Sources: Wikipedia, "610 Office"; World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong lists (Falun Gong-side claim, not independently verified); Xinhua, January 2016, on Li Dongsheng's sentencing.

7. Downfall and suspended death sentence (2021–2022)

On October 2, 2021, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that Fu Zhenghua was under investigation for serious disciplinary and legal violations. His title at the time — vice chairman of the CPPCC Social and Legal Affairs Committee — was a sinecure on the "second line." His eclipse had been written on the wall since his May 2020 removal as justice minister.

On March 31, 2022, Fu was expelled from the Party and from public office ("double expulsion"). The notice's language was blistering: he had "never been truly loyal to the Party and the people," "broke the law while enforcing it," "perverted justice for personal ends," and caused "gravely harmful political consequences." On July 28, 2022, the Changchun Intermediate People's Court in Jilin held a public first-instance trial; on September 22 it sentenced him:

In January 2023, state television aired the anti-corruption special Forever Blowing the Charge, with Fu "repenting" on camera: his crimes, he said, had "gravely damaged the Party's image, the public-security and judicial undertakings, and the political ecology of the political-legal system." Gray-haired and haggard on screen — nothing left of the swagger of the man who commanded the lawyer roundups seven years earlier.

Sources: CCDI announcements, October 2, 2021 and March 31, 2022; Xinhua and Reuters, September 22, 2022; CCTV, Forever Blowing the Charge (January 2023).

8. Responsibility: the persecutor devoured by the system

Fu Zhenghua's story is a perfect specimen for understanding the CCP system. The "crimes" he used against others — enforcing the law while breaking it, perverting justice, abusing power — are nearly identical to the charges that finally convicted him. The methods he deployed against lawyers and Falun Gong practitioners (residential surveillance at designated locations, prolonged detention, televised confessions) were later deployed against him (disciplinary detention, televised repentance). This is no coincidence but the machine's inherent logic: once the persecution machine starts, no one is safe — including its operators.

His responsibility runs three layers deep. First, direct command: every arrest list, every out-of-province detention, every televised confession in "709" went through his planning. He was not an executor but the chief architect. Second, institutional: as 610 chief he sustained the systematic persecution of Falun Gong for over a year; as justice minister (2018–2020) he had the chance to redress the repression of lawyers and chose continuity instead. The New York City Bar's 2018 letter sat on his desk; he never answered. Third, exemplary: he showed every police officer and official in China that persecution pays — the harder you hit lawyers, the faster you rise. Until he became the anti-corruption hunt's prey himself.

The darkest comedy played out in September 2022: Fu sentenced to death with reprieve on September 22; his deputy Sun Lijun sentenced the same way on September 23. Master and protégé, into effectively the same life imprisonment one day apart. They once sent lawyers to prison together; now they sample a different kind of "justice" themselves.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Fu Zhenghua," "Sun Lijun"; CCDI notices; New York City Bar Association letter, 2018.

9. Contested narratives

The official narrative: Beijing frames Fu as a corruption case: 117 million yuan in bribes, shielding his brother, "never truly loyal to the Party." The official account discusses his graft, never "709" or the 610 Office — in the official telling, "709" was "lawful打击 of crime," and Fu's only "mistake" was being corrupt himself. The omission is deliberate: admitting "709" was persecution would void the entire operation's legitimacy.

The victims' and human-rights narrative: To the rights-lawyer community and international human-rights groups, Fu is first a human-rights persecutor and only second a corrupt official. They argue his trial dodged the real charges — convicted of "bribery" while "709" and the Falun Gong suppression went unmentioned: anti-corruption as a weapon of power struggle, with the actual victims receiving no reckoning.

A colder observation: Some commentators note that Fu's downfall itself reveals the system's essence: in CCP officialdom, the sole standard of "loyalty" is picking the right side, not refraining from evil. Fu fell not because he persecuted lawyers — he was promoted while persecuting lawyers. He fell because he picked the wrong side in the post-2020 purge of the police system. Anti-corruption as an instrument of power struggle finds its perfect confirmation in him.

Sources: CCDI "double expulsion" notice, March 31, 2022; Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International statements; Wall Street Journal and Reuters commentary.

10. Beijing police chief: the Anyuanding "black jails" and the airport bombing

The Anyuanding affair (2010): Fu became director of the Beijing Public Security Bureau in February 2010. That September, Caijing magazine (September 13) and the Southern Metropolis Daily (September 24) revealed that a Beijing security firm, Anyuanding, was being paid by local governments' Beijing liaison offices to intercept petitioners in the capital and hold them in rented hotels and houses — IDs and phones confiscated, freedom of movement denied — until officials from their home provinces collected them. The facilities were known as "black jails." According to Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), the company held agreements with 19 provincial governments. Beijing police then criminally detained the company's chairman and general manager on charges of illegal detention and illegal business operations. But the accountability stopped there: no official of any government that had hired the firm was ever punished, and CHRD recorded that Caijing's reporters were threatened by Beijing police after publication. In December 2011 the Beijing police announced a six-month crackdown on the security industry, proclaiming "zero tolerance" for petitioner interception and black jails. The industry was tidied up; the system that paid for it was untouched.

The Ji Zhongxing bombing (2013): On July 20, 2013, Ji Zhongxing, a petitioner from Heze, Shandong, detonated a homemade explosive device in Terminal 3 of Beijing Capital International Airport. Ji had been beaten and paralyzed by security personnel while working in Dongguan, Guangdong, years earlier, and had petitioned for nearly a decade without redress. He was the most seriously injured in the blast; one police officer was slightly hurt. Fu was still Beijing's police chief at the time (his tenure ran to March 2015). In the aftermath, security levels at the capital's airport and across Beijing's public spaces were raised across the board, and Beijing police stepped up screening and interception of petitioners entering the city. In October 2013 Ji was sentenced to six years in prison for the bombing. The handling of the case followed Fu's consistent stability-first logic: the decade of unanswered petitions behind the blast drew no official response at all; what got strengthened was screening, interception, and punishment.

Sources: Caijing (September 13, 2010) and Southern Metropolis Daily (September 24, 2010) investigations of Anyuanding; CHRD human rights briefings, September–October 2010, and its reporting on black jails; Al Jazeera and China Daily coverage of the Anyuanding detentions (September 2010); Xinhua and BBC coverage of the July 20, 2013 airport bombing and Ji Zhongxing's sentencing.

11. The lawyers' purge under Justice Minister Fu, and details of his fall

A note on the 610 tenure: Fu took over the Central 610 Office in January 2015 (ministerial rank), succeeding Liu Jinguo. Public records of the office's activities in this period are scarce — it almost never appeared publicly at the central level, while local "prevention offices" operated as before — consistent with the institution's habitual secrecy. What can be verified publicly is essentially the appointment itself, and the March 2018 institutional reform that abolished the office and folded its functions into the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission and the Ministry of Public Security.

The disbarment wave continued on his watch: The wave of revoked and cancelled law licenses began in January 2018, two months before Fu became Minister of Justice, and expanded throughout his two years in the post (March 19, 2018 – April 29, 2020). By the count of groups such as the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, at least twenty rights lawyers were disbarred, had their licenses cancelled, or were left unable to practice by stalled annual inspections from January 2018 onward. Verifiable cases from his tenure include: June 2018, when Hunan's justice department held hearings on revoking the licenses of Wen Donghai and Yang Jinzhu, both of whom were subsequently disbarred; January 2019, when Guangdong's justice department revoked Liu Zhengqing's license over "endangering state security" through statements made defending clients in court — a case recorded in the U.S. State Department's 2019 human rights report; and 2019, when Liu Xiaoyuan of the Fengrui firm, unable to practice for years, had his license cancelled. The Ministry of Justice is the supervisory authority over the country's justice departments and the legal profession; under Fu, there is no record of the ministry reversing or publicly addressing a single one of these decisions.

Details of the fall, on the official record: The CCDI's March 31, 2022 expulsion notice stated in terms that Fu had "joined the political clique of Sun Lijun, formed factions and cliques, and engaged in self-serving collusion" — the political characterization of his downfall, also cited in Reuters' sentencing coverage. The court's bribery finding: between 2005 and 2021, using the successive posts he held, he accepted money and goods worth a total of more than 117 million yuan. The Changchun court imposed the suspended death sentence on September 22, 2022; under the judgment itself, once the two-year reprieve expires the sentence converts to life imprisonment without commutation or parole — an outcome fixed in the verdict, leaving no room for later maneuvering. As of this page's last verification date, no further information about his imprisonment has appeared in public channels.

Sources: Wikipedia, "610 Office" (list of directors); Voice of America, June 2018, on the Wen Donghai and Yang Jinzhu hearings; U.S. State Department, 2019 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China (Liu Zhengqing case); NPR, February 2021, investigation of disbarred Chinese rights lawyers (Liu Xiaoyuan case); CCDI expulsion notice, March 31, 2022; Reuters, September 22, 2022.

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