第98案 | 李延贺（富察）Case 98 | Li Yanhe (Fucha)
2023年3月，八旗文化总编辑李延贺（富察）飞回上海：探亲，顺便办理注销大陆户籍的手续——那是他取得台湾身份的最后一道程序。他落地不久就消失了。近两年后，上海市第一中级人民法院在一场没有任何人知道的「公开审判」里，以煽动分裂国家罪判了他三年；判决作出整整一个月，台湾社会才从国台办的书面回应里知道他已经被判，又过了九天，才在记者的追问下听到刑期。他到底「煽动」了什么，官方至今没有说出一个字；陆委会替它说了：他出版的书，不符合中共的史观。2026年6月，中央社引述一名与家属有联系的消息人士说，他已在5月刑满出狱，却因为剥夺政治权利一年未满，被禁止离开中国大陆，回不了台北那个有妻子、孩子和一屋子书的家——这条消息，国台办不证实，陆委会也不证实。In March 2023 Li Yanhe — Fucha, editor-in-chief of Gusa Publishing — flew back to Shanghai: to see family, and to cancel his mainland household registration, the final step in his Taiwan status procedure. Soon after landing, he vanished. Nearly two years later the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, in an 'open trial' that nobody on earth knew was happening, sentenced him to three years for inciting secession. A full month after the verdict, Taiwan learned from a written Taiwan Affairs Office response that he had been sentenced at all; nine days after that, and only under a journalist's questioning, the length of the term was spoken aloud. What exactly he had 'incited' the authorities have never said, not one word; Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said it for them — the books he published did not conform to the Communist Party's view of history. In June 2026 CNA, citing a source in contact with his family, reported that he had been released in May on completing his term, but that with a year of deprivation of political rights still to run he is barred from leaving mainland China and cannot go home to the Taipei house with his wife, his child and a houseful of books — a report the TAO will not confirm, and the MAC will not confirm either.
The man: from Xiuyan to the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
Li Yanhe's pen name is Fu Cha — in pinyin Fucha, sometimes rendered Fu Cha. The name matters to this case's deeper background, so it is explained first. Fucha is a great Manchu clan name, the clan of Qing-dynasty empresses. Li, who identifies as ethnically Manchu, signed himself "Fucha Yanhe" in the Manchu style and worked under the name Fucha. He was born in 1971 in Xiuyan County, Liaoning — Xiuyan is a Manchu autonomous county famous for its jade. This page's check on the birth year runs as follows: CNA's reporting in both 2023 and 2025 gives "born in 1971 in Liaoning", its 2026 release report proceeds on the same biography without contradiction, and Human Rights Watch's April 2025 statement calls him 54 — a man born in 1971 would have been 53 or 54 in April 2025, so the two lines agree. This page accordingly writes 1971, flagging that the year rests on the common wording of Taiwanese media and biographical sources, with no mainland official source to corroborate it, but with multiple sources in agreement and none in conflict.
His education and career form the résumé of a publishing insider. On the published biographical record (the Wikipedia entry on Fucha and the reporting it cites), he took a doctorate in literature at East China Normal University and then entered Shanghai's state publishing system, rising to deputy director of the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, a venerable literary imprint within the Shanghai Century Publishing Group. To reach deputy director of a provincial-level literary publishing house is to have climbed high inside the People's Republic's own publishing establishment: the man later convicted of "inciting secession" spent the first half of his working life as a senior editor and manager within the Communist Party's publishing system. That layer of biography is indispensable to this archive, because the charge that finally consumed him was a speech charge — and its object was not an outsider to the system but one of its own former cadres of print.
The turn came through marriage. In 2005 he married a Taiwanese woman; they have a child. In 2009 he moved to Taiwan as a dependant. That same year Taiwan's indigenous Book Republic Publishing Group invited him to build a house inside the group — and Gusa Publishing was born (some sources put the formal founding across 2009–2010; this page follows CNA's "founded in 2009"). Book Republic is Taiwan's second-largest publishing group (CNA's description), crowded with imprints; Gusa occupied a singular place among them: a house run by a Manchu editor from the mainland, steeped in both shores' publishing ecologies, specialising in books about Chinese history and politics that could not be published on the mainland. The catalogue that house produced over the next fourteen years is, in substance, this case's real indictment.
In 2013 he received his Republic of China residence permit. But status remained a thorn in his life that could not be pulled out. Under Taiwan's Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, a mainland spouse seeking settlement and household registration in Taiwan — the identity card — must first cancel his or her mainland household registration (hukou). The biographical summaries state it bluntly: because he remained a citizen of the People's Republic he could never obtain a Republic of China identity card, and, in the entry's words, this "planted the distant cause of his later arrest when he went home intending to cancel his hukou". Human Rights Watch's April 2025 statement, linking to CNA reporting, says he "became a Taiwanese citizen in early 2023 after living there for over a decade". This page handles the tension between the formulations as follows: in Taiwan's legal order, cancellation of the mainland hukou is one of the final requirements of a mainland spouse's naturalisation sequence, and his March 2023 trip to Shanghai was made to complete exactly that final step. Whether his legal position in early 2023 is best described as "Taiwanese citizen with the cancellation outstanding" or as "mainland resident holding Taiwan residence" is a point on which the sources divide — CNA's March 2025 reporting still calls him a Chinese national with residency in Taiwan — and this page records the divergence side by side rather than forcing a ruling (see the Verification Note). What admits of no doubt is the errand: he flew to Shanghai to cancel a household registration he had long decided to give up, and what met him there was the state security apparatus.
His public identity in Taiwan was not confined to the publishing house. From 3 February 2020 he hosted a programme on Radio Taiwan International, "This Is How We See China — Fucha Time", speaking as publisher and commentator on Chinese politics and society. The programme could not continue after his arrest and ended on 31 December 2023 (as recorded in the Wikipedia entry on his case, flagged here as a relayed detail). A man who talked about China every week on Taiwan's public broadcaster, and who published the mainland's banned books in Taipei — both identities had existed for years, fourteen in one case and three in the other, when he boarded the flight to Shanghai in March 2023. Nor was it his first trip back: a long profile by Guang Media (IPK Media) records that across his fourteen years in Taiwan he had travelled back and forth constantly. The profile's judgement — relayed here with its attribution — is that he may have failed to notice the great change that had quietly overtaken the mainland he had left, and the danger that came with it. Fourteen years of uneventful crossings, then one crossing from which he did not return: that contrast is the first cell of this case's timeline, and this page pins it down first.
Gusa Publishing: a fourteen-year catalogue that reads like an indictment
To understand why Li Yanhe was convicted, one has to look at what Gusa published — because the authorities have never published any list of his alleged criminal acts, and the outside world's entire knowledge of the "facts" of this case comes from the catalogue itself.
Gusa's positioning was explicit from its founding. On the convergent account of many reports, it specialised in non-fiction on Chinese politics and history: translations of Western and Japanese scholarship on China, and works by scholars from both shores on CCP party history, ethnic questions and contemporary Chinese politics — a significant share of them titles that are banned on the mainland or could never be published there at all. Human Rights Watch's summary: Gusa "has published translated works on global affairs, politics, and history, including some critical of the Chinese government". PEN America's April 2023 statement is more specific: Li "had published books by Chinese dissidents and on subjects that otherwise would have been banned by Beijing", giving Chinese-language readers access to different ideas and perspectives, including translations of Western authors. From the titles independently attested in reporting, this page names the most representative. He Qinglian's Red Infiltration: The Reality of China's Global Media Expansion, a systematic study of the CCP's external propaganda and media expansion. The Chinese-language edition of Louisa Lim's The People's Republic of Amnesia, a work of oral history revisiting the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown — an absolute banned book on the mainland. A title on the oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang (AFP's May 2023 reporting notes that Gusa published "one title on alleged oppression of Uyghurs in the far-western region of Xinjiang"). And works by the Japanese Mongolologist Yang Haiying documenting the Cultural Revolution massacre of Mongols in Inner Mongolia. In 2026, Taiwanese legislator Chen Pei-yu, criticising the mainland's new Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, said publicly that Fucha "was sentenced to three years for inciting secession merely for publishing books about Mongols massacred during the Cultural Revolution, which did not conform to the CCP's view of history". That is a Taiwanese legislator's public accusation, not a prosecution evidence list, and this page records it with that attribution; but it dovetails exactly with the MAC's official formulation — the MAC said Fu Cha was detained for publishing works "not in line with the Chinese Communist Party's view of history" (as quoted by Human Rights Watch in September 2024). In other words, the closest thing to an official account of "what he actually did" comes from the government of the persecuted man's own side: he published books whose historiography was wrong. The prosecution's own version — the indictment — has never been seen by anyone outside the system.
The Manchu and Mongol historiography thread deserves one pinned paragraph of its own, because it may be the key to why the authorities chose this man. Fucha was Manchu, with a strong personal identification with Manchu history and a distinctly unofficial view of it; Gusa published a large body of work challenging the CCP's official ethnic historiography — work that does not write the Qing simply as a "Chinese dynasty", nor Inner Mongolian and Xinjiang history as "inalienable since ancient times". Analysis carried in commentary on the case (relayed in the Wikipedia entry) links the prosecution to Gusa books touching Manchu history that were seen as subverting the official narrative of the Chinese nation. This page grades that link as analysis and commentary: no official source has ever confirmed that any particular book or passage entered the charge. It is recorded because the structure of the charge itself points at a contest over national narrative — a Manchu publisher jailed for "splitting the country" over non-official versions of Manchu and Mongol history and contemporary ethnic repression is a correspondence between offence and catalogue that requires no invention to be seen.
Gusa's output rhythm is the hardest quantitative evidence of this case's chilling effect. Guang Media's 2024 long-form profile, working from Gusa's own public catalogue, produced a series of numbers: before Fucha's arrest, Gusa published more than forty books a year for three consecutive years, eight or nine in a busy month; in 2023, the year of his arrest, it published twenty-four; by September 2024 it had published eight books that year. The profile quotes former Gusa editor Wang Jiaxuan: forty-odd books a year, and Fucha personally handled every single one. The house's production structure, in other words, was built around one editor-in-chief — seize that one man and you press the pause key on the whole publishing house. Those figures come from one media outlet's count of a public catalogue and are used here with that attribution; what they prove is that whatever Beijing intended, the chilling effect has already occurred in the most measurable form imaginable — in a catalogue. The MAC's formal statement of 17 March 2025 uses precisely this term: the case was aimed at creating a "chilling effect".
Set Gusa on the larger map. Human Rights Watch observes that since the disappearance of the five Causeway Bay booksellers in 2015 and the imposition of Hong Kong's National Security Law in 2020, Hong Kong's once-free publishing industry has ended, and Taiwan has become "the last major hub for Chinese-language thought and writing outside the control of the Chinese Communist Party". The Fu Cha case struck at that hub, at its most symbolic imprint and its most symbolic editor. The solidarity speakers said as much at the May 2023 press conference: veteran publisher Li Chin-lian told the room that Taiwan was now the only place in the Chinese-speaking world enjoying full freedom of speech, creation and publication — and that this was the deepest meaning of standing up for Fucha. Beijing's secret judgment was its reply to that "only".
March 2023: to Shanghai to cancel a hukou — then silence
In March 2023 Li Yanhe flew from Taipei to Shanghai. The purpose of the trip is described with high consistency across sources: to visit family and friends, and to complete the cancellation of his mainland household registration — the final requirement of his Taiwan status procedure (Human Rights Watch, New Bloom, CNA and others). Shortly after landing he disappeared. CNA's June 2026 release report, looking back, supplies the exact date: he was detained by state security authorities in Shanghai on 21 March 2023. This page grades that date as follows: it appears for the first time in CNA's 2026 reporting; the reporting of 2023–2025 knew only "detained in Shanghai in March". The date is specific, and its source is Taiwan's official news agency retrospectively reporting a case it had tracked throughout; this page adopts it with its provenance flagged (see the Verification Note).
The first weeks of the disappearance were met with silence in Taipei. His family wanted a quiet rescue — a fact attested consistently by several sources. At the May 2023 press conference, solidarity organiser and former Gusa staffer Wang Jiaxuan recalled that when Fucha first vanished, all parties kept a low profile and stayed in close contact with the family; only when quiet manifestly failed did Taiwan society decide to speak. The silence was broken by Bei Ling, a dissident poet in exile in the United States: around 20 April 2023 Bei Ling disclosed that Fucha had been detained by Shanghai police (AFP's account: "a dissident poet said last month it was believed Li had been 'secretly detained' in Shanghai"; Taiwanese reporting fixes the disclosure at 20 April). The same day, MAC deputy minister Jan Jyh-horng, asked by CNA, said Li Yanhe was "safe", and gave no details — Taiwan's authorities speaking on the case for the first time. "Safe" was all the family and the public were given: it confirmed that he was alive, and it confirmed that he was not free.
On 26 April 2023 TAO spokesperson Zhu Fenglian, answering questions at a regular news conference, confirmed: "It is understood that Li Yanhe, suspected of engaging in activities endangering state security, is under investigation by the state security organs." That was Beijing's first confirmation, couched in the maximally general formula of "activities endangering state security" and "under investigation". The same day, PEN America issued its statement (dated 26 April, carried by IFEX on 1 May), in which Angeli Datt, its China research and advocacy lead, said: "Publishing is not a crime and Li Yanhe should be released immediately and unconditionally. His detention is an attack on free expression." PEN America set the case in the genealogy of persecuted publishers: Gui Minhai of Causeway Bay Books was still serving ten years, and Hong Kong publisher Yao Wentian had been released in March 2023 after nearly ten years in prison for publishing books about Chinese leaders.
Four days before the TAO's confirmation, on 22 April, forty writers, scholars and senior media workers from Taiwan and abroad had already signed a joint statement demanding Li's immediate release (CNA, 22 April). The statement said he had been forbidden to see his lawyer and family and that communication with him was severely restricted; it praised his devotion to reading and publishing, and wrote that though born in China he "has relished Taiwan's freedoms, and devoted himself to upholding those freedoms for Taiwan's readers". He Qinglian and Louisa Lim — two Gusa authors — were among the signatories. RSF's East Asia director Cédric Alviani called for his release in the same period. Every voice in that first phase asked the same question — what exactly is he supposed to have done? Beijing's answer, a month later, became more specific, and colder.
On 17 May 2023 TAO spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang told a regular news conference that the Shanghai State Security Bureau had lawfully taken criminal compulsory measures against Li Yanhe, "suspected of engaging in criminal activities of inciting secession", and that the case was being processed further (Initium Media's reporting, relayed by CNA). Compared with 26 April's "endangering state security, under investigation", this confirmation added three things: the executing organ (the Shanghai State Security Bureau), the nature of the measure (criminal compulsory measures), and the direction of the charge (inciting secession). From that day, the case's charge-frame was fixed: not espionage, not subversion, but "inciting secession". A publisher was to be fitted into the secession offence-system for the books he had published in Taiwan — and that fixing happened nearly two months after he vanished, while his family still did not know where he was held.
The solidarity campaign: from forty signatures to three hundred and fifty
On 12 May 2023 the Solidarity Working Group for Fucha held a press conference in Taipei and released a joint statement signed by more than 350 people from publishing, academia, culture and media (reported by the Taiwan Church News and AFP). Two demands were put to Beijing: first, that the authorities respect Fu Cha's rights under Chinese law, including contact with his family and lawyers, and publish the results of the investigation as soon as possible; second, that they handle the case prudently, to avoid a chilling effect on Taiwan's publishing industry and damage to normal cross-strait cultural exchange. The independent bookstore owner hosting the event said he himself no longer "dared go to China". AFP recorded the wider fear: people in Taiwan's media, publishing and cultural sectors were warning each other away from the mainland and Hong Kong, and one participant said it did not stop with publishing — "even people who wrote something critical of China on Facebook are afraid". This page preserves those two sentences as the primary record of Taiwan's cultural mood in May 2023: the chilling effect did not need to wait for a verdict; the detention itself accomplished most of it.
The campaign continued in lecture form. In June and July 2023 the working group ran a lecture series, "#2023 Fucha Returns to Taiwan", inviting political commentators and international-relations scholars to speak about Fucha and Gusa's publishing (Guang Media's profile). On 15 September 2023, with Fu Cha detained for nearly half a year, the cultural world held another press conference: novelist Li Ang, National Taiwan University political scientist Tao Yi-fen, literary critic Chu Yu-hsun and finance writer Hu Tsai-ping attended — and one man with a singular qualification: Lee Meng-chu (Morrison Lee). Lee is a Taiwanese businessman who was arrested in Shenzhen in 2019, convicted in an espionage-related case and sentenced; after serving his term he was kept in mainland China, unable to return to Taiwan, because of a deprivation-of-political-rights penalty, and only made it back via Japan in August 2023. He sat at Fucha's solidarity press conference as a man who had walked the road before. Li Ang said Fu Cha had been unlawfully detained for nearly half a year, unable to see family or lawyers, with no one yet able to say what red line he had crossed; "if you really want us to be able to exchange with peace of mind, the best thing you can do — is to release Fucha immediately and let him return to Taiwan to be with his family." The press conference also called on the four Taiwanese presidential candidates to attend to the risks the revised Counter-Espionage Law posed to Taiwanese travelling across the strait (Initium Media, 16 September 2023). Remember Lee Meng-chu's thread: when the report of Fucha's release arrived in 2026, it emerged that he was walking exactly Lee's road — term served, supplementary deprivation of political rights, and no way out of the country.
The solidarity record also carries a shadow that belongs in the archive: the tension between the family's wish for quiet and the public campaign. From the first day the family wanted a low profile — in March 2024, at the first anniversary of his disappearance, a publishing event planned around Gusa and Fucha was cancelled at short notice, reportedly out of regard for the family's continuing wish for quiet (Guang Media). Human Rights Watch's 2025 statement contains a heavier sentence still: Taiwanese media reported that the Chinese authorities had pressured Fu Cha's family not to speak publicly about his case. This page grades that sentence as Human Rights Watch relaying Taiwanese media reporting whose original text this site did not retrieve — presented as a relay, at that grade. But it fits the verifiable outline: a wife and child in Taiwan, a husband in the hands of the mainland state security apparatus, place of detention unknown, charge unknown. This family's silence has both a rational, self-protective face and, possibly, an imposed one. The archive's method is to set out both possibilities, labelled as to which layer is confirmed and which is relayed.
Nearly two years of isolation: residential surveillance at a designated location, and seven characters of reassurance
From his detention on 21 March 2023 to the verdict on 17 February 2025, Li Yanhe was held for nearly two years. What the outside world could confirm about his situation in those two years was cruelly little. This section pins down all of it, and marks the blanks as blanks.
The form of custody. In its September 2024 statement on the Yang Chih-yuan case, Human Rights Watch wrote that the authorities had been holding Fu Cha under "residential surveillance at a designated location" (RSDL). RSDL is the form of enforced-disappearance-style detention widely used in Chinese state security cases: the suspect is held at a secret location, wholly cut off from the outside world, in a measure that is legally not an arrest yet can run for six months and, in "endangering state security" cases, be extended and applied repeatedly. Human Rights Watch is the only institution in the sources this site consulted that names this form of custody for Li; this page records it with that attribution, graded as the finding of a single authoritative human-rights organisation, uncorroborated by any mainland official source — for the mainland authorities never published any detail of the measures against him at all. April brought "under investigation"; May brought "criminal compulsory measures"; after that, silence. Where in Shanghai he was held, when he was formally arrested, when his case was transferred for prosecution: all matters of no public record.
Visits and communication. The forty cultural figures' statement of April 2023 already recorded that he was barred from seeing lawyers and family and that communication was severely restricted. Human Rights Watch's April 2025 statement reached the fuller judgement: "There is no indication that Fu Cha had access to lawyers or family members as required by international law." The MAC knew more than the public — its 17 March 2025 statement said it had "full knowledge" of the case but would not share details out of respect for the family's wishes. That sentence cuts both ways: it shows Taiwan's authorities were not wholly in the dark, and it shows that the family's wishes had become the information boundary for every institution alike. Across nearly two years, of how Fu Cha's health held up, whether he wrote a single word inside, how far his case had progressed, the public record holds exactly one exception.
The exception came in September 2024. On the summary carried in the Wikipedia entry on his case, the TAO said in response to questions that month that Fu Cha's "physical condition was good" and that the departments concerned would handle the case according to law. This site was unable to retrieve the full transcript of that TAO briefing to check the wording, and accordingly grades the item as a second-hand summary, flagged as such, not as a verified official text. But even taken at face value, its information content is seven words long: for a man held incommunicado for a year and a half, the totality of official health information was "physical condition good", and the totality of procedural information was "handled according to law" — while whether that "handling" had already proceeded to a secret trial, no one knew. When the truth surfaced in March 2025, people learned that five months after that reassurance, a "public trial" that nobody attended and no media reported had already sentenced him.
The institutional background of the case's second half must be recorded in this section, because the case moved forward inside it. On 21 June 2024 the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued the "Opinions on lawfully punishing 'Taiwan independence' diehards for secession and inciting secession" — the "22 guidelines" — effective that June: they sweep advocacy of an independence referendum, propaganda and education activity, and organisation-building in Taiwan into the scope of secession and incitement prosecutions, carry penalties up to death, and permit trials in absentia (recorded in the CECC's January 2025 research report and Human Rights Watch's statements). Fu Cha was arrested before the Opinions issued, and in formal legal terms they do not apply retroactively; but eight months after they issued, the SPP placed his case on a press-conference pedestal. The timeline is set out here; the reader may judge the resonance between text and case for themselves. This page records dates and documents, and writes no causation on anyone's behalf.
The Yang Chih-yuan case: the other Taiwanese in the display case
To read the official positioning of the Fu Cha case, one must read the Yang Chih-yuan case alongside it — because it was Beijing itself that bound the two men together.
Yang Chih-yuan, born in 1990, is a Taiwanese political activist who helped found the Taiwanese National Party, which advocates formal Taiwan independence. On 3 August 2022 — the day after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan — he was detained by state security in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, then held incommunicado for a long period and formally arrested in April 2023 (Human Rights Watch; CECC research report). On 26 August 2024 the Wenzhou Intermediate People's Court convicted him under paragraph 1 of Article 103, "secession", and sentenced him to nine years' imprisonment and three years' deprivation of political rights; that verdict too was kept secret, and was disclosed only on 6 September, by TAO spokesperson Chen Binhua under questioning. The CECC's January 2025 staff research report, "First Separatism Conviction of a Taiwanese Citizen", establishes that this was the first time China had convicted a Taiwanese citizen of "separatism", and that the conduct prosecuted was his political activity in Taiwan between 2008 and 2020. Human Rights Watch's verdict on it: prosecuting a man for exercising his basic rights in Taiwan "has effectively criminalized being Taiwanese".
The parallel structure of the two cases is laid out in a single view: the same Article 103 — paragraph 1 for Yang ("secession", nine years), paragraph 2 for Li ("inciting secession", three years); the same secret custody; the same verdicts kept secret and then "squeezed" out by a TAO spokesperson at a news conference; and conduct prosecuted in both cases that occurred in Taiwan — in one case founding a party and doing politics, in the other editing and publishing books. The only difference is the official grading of the conduct: Yang was cast as a "ringleader", Li as an "inciter". On 26 February 2025 the Supreme People's Procuratorate formally placed the two side by side, showcasing the Li Yanhe case and the Yang Chih-yuan case together as "major cases" endangering national security — in the Dui Hua Foundation's relay of the official language, "Taiwan independence" cases that "seriously endangered state security". One man did politics, the other did publishing, and Beijing put them in the same display case. What is in the case is not two men but a signal: whatever a Taiwanese person does in Taiwan, if it is characterised as "independence", Article 103 can reach it. The receiving end read the signal exactly so: the CECC framed its Yang report around the pretensions of long-arm jurisdiction, and the MAC said any Taiwanese person can be labelled a "Taiwan independence separatist" at the CCP's wanton discretion.
26 February 2025: a "major case" on the Procuratorate's stage
On 26 February 2025 the Supreme People's Procuratorate held a press conference on the theme of national security and social stability (the Dui Hua Foundation records it as a press conference on "security and stability"). At it, the SPP listed the Li Yanhe case and the Yang Chih-yuan case together as "major cases", describing them as "Taiwan independence" cases that seriously endangered state security. That day fell nine days after the first-instance verdict in Li's case (17 February) — which is to say: when the SPP exhibited the case on its stage, the judgment had in fact already been rendered, while the entire outside world, family, legal profession and media included, was still being kept in ignorance. The press conference spoke of the case's "typicality" and said not one word about the fact that it had already been decided. The Dui Hua Foundation's Prisoner Updates 2025 #3, assembling the record, consequently has a bleak architecture: first the TAO's written confirmation of a 17 February conviction; then the disappearance "nearly two years" before; then the 26 February showcase. Three items of information, fitted together, reveal the complete chain — a man secretly detained, secretly sentenced, and then publicly exhibited.
Why exhibit him on the eve of the Two Sessions? In March 2026 an author acquainted with Fucha wrote a piece during the Two Sessions (carried by the Canada-based Westca portal) whose title asks the question outright: "With so many things at China's Two Sessions, why deliberately mention Fucha?" The piece says the session reports mentioned Fucha again, and that people were concerned; the author concedes knowing little more than anyone else, but sets down several statements that posterity can check. First: counting the residential-surveillance period toward the term at the statutory conversion rate, Fucha should be out around the middle of 2026. Second: whether he can get a passport and return to Taiwan after release is another question — Lee Ming-che and Lee Meng-chu both had their documents held for a time after release because of "deprivation of political rights". Third: "I have never heard Fucha utter a single separatist statement" — he loved Taiwan's democracy and freedom, but never advocated independence. Fourth: the author learned only after the arrest that Fucha had applied for a Republic of China identity card; he had asked him several times before and never got a straight answer — "I think he struggled with it inwardly for a long time." This page grades that text as commentary and recollection by an acquaintance, not news reporting; its claim that the session reports named Fucha could not be verified by this site against the published text of the SPP's March 2026 work report (which does contain the general formula of punishing "'Taiwan independence' diehards" for secession and incitement, but no naming that this site could locate), and it is recorded here as commentary with that caveat. But the question its author posed a year in advance — after he gets out, will he be allowed to leave? — received its worst answer in June 2026. The piece is therefore a rare "prophetic" document in this case's archive, and this page preserves its judgements and its provenance as written.
17 February 2025: an "open trial" that nobody knew about
Now to the procedural core of the case: the verdict itself.
The confirmable elements of the judgment are these. Court: the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. Date of pronouncement: 17 February 2025. Offence: inciting secession, paragraph 2 of Article 103 of the Criminal Law. Principal penalty: three years' imprisonment. Additional penalty: deprivation of political rights for one year. Property penalty: RMB 50,000 — rendered by the TAO and CNA as "confiscation of personal property", and by CPJ, New Bloom and other English-language channels as a "fine" of 50,000 yuan; this page follows the TAO's own wording and preserves the variant (the grading analysis is in the Verification Note). The paragraph's sentencing range runs: whoever incites others to split the country or undermine national unity shall be sentenced to up to five years' imprisonment, criminal detention, surveillance or deprivation of political rights; ringleaders and those whose offence is grave, to five years or more. Three years sits mid-range in the ordinary band. The manner of the verdict's publicity is the most glaring part of the case: the TAO's written response of 17 March 2025 stated that the case had been heard in open court and the verdict publicly pronounced on 17 February (CNA's relay of the TAO's words conveys "tried in open court and sentenced in court"; the relays vary slightly, and this page takes their common core: the authorities insist the trial and the pronouncement were both "open"). But the facts are these: on the day of the hearing and pronouncement, not a single media outlet reported it; no court announcement that the outside world could retrieve gave notice of it; and the family and supporters learned that a verdict existed only a full month later, from the TAO's written response, and then waited nine more days to hear the term at a news conference.
On "open" versus "secret", this page pins the two sides down side by side. Beijing's side (the TAO's written response and Chen Binhua's answers): the case was heard in open court and the verdict publicly pronounced in accordance with law; Li Yanhe's litigation rights were protected; he pleaded guilty, accepted the punishment, lodged no appeal, and the judgment is final; his family has been informed of the outcome. Taiwan's side (the MAC's statement of 17 March 2025 and minister Chiu Chui-cheng's public remarks of 18 March): the outcome of the trial was decided in advance; the claim that he was afforded legal rights under the mainland judicial system was "a complete lie"; Chiu called it a "show trial". The international side: Human Rights Watch flatly calls it a secret sentencing ("secretly sentenced"); RSF says he was sentenced after being "detained incommunicado for two years"; ARTICLE 19 says the SPP-led proceedings were conducted in secret (its statement contains one error — dating the sentencing to 27 March — corrected by this page, see the Verification Note). The three sides do not disagree on the elements of the judgment — court, date, offence, term agree across all of them — only on the characterisation of the procedure. This page's position is to lay out the checkable procedural facts and let the characterisation make itself: a trial whose hearing date no one knew beforehand, whose verdict no one knew of for twenty-eight days, whose judgment has never been published and whose alleged criminal acts have never been specified — whatever label is pasted on it, that is the whole of its openness.
The list of absent texts must be itemised, because it defines the boundary of this case's archive. The indictment: no public record. The full text of the judgment: no public record (no document for this case appears in China Judgments Online). Trial transcripts and any trial footage: no public record. The defence lawyer's name and arguments: no public record. The list of specific statements, books or acts charged: no public record — in Human Rights Watch's words, the Chinese authorities "have yet to specify which of Fu Cha's actions were considered criminal, nor release any legal documents or evidence despite insisting that due process rights were respected". The TAO said the family "has been informed"; CNA recorded in the same breath that what the family was told was the sentencing result, and that no information was provided about his health or whereabouts. The complete public documentation of a three-year prison sentence, issued in the name of the rule of law, amounts to a few sentences from a spokesperson at a news conference. That is the documentary total this case has left to the world.
17 and 26 March 2025: publication by extraction, twice
The manner of the verdict's publication deserves its own section, because it is a complete specimen of how this machinery releases information: not in one announcement but in two extractions.
The first, on 17 March 2025. In a written response to media enquiries, the TAO confirmed that Li Yanhe had been convicted of inciting secession by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, tried in open court with the verdict pronounced on 17 February, and that his litigation rights had been protected (the Dui Hua Foundation records it as a written response; Human Rights Watch as a public TAO statement that day). That response contained one lethal omission: it did not mention the length of the sentence. A publisher had been sentenced — to how many years no one was told — a full month after the verdict and two years after his detention. CNA's reporting that day exposed the time structure: the TAO's statement fell exactly one month after the purported pronouncement, it was the first time the Chinese authorities had specifically mentioned a trial in his case at all, and "the length of Li's sentence is still not publicly known". The same day, the MAC answered with its statement: the case was being used by the CCP for propaganda; it was "aimed at suppressing Taiwan's publishing, academic and cultural circles" and creating a chilling effect; the outcome had been decided in advance and the claim of legal rights was "a complete lie"; and the MAC said it had "full knowledge" of the case but would not share more, out of respect for the family's wishes. Gusa Publishing that day (as reported by Taiwanese media) expressed anger and bewilderment at the conviction: his colleagues could not understand how a man who was "just a publisher" could be charged with inciting secession. The next day, 18 March, MAC minister Chiu Chui-cheng restated the Council's position in public, calling the case a "show trial" whose verdict the CCP had predetermined (CNA, relayed by Taiwan News).
The second extraction, on 26 March 2025. At the TAO's regular news conference, a journalist — Human Rights Watch records that it was a foreign journalist — pressed for the term, and spokesperson Chen Binhua finally disclosed it: Li Yanhe had been sentenced for inciting secession to three years' imprisonment, one year's deprivation of political rights, and RMB 50,000 in personal property confiscated (most English-language reports render the last as a fine; see the Verification Note); he added that Li had pleaded guilty in court, had not appealed, and that the judgment was final, and that the family had been informed of the sentencing (CPJ, CNA and others relay this consistently). Counting from the day of pronouncement, the most central fact of the case — the term — was withheld for thirty-seven days; counting from the day of detention, his family waited two full years to learn, at a press conference and simultaneously with the whole world, how many years he would serve. CPJ issued its condemnation the same day (below). Gusa's response, relayed by CNA, was that it was "saddened", with no further comment; an informal monitoring group led by veteran journalist Lee Chih-te issued a statement condemning the Chinese authorities for "illegally detaining and punishing Fu Cha" and demanding his immediate release to reunite with his family in Taiwan (relayed by Taiwan News Wire).
Set the two publications side by side and a structure emerges. The first acknowledged "he was sentenced" while withholding the term, leaving an interval of pressure and speculation — for nine days Taiwan society could only guess how long he would be jailed. The second came only when a journalist asked, and arrived packaged with the full accompanying formula — guilty plea, acceptance, no appeal — sealing the exits against questioning in advance. This is not the negligence of information release; it is the design of its rhythm. And for the family, the rhythm meant this: first they were told "sentenced", then they stewed for nine days not knowing for how long, and then they learned the figure — three years — from television, together with the reporters. The official formula "the family has been informed" describes exactly this kind of informing.
The international record: four statements and one foundation's file
This page checked the international record item by item; it is set out here in order.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 26 March 2025, the day the term was disclosed. Its Asia programme coordinator Beh Lih Yi said Li's continued imprisonment for his work in journalism and publishing was one more example of China's relentless suppression of free speech. CPJ's statement confirms the elements in agreement with the TAO's account — convicted by a Shanghai court in February, three years, 50,000 yuan, a guilty plea and no appeal — while noting that Beijing has never said what Li did to incur the charge, and setting the case inside its annual census: China was the world's largest jailer of journalists. CPJ classifies Li as a "radio host and publisher", which is how he is filed in the international press-freedom record.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), statement of 26 March 2025 (carried by IFEX on 4 April). RSF called Li "one of the last Chinese journalists publishing books critical of the Chinese regime", recorded his Radio Taiwan International programme and his founding and editorship of Gusa, which specialises in political books many of them banned by Beijing, and confirmed the 17 February sentence at the Shanghai First Intermediate Court — three years, one year's deprivation of political rights, and 50,000 CNY (RSF's original wording, "fined 50,000 CNY in personal assets", is a muddled hybrid, recorded by this page in its original state). RSF had been among the first international organisations on the case, its East Asia director Cédric Alviani calling for his release as early as April 2023.
ARTICLE 19, statement of late March 2025. It demanded Li's immediate and unconditional release and that he be allowed to reunite with his family in Taiwan, recorded that he had been arbitrarily detained since 2023, and noted that the MAC had refuted Beijing's claims and pointed to the secrecy of the SPP-led proceedings. The statement carries one hard error: its introduction dates the sentencing to a Shanghai court acting "on Wednesday 27 March" — the verdict was in fact handed down on 17 February, 26 March was the day the TAO disclosed the term, and 27 March is neither. This page has corrected the date in its citations of the statement to 17 February (verdict) and 26 March (disclosure), and logs the correction in the Verification Note: the error does not change the statement's position, but archival citation must run on correct dates.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), 7 April 2025, "China: Free Imprisoned Taiwan Publisher". This is the weightiest international statement in the case. Two sentences by associate Asia director Maya Wang were quoted around the world: "The Chinese authorities have imprisoned Fu Cha for daring to publish books on China that they don't like", and the case against him was "an apparent attempt to muffle freedom of expression outside its borders and intimidate Taiwan's vibrant publishing industry". The statement catalogues the procedural defects systematically: the criminal acts unspecified; no legal documents or evidence released; no indication of access to lawyers or family; pressure on the family to stay silent (relaying Taiwanese media); and Taiwan's authorities unable to visit him because Beijing does not recognise Taiwan. It supplies the two characterisations — "transnational repression" and chilling effect — and demands that the conviction be quashed, that Fu Cha be released, and that he be allowed to leave China. HRW's other key text on this case is its September 2024 Yang Chih-yuan statement, in which it recorded that Fu Cha was being held under residential surveillance at a designated location and quoted the MAC that he was detained for publishing works "not in line with the Chinese Communist Party's view of history". This page reads the two statements together as the spine of the international human-rights record.
The Dui Hua Foundation, Prisoner Updates 2025 #3. This US foundation, which has tracked Chinese political-prisoner cases for decades, records the case in the cool prose of a wire log: disappearance in March 2023; the TAO's April 2023 confirmation of an endangering-state-security investigation; conviction on 17 February; the term revealed a month later; and the SPP's 26 February press conference exhibiting the case, with Yang Chih-yuan's, as a "Taiwan independence" case that "seriously endangered state security". Dui Hua's value is archival: no comment, no rhetoric, only dates and official formulations pinned down — and several of this page's procedural dates are corroborated against its record. Beyond it, the CECC's January 2025 Yang research report, though centred on Yang, established the analytical frame — Article 103 applied to Taiwanese as an expansion of long-arm jurisdiction — that every subsequent policy text on the Fu Cha case has used. This site searched for a passage naming Li Yanhe in the US State Department's annual human rights reports and did not find one in the sources consulted; this page accordingly makes no such record, and does not fill the gap with conjecture (see the Verification Note).
The arithmetic of the term, and why "release" does not mean freedom
A three-year term turns on its start date. In this case the arithmetic is missing a piece from the very beginning: no official text exists from which his term's computation can be checked.
Set out the known numbers. Detained 21 March 2023 (per CNA's 2026 retrospective). Sentenced at first instance on 17 February 2025 to three years; the TAO says he did not appeal, so the judgment took effect. If the term ran from the first day of custody — under the usual Chinese rule, pre-judgment custody counts day-for-day against the term, while residential surveillance at a designated location counts at two days for one — the three years should have expired around March 2026; the acquaintance's March 2026 expectation of release "around the middle of the year" was computed on exactly this basis, already allowing for the halved RSDL conversion. The release actually reported came in May 2026 — a date that matches no straightforward computation: full day-for-day credit points to March 2026; halved credit for the RSDL period pushes the date later. This page's conclusion can only be: the exact start date and conversion of the term cannot be verified, because the judgment was never published; and the May 2026 release date itself rests on a single-source chain (next section). The archive leaves a labelled question mark here, and fills it with no speculation.
More important than the arithmetic is the design that follows release. The one year's deprivation of political rights is this case's additional penalty, running from the completion of the principal term. What that penalty means for a Taiwanese person is best explained by New Bloom's June 2026 analysis: foreigners are normally deported after serving their sentences, because foreigners have no Chinese political rights to be "deprived" of in the first place; but Beijing does not treat Taiwanese as foreigners, so the deprivation penalty becomes an instrument for keeping Taiwanese people inside the mainland after their sentences end — the term served is not the end; the additional penalty's year is a second, invisible term. The precedent is Lee Meng-chu: arrested in 2019, sentenced to one year and ten months with two years' deprivation of political rights; after serving his term he remained unable to leave for a long period, reaching Taiwan only in August 2023, via Japan (New Bloom and Taipei Times reporting). It was Lee who sat at Fucha's solidarity press conference as the man who had walked the road before. New Bloom further speculates that Beijing holds released Taiwanese in part to let the media heat dissipate, so that the person's return does not become a news event. This page grades the items separately: the Lee precedent itself is multiply reported fact; "delay to avoid the media" is New Bloom's analytical speculation, recorded with its attribution.
"Released in May 2026 after serving his term" must therefore be read in pieces in this case. Release means walking out of the prison's high walls. It does not include permission to leave the country; it does not include going home to Taipei; it does not include resuming a normal life with his wife and child. Until the additional penalty expires, the man remains in legal status a person undergoing punishment, "deprived of political rights", with his passport and his exit in the hands of the organs that handled his case. The Fu Cha case thus presents a two-storey structure in the archive: the three-year principal term punished the books he published in Taiwan; the one-year additional term governs whether, after prison, he may leave at all. And the signal sent to Taiwan society is the two storeys combined: the risk of going to the mainland is not merely years in prison — it is that even after the prison, the way home runs another year, or longer.
Latest status: the June 2026 release reports, and their exact evidentiary grade
This section is this page's current-status record, and this site states its evidentiary grade first, as the case requires: it is a single-source chain, confirmed by no authority.
On 10 June 2026 CNA published its report (the English version carried the same day by the Taiwan News Gazette): a source in contact with Fu Cha's family told CNA that Li Yanhe had completed his three-year term, was released from prison in May 2026, and had met with family members; but that he faced the additional penalty of one year's deprivation of political rights and could not leave mainland China; the source described his situation as "appearing to be free, but unable to leave the country". CNA recorded in parallel that the Chinese-language Liberty Times had also reported his release, his reunion with family, and the restriction on his movement out of China. Whether the two Taiwanese outlets' sourcing is independent of the same informant is not stated in the published reports; this site therefore does not count them as two independent sources, and records them as parallel reports on a single information chain. New Bloom followed on 16 June 2026 with analysis whose factual content matches CNA's and adds no new first-hand witness or document.
The official responses were two forms of non-confirmation. TAO spokesperson Zhang Han, asked about Fu Cha's release at a regular briefing, did not confirm it, saying only that the relevant departments had handled the case lawfully and protected his lawful rights and interests (as relayed by CNA). The MAC likewise declined to confirm, citing the family's privacy. Read the two non-confirmations precisely: Zhang Han's answer did not deny the release — it refused all information, in unbroken continuity with her predecessors' performances across this case: "under investigation" in April 2023, "physical condition good" in September 2024, the two squeezed-out disclosures of March 2025. At no point in this case has official information ever been volunteered, complete and timely. The MAC's non-confirmation for its part continues its posture since 2023: the family's wishes as the boundary, no details. Between "handled lawfully" and "respecting privacy", the released Fu Cha himself has not uttered one public word.
As of this site's check on 30 October 2026, nothing newer has appeared: no report of his arrival in a third place or return to Taiwan (on Lee Meng-chu's path, a permitted exit would normally run through a third place and be reported), no public statement by him or his family, no word from the TAO on when the exit restriction might lift. Where inside the mainland he now is, which family member he is living with, how his health is: no public record. On the arithmetic of the reported account — release in May 2026, one additional year — the deprivation period would expire around May 2027; whether exit follows expiry depends on the case organs' actual clearance, and the Lee precedent shows that "expiry" and "release to leave" can be separated by months. This page fixes its status line in one sentence: a single-source report holds that he was released in May 2026 on completion of his term and is barred from leaving China; the report has been neither officially confirmed nor denied, and no independently verified news has followed — and this page's status field is set at exactly that sentence, to be updated when a reliable source appears.
The family: a wife, a child, and a household asked to keep quiet
The last block of a persecution archive belongs, by this site's custom, to those outside the walls. In Fu Cha's case there is little that can be written — and the littleness is itself part of the record.
The confirmable frame: his wife is Taiwanese; they married in 2005 and have a child; the family home is in Taipei. When he vanished in March 2023, it was the family who first faced the black box of the state security machine: not knowing where he was held, not knowing the charge, not knowing whether a lawyer could be engaged. The solidarity circle's public accounts show that the family wanted a quiet rescue from the very start — which is why the campaigners held back for nearly two months before going public; and across the three years that followed — through the loudest solidarity press conferences and the angriest post-verdict statements — the family never appeared in public and never issued a signed statement. At every key node the MAC repeated the same sentence: details cannot be disclosed, out of respect for the family's wishes (the "full knowledge but respect for the family" of 17 March 2025; the refusal to confirm the release news "for the family's privacy" in June 2026). And Human Rights Watch relayed Taiwanese media reporting that the Chinese side had pressured the family not to speak publicly about the case (relay grade; see earlier and the Verification Note). Fitted together, these pieces describe this family's three years: a husband inside secret custody and a secret trial; a wife in Taipei with a child, working the quiet official channels on one side and bearing, on the other, the fear that public volume might bring retaliation — learning even the length of her husband's sentence from a press conference.
The June 2026 release report contains one detail that this archive sets down gently: the source said that after his release he "has met with family members". The report does not say which family member, or where — whether his wife and child travelled to the mainland, or mainland relatives. This page does not guess. But those few words are the only occasion in three years on which this family appears in the public record in the form of a "reunion", and they arrive inside a single-source report with a blurred dateline, needing an informant to relay them. Three years ago one of his stated reasons for flying to Shanghai was to visit family; three years on, he has met family in that same country, yet cannot go home. Home is the house in Taipei, with his wife and child and a houseful of books. When this family will next be whole in one room cannot be written from the present record, and this page will not invent it for them.
Timeline
1971: Li Yanhe is born in Xiuyan County, Liaoning (CNA and biographical sources in agreement; Human Rights Watch's "54" in 2025 is consistent). Of Manchu descent, he signs himself "Fucha Yanhe", pen name Fucha.
Education and mainland publishing career: doctorate in literature at East China Normal University; enters Shanghai's publishing system and rises to deputy director of the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House (on published biographical material).
2005: Marries a Taiwanese woman; they have a child (on published biographical material).
2009: Moves to Taiwan; invited by the Book Republic Publishing Group to found Gusa Publishing as an internal venture (some sources place the formal founding across 2009–2010); serves as editor-in-chief (CNA).
2013: Receives his Republic of China residence permit (MAC material and biographical sources); the final outstanding requirement of his Taiwan settlement status is cancellation of his mainland hukou.
3 February 2020: Begins hosting "This Is How We See China — Fucha Time" on Radio Taiwan International (per the Wikipedia entry on his case).
Early 2023: Becomes a Taiwanese citizen, according to Human Rights Watch citing CNA; the formulations of his status vary across sources — see the Verification Note.
21 March 2023: On a trip to Shanghai to visit family and process the hukou cancellation, he is detained by state security authorities (the date as retrospectively given in CNA's 2026 reporting; contemporary reporting knew only of a March disappearance). He is thereafter held incommunicado, his place of detention never published; according to Human Rights Watch, he was held under residential surveillance at a designated location.
20 April 2023: Dissident poet Bei Ling discloses that Fucha has been detained by Shanghai police; MAC deputy minister Jan Jyh-horng tells CNA that Li Yanhe is "safe".
22 April 2023: Forty writers, scholars and senior media workers from Taiwan and abroad jointly demand his immediate release (CNA).
26 April 2023: TAO spokesperson Zhu Fenglian confirms that Li Yanhe, suspected of activities endangering state security, is under investigation by state security organs; PEN America issues its statement the same day demanding his unconditional release.
12 May 2023: The Solidarity Working Group for Fucha releases a joint statement of more than 350 signatories and holds a press conference, advancing two demands — respect for his legal rights, and avoidance of a chilling effect (Taiwan Church News; AFP).
17 May 2023: TAO spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang confirms that the Shanghai State Security Bureau has taken criminal compulsory measures against Li Yanhe on suspicion of inciting-secession criminal activities (Initium Media; CNA).
June–July 2023: The solidarity working group runs the "#2023 Fucha Returns to Taiwan" lecture series (Guang Media).
15 September 2023: The cultural world holds another solidarity press conference, with Lee Meng-chu attending as a man previously sentenced and held in the mainland (Initium Media).
31 December 2023: His RTI programme "Fucha Time" ends (per the Wikipedia entry on his case).
21 June 2024: The "22 guidelines" judicial Opinions on punishing "Taiwan independence" separatist crimes are issued and take effect (CECC; Human Rights Watch).
26 August 2024: In the parallel case, Yang Chih-yuan is sentenced by the Wenzhou Intermediate People's Court to nine years for secession and three years' deprivation of political rights; the sentence is disclosed by the TAO on 6 September (CECC research report; Human Rights Watch).
September 2024: The TAO says Fu Cha's physical condition is good and the case will be handled according to law (per the summary in the Wikipedia entry; this site could not retrieve the briefing transcript, graded as relay).
17 February 2025: The Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court convicts him at first instance of inciting secession: three years' imprisonment, one year's deprivation of political rights, and RMB 50,000 — "confiscation of personal property" in the TAO's wording, a "fine" in most English-language channels (see the Verification Note). No one outside the system knows of the pronouncement; the TAO calls it an open trial with a public verdict.
26 February 2025: The Supreme People's Procuratorate showcases his case, with Yang Chih-yuan's, at a press conference as a "major case" endangering national security (Dui Hua Foundation; Human Rights Watch).
17 March 2025: The TAO confirms in a written response that he was convicted and sentenced on 17 February, without disclosing the term; the MAC the same day calls the outcome predetermined and the case an instrument for suppressing Taiwan's publishing and academic circles; Gusa expresses anger and bewilderment.
18 March 2025: MAC minister Chiu Chui-cheng publicly calls the case a "show trial" (relayed by CNA).
26 March 2025: Under a journalist's questioning, TAO spokesperson Chen Binhua discloses the term — three years, one year's deprivation of political rights, RMB 50,000 — and says Li pleaded guilty and did not appeal; CPJ and RSF issue condemnations the same day (ARTICLE 19's statement follows within days).
7 April 2025: Human Rights Watch issues its statement characterising the case as transnational repression and demanding that the conviction be quashed, Fu Cha released, and that he be allowed to leave China.
March 2026: During the Two Sessions, an author acquainted with Fucha writes on the case being raised again in official reporting, and predicts that after release his documents may be held because of the deprivation penalty (carried by Westca; recorded here as commentary).
May 2026: According to CNA's single-source-chain report, Li Yanhe is released from prison on completion of his term and meets family, but is barred from leaving mainland China (not officially confirmed; graded unverified).
10 June 2026: CNA reports the release; TAO spokesperson Zhang Han does not confirm it, saying only that the case was handled lawfully; the MAC declines to confirm, citing family privacy; the Liberty Times carries a parallel report, and New Bloom follows with analysis on 16 June.
May 2027 (estimate): If the release report and the additional penalty hold, the one year's deprivation of political rights would expire around this time — this site's arithmetic estimate from the reported dates, not an official date; whether he will then be permitted to leave remains without any public information.
Our Take
This site's commentary on this case stays with this case's own facts.
First: what was sentenced here was not conduct but a catalogue. Set out the greatest common divisor of every official text across three years: the TAO has only ever uttered the six characters for "inciting secession", and has never identified which book, which sentence, which broadcast constituted the incitement; the MAC, for its part, has said publicly that he was detained for publishing works "not in line with the Chinese Communist Party's view of history". The factual structure of the case is therefore this: a man lived in Taiwan for fourteen years and published more than a hundred Chinese books, every one of them lawful in Taiwan and banned on the mainland; then, on the few days he returned to the mainland on an administrative errand, he was seized and jailed under the secession offences. The catalogue is the indictment; the historiography is the crime. When the whole content of "incitement" is a book list, the offence punishes not inciting acts but the editing and circulation of thought itself — what books to commission, what view of history to import, what Chinese readers may read: that is the crime. Which is exactly what Human Rights Watch's sentence means: he was imprisoned for daring to publish books about China that they don't like.
Second: the words "open trial" were dismantled by this case's own publication process. A trial pronounced on 17 February; the family learned that it existed on 17 March, from a written response; the term was learned on 26 March, at a press conference; the judgment has never been published, the indictment has never been published, the acts charged have never been specified. Beijing calls it an open trial; Taipei calls it a show trial. This site adopts neither side's label and simply lists the procedural facts once more: no retrievable notice of the hearing, a verdict unknown for twenty-eight days, no document ever made public, a charge never resolved into specific acts. If a trial's openness has to be conferred retroactively by a spokesperson's announcement, then what was made public was not the trial but the announcement. This case's largest contribution to the concept of the "open trial" is to demonstrate how completely it can idle: every procedural noun present, every procedural substance absent.
Third: the Procuratorate's press conference is the official confession of this case's character. On 26 February 2025, with the verdict secretly rendered nine days earlier, the SPP set this case beside Yang Chih-yuan's on its stage as major "Taiwan independence" cases that had "seriously endangered national security". For the judicial organs to use an undisclosed judgment as material for political messaging in advance tells us the ranking of the verdict's functions in this case: signal first, document second — the document may even never appear at all. A man who ran a political party and a man who ran a publishing house were fitted into one display case, to show Taiwan society the range of Article 103: politics or culture, organisation or editing — once the "independence" characterisation lands, all of it is in range. The chilling effect is therefore not this case's side effect but its purpose; and Gusa's output, fallen from forty-odd books a year to eight, is that purpose's acceptance certificate, signed in catalogue numbers.
Fourth: the hukou cancellation is the coldest link in this case. In early 2023 he had completed most of Taiwan's status procedure, and he travelled to Shanghai expressly to perform the final step the law required — cancelling a household registration that the law obliged him to cancel and that he had resolved to give up. What met the man who came to comply was state security detention. Taiwan's system requires mainland spouses to deal in person with the mainland authorities to prove the severance of their status; and the mainland's state security machinery waited for him at precisely that statutory point of contact. In 2025 Taiwan introduced alternative-document measures allowing those at safety risk not to return in person for cancellation proof (Taiwan Insight's 2026 analysis) — a repair that came too late, but one that acknowledges the institutional trap this case exposed: when a system makes "cancel your hukou" a requirement, and a regime posts its police outside the hukou window, the requirement itself becomes the mechanism of the trap. This site holds that this link belongs not only in a footnote of cross-strait relations: it applies to every institutional design that requires an applicant to prove severance to the very state that persecutes them.
Fifth: release is not the full stop; the additional penalty is the ingenuity of the design. Deprivation of political rights has no practical content for a man with no intention of engaging in mainland politics — but it is used as the handle for withholding his exit: the three-year principal term confined his body; the one-year additional term confines his destination. Lee Meng-chu walked the whole road — term served, unable to leave, waiting out the penalty and the actual clearance, home at last by way of a third country; Fu Cha is walking the second stretch of the same road. Nor did Beijing need to invent any new instrument for this: the offence, the additional penalty and exit control are all ready-made statutes and ready-made organs. The case's complete form in the archive is therefore: three years for speech, then a year of being kept — and when that year truly ends, and whether exit follows when it does, rests entirely in the discretion of the organs that ran the case, without a single citable public standard. For Taiwan society, the message of this form outlasts the three-year term: the risk of going to the mainland is not only years in prison; it is that after prison you may still not get home.
A last word about the man himself. Fucha is a Manchu who rose to deputy director of a literary publishing house in Shanghai, then crossed to Taiwan and built Gusa, the house of banned books. The work of his life has been to open Chinese-language readers one more window: the oral histories of June Fourth, the camps of Xinjiang, the massacre in Inner Mongolia, He Qinglian's red infiltration — carried into the Chinese-reading world one volume at a time. His acquaintance writes that he never advocated independence; that he simply loved Taiwan's freedom and wanted readers to read the real China. This site places that recollection here at its proper grade because it forms the exact counterpoint to every official text: the authorities say he "incited secession"; everyone who knows him says the same one thing — he is a publisher, and the books he published contain the China that the CCP forbids Chinese people to see. Which of the two sentences stands closer to the facts, the world must judge from the catalogue, since the judgment will not be published. This site's judgement is written in this page: a catalogue is not an indictment, and a regime that treats a catalogue as an indictment fears not secession but reading.
Verification Note
This site's characterisation: a case of cross-border speech persecution in which publishing activity in Taiwan was criminalised under paragraph 2 of Article 103 of the Criminal Law, "inciting secession"; it meets this site's criteria for the persecution archive. The source structure of this case must be explained first. The mainland authorities' entire public output on this case consists of four TAO communications (Zhu Fenglian on 26 April 2023; Ma Xiaoguang on 17 May 2023; the written response of 17 March 2025 and Chen Binhua on 26 March 2025; Zhang Han in June 2026) and one exhibition at the SPP's 26 February 2025 press conference; no judicial document of any kind has been published. The case's factual anchors therefore come chiefly from Taiwan's authorities (MAC statements and CNA reporting), international human-rights and press-freedom organisations (Human Rights Watch, CPJ, RSF, ARTICLE 19, PEN America, the Dui Hua Foundation, and the CECC's research report), and high-quality long-form reporting (Guang Media's profile, Initium Media, AFP, New Bloom). Mainland official claims are presented throughout this page in attributed form ("the TAO states") and are never blended with independently sourced fact.
Facts verified across sources: the March 2023 trip to Shanghai to visit family and process the hukou cancellation, followed by disappearance (Human Rights Watch, CNA, New Bloom and Guang Media in agreement); the TAO's confirmation on 26 April 2023 that he was under state-security investigation for activities endangering state security (the TAO briefing, relayed consistently by CNA and others); the TAO's confirmation on 17 May 2023 that the Shanghai State Security Bureau had taken criminal compulsory measures against him on suspicion of inciting secession (Initium Media; CNA); his incommunicado state from detention onward, with no indication of lawyer or family access (the forty-signatory statement of April 2023 already recorded the bar on visits; Human Rights Watch's 2025 statement reached the same judgement); the first-instance conviction for inciting secession by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on 17 February 2025, the three-year term, one year's deprivation of political rights and the RMB 50,000 property penalty (the TAO's two March 2025 communications, the Dui Hua Foundation's record, CPJ, RSF and CNA in agreement — save for the characterisation of the 50,000, see below); the SPP's exhibition of the case, with Yang Chih-yuan's, as a major national-security case at its 26 February 2025 press conference (Dui Hua; Human Rights Watch); the parallel elements of the Yang case — detained in Wenzhou on 3 August 2022, sentenced on 26 August 2024 by the Wenzhou Intermediate Court to nine years for secession and three years' deprivation, disclosed by the TAO on 6 September (the CECC's January 2025 research report and Human Rights Watch, in agreement); the MAC's 17 March 2025 statement that the outcome was predetermined and the case aimed at suppressing Taiwan's publishing, academic and cultural circles (CNA's full relay); and Gusa's founding in 2009 inside the Book Republic group, with a catalogue heavy in CCP-taboo subjects (CNA, CPJ, PEN America and AFP in agreement).
Matters resting on a single source or on relay, graded in the text: the exact detention date of 21 March, which comes from the retrospective account in CNA's June 2026 release report — earlier reporting said only "March 2023" — adopted by this page with its year of first appearance flagged; the RSDL form of custody, which appears only in Human Rights Watch's September 2024 statement and is corroborated by no official source; the September 2024 TAO remark that his "physical condition was good", which this site found only in the second-hand summary in the Wikipedia entry on his case, the full briefing transcript not having been retrieved — graded as relay; the pressure on the family to stay silent, which is Human Rights Watch relaying Taiwanese media reporting whose original this site did not retrieve; Gusa's output figures (forty-plus books a year, twenty-four in 2023, eight in the first nine months of 2024), which come from Guang Media's count of Gusa's public catalogue; the causal link between Gusa's catalogue (the Manchu and Mongol historiography titles and the like) and the prosecution, which is outside analysis plus legislator Chen Pei-yu's public statement, not a prosecution evidence list; the acquainted author's March 2026 commentary on the case being raised again in session reporting, which is commentary in genre, and whose claim about the SPP's 2026 work report "mentioning Fucha" this site could not verify against the report's published text — the report contains the general formula on punishing "Taiwan independence" secession crimes but no naming that this site could locate — and which is therefore recorded as commentary only; and the Lee Meng-chu precedent (term served, exit barred, return via Japan in August 2023), which is multiply reported fact, while "delay to let the media cool" is New Bloom's analytical speculation.
The evidentiary grade of the latest status (this page's central flag): the whole of the item "released from prison in May 2026 on completion of his term, met family, barred from leaving China" derives from a single information chain — CNA's 10 June 2026 report citing "a source in contact with his family". The Liberty Times carried a parallel report the same day, but whether the two outlets' sourcing is mutually independent cannot be confirmed, and this site does not count them as two independent sources; New Bloom's 16 June follow-up added no new first-hand witness or document; the TAO neither confirmed nor denied (Zhang Han said only that the case was handled lawfully with his rights protected); and the MAC declined to confirm, citing family privacy. This page's status field and text therefore express the release and the exit bar throughout as "reported by CNA through a single source; unverified", and do not write them as established fact. If the report is accurate, the one year's deprivation of political rights would expire around May 2027 — this site's arithmetic estimate.
Source conflicts and this site's treatment. First, the nature of the RMB 50,000. The TAO and CNA wording is "confiscation of personal property of RMB 50,000"; CPJ renders it a "fine of 50,000 yuan", New Bloom a "fine of 50,000 yuan", and RSF's original text carries the muddled hybrid "fined 50,000 CNY in personal assets". Because paragraph 2 of Article 103 carries no fine in its statutory configuration, and because "confiscation of personal property" is the TAO's own answer as given, this page follows "confiscation of personal property" and records the English channels' "fine" as a variant, explained here. Second, the formulation of his Taiwan status. Human Rights Watch says he "became a Taiwanese citizen in early 2023"; CNA's March 2025 reporting calls him a mainland Chinese national with residency in Taiwan, as does Taiwan News Wire the same day; the biographical record has him receiving a residence permit in 2013 and long unable to obtain an identity card because of his mainland citizenship. In Taiwan's system, a mainland spouse's identity card requires cancellation of the mainland hukou — the very errand on which he was arrested. This page presents the three formulations side by side and writes in its text only what is certain: fourteen years settled in Taiwan, marriage and residence undisputed, and the March 2023 trip's purpose of completing the hukou cancellation. Third, details of the move and the founding: CNA has the 2009 move and the 2009 founding; one passage of New Bloom says "residing since 2013" — 2013 is in fact the year of his residence permit — and this page writes the two layers distinctly (moved 2009, residence permit 2013) and does not adopt New Bloom's phrasing at that point. Fourth, a mistranslation in English wire copy: an English compilation from the United Daily News system (carried by Taiwan News) rendered the charge as "inciting subversion of state power", which matches no Chinese-language source — all give "inciting secession" — and this page follows the Chinese offence name, logging the variant here. Fifth, ARTICLE 19's statement misdates the sentencing to a court acting on "27 March": the correct dates are 17 February (verdict) and 26 March (disclosure of the term); this page has corrected its citations accordingly and logs the correction here. Sixth, the birth year: CNA twice gives 1971, and Human Rights Watch's "54" in 2025 is consistent with it; this page adopts 1971, flagging the absence of any mainland official corroboration. Seventh, a correction to the briefing materials received by this site, which had the TAO confirming in April 2023 that he had been "criminally detained on suspicion of inciting secession": on checking, Zhu Fenglian's 26 April formulation was only "activities endangering state security, under investigation"; the offence name (inciting secession), the executing organ (the Shanghai State Security Bureau) and the phrase "criminal compulsory measures" arrived only with Ma Xiaoguang's 17 May statement. The text has been written in those two steps and the correction is recorded here.
Matters of no public record, flagged wherever they arise in the text: the place of custody and the specific location of any residential surveillance; the date of formal arrest and of transfer for prosecution; the indictment, the full judgment text and any trial record; the list of specific acts, statements or titles charged; the defence lawyer's name and arguments; details of his health and communications in custody (beyond the relayed "physical condition was good" of September 2024); the name of the prison where he served; the exact start date and conversion computation of his term; the exact date of the reported May 2026 release, his residence and health after it; and any date for the lifting of the exit restriction. This site searched for a naming of Li Yanhe in the US State Department's annual human rights reports and found no such passage in the sources consulted; the text accordingly makes no such record and fills nothing in by conjecture.
The three-requirements check: time and place are confirmed (the month and Shanghai location of the detention, the two TAO confirmations, the press-conference exhibition, the verdict and disclosure dates, the court and the offence are all supported by the anchor sources above; the exact detention date is CNA's 2026 retrospective and is flagged as such); cross-verification has been completed (mainland official statements, Taiwan official and CNA reporting, international organisations and long-form media kept in four separate layers throughout, with conflicts inside each layer listed one by one); visual and cultural evidence — Fu Cha's RTI broadcasts, Gusa's public catalogue and the filmed record of the solidarity press conferences all appear in the sources above, and this page records only their existence and provenance, relaying no unverified visual detail.
Sources
- Human Rights Watch, 7 April 2025, "China: Free Imprisoned Taiwan Publisher": aged 54; Gusa editor-in-chief; became a Taiwanese citizen in early 2023; detained in March 2023 on the Shanghai trip to rescind his household registration; Maya Wang's two judgements; the TAO's 17 March "open trial" conviction announcement without the term; disclosure only on 26 March after a journalist's question; criminal acts unspecified, no documents or evidence released; no indication of lawyer or family access; family pressured to stay silent (relaying Taiwanese media); the February SPP press conference listing his case with Yang Chih-yuan's as major national-security cases; the transnational-repression and chilling-effect characterisation; the Causeway Bay and Hong Kong publishing background. The spine of the international record.
- Human Rights Watch, 10 September 2024, "China: Free Taiwanese Political Activist" (the Yang Chih-yuan statement): Yang detained in Wenzhou on 3 August 2022, formally arrested April 2023, convicted on 26 August 2024 of separatism and sentenced to nine years, closed trial, sentencing undisclosed until 6 September; the same statement records that Fu Cha was held under residential surveillance at a designated location and quotes the MAC that he was detained for publishing works "not in line with the Chinese Communist Party's view of history", and that in early 2023 he became a Taiwanese citizen and was visiting China to renounce his PRC nationality and see family. This page's source for the RSDL item and the MAC's early characterisation.
- The Dui Hua Foundation, Prisoner Updates 2025 #3: the TAO's written confirmation that Li Yanhe was convicted of inciting splittism on 17 February by the Shanghai Number One Intermediate People's Court, the term of three years with one year's deprivation of political rights revealed a month later; the April 2023 TAO confirmation of an endangering-state-security investigation; the SPP's 26 February 2025 press conference terming the case a "Taiwan independence" case that "seriously endangered state security", cited alongside Yang Zhiyuan's (nine years, three years' deprivation). The archival record of official formulations and dates.
- Congressional-Executive Commission on China, January 2025 staff research report, "First Separatism Conviction of a Taiwanese Citizen": Yang criminally detained in Wenzhou in August 2022 and held under residential surveillance at a designated location; convicted on 26 August 2024 of separatism, nine years and three years' deprivation, the first Article 103 conviction of a Taiwanese citizen; the background of the June 2024 punishment guidelines. The anchor for the parallel case and the institutional background.
- Central News Agency, 17 March 2025 (carried by the Overseas Community Affairs Council site): the TAO's confirmation that day of a 17 February "public verdict" at the Shanghai First Intermediate Court, the statement falling exactly one month after the pronouncement with the term still unknown; the MAC's same-day statement — the case aimed at suppressing Taiwan's publishing, academic and cultural circles and creating a chilling effect, the outcome predetermined, the rights claim "a complete lie", the MAC in full knowledge but respecting the family's wishes; born 1971 in Liaoning, moved to Taiwan in 2009 and founded Gusa the same year, Gusa an affiliate of the Book Republic Publishing Group, Taiwan's second-largest publisher.
- Central News Agency, 10 June 2026 (English version carried by the Taiwan News Gazette): a source in contact with the family states that Fu Cha was released in May 2026 after serving his three-year sentence, faces the additional one-year deprivation of political rights, and is "appearing to be free, but unable to leave the country"; the Liberty Times' parallel report; TAO spokesperson Zhang Han not confirming, saying only that the case was handled lawfully with his rights protected; the MAC declining to confirm for family privacy; the same report retrospectively dating his detention by state security in Shanghai to 21 March 2023 and recording the February 2025 sentence of three years with confiscation of RMB 50,000 (US$7,377) in personal property. The single-source chain behind the latest status, graded unverified by this page.
- Committee to Protect Journalists, 26 March 2025: condemnation of the three-year sentence; Li a Chinese citizen with Taiwan residency, pen name Fucha, arrested in March 2023 by state security officers and held in secret detention; Chen Binhua's news-conference account of a February conviction, a 50,000-yuan fine (the divergence from the TAO's "confiscation of personal property" is treated in the Verification Note), a guilty plea and no appeal; Beh Lih Yi's judgement; Gusa "saddened"; his RTI host identity.
- Reporters Without Borders, 26 March 2025 (carried by IFEX on 4 April): Li detained incommunicado for two years, the sentence confirmed by Beijing on 26 March; the 17 February Shanghai First Intermediate Court sentence of three years, one year's deprivation of political rights and 50,000 CNY (original wording "fined 50,000 CNY in personal assets"); Gusa's specialisation in political books banned by Beijing; his RTI programme; the characterisation "one of the last Chinese journalists publishing books critical of the Chinese regime".
- ARTICLE 19, March 2025: the demand for immediate and unconditional release and reunion with his family in Taiwan; arbitrarily detained since 2023; the MAC's refutation of Beijing and the secrecy of the SPP-led proceedings. Its introduction misdates the sentencing to "27 March"; corrected by this page to 17 February — see the Verification Note.
- PEN America, 26 April 2023 (carried by IFEX on 1 May): Angeli Datt's "Publishing is not a crime" judgement; the TAO's confirmation that day of an endangering-state-security detention; Li's publishing of dissident authors and Beijing-banned subjects, and of translations giving Chinese-language readers access to different ideas; the genealogy of persecuted publishers, Gui Minhai and Yao Wentian.
- Central News Agency, 22 April 2023 (carried by Asia Democracy Chronicles): the joint statement of forty writers, scholars and senior media workers demanding immediate release; Li barred from lawyers and family, communication severely restricted; Jan Jyh-horng's statement of 20 April that Li was "safe"; born 1971 in Liaoning, moved to Taiwan in 2009 after marriage, founded Gusa in 2009; He Qinglian and Louisa Lim among the signatories.
- Taiwan Church News, May 2023 (issue 3716): the 12 May solidarity press conference, more than 350 signatories from Taiwan's intellectual world, the two demands of legal rights and avoidance of a chilling effect, the remarks of Wang Jiaxuan and Li Chin-lian, and the recollection that the family initially wanted a low profile.
- Agence France-Presse, 12 May 2023 (carried by SpaceWar): Taiwan publishers warning peers away from the mainland and Hong Kong; the disappearance and detention narrative; RSF's Cédric Alviani calling for release; a bookseller who "would not dare go to China"; Gusa's title on the oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang; the precedent background of Lee Ming-che, jailed for five years in 2017 and released in 2022.
- Initium Media, 16 September 2023: the 15 September cultural-world press conference, with Li Ang, Tao Yi-fen, Chu Yu-hsun, Hu Tsai-ping and the newly returned Lee Meng-chu in solidarity; the relay of Ma Xiaoguang's 17 May formulation (the Shanghai State Security Bureau taking criminal compulsory measures against Li Yanhe for suspected inciting-secession activities); the early disclosures of 20 April and the family's wish for quiet.
- Guang Media (IPK Media), long-form profile "Fucha — the Vanished Taiwan Publishing Editor-in-Chief" (by Lin Yaming): Zhu Fenglian's April formulation in full; the 2009 internal-venture founding of Gusa at Book Republic's invitation; the catalogue statistics (forty-plus books a year before, twenty-four in 2023, eight in the first nine months of 2024); Wang Jiaxuan's "he handled every book himself"; the June–July 2023 "#2023 Fucha Returns to Taiwan" lecture series; the March 2024 event cancelled out of regard for the family's wish for quiet; the fourteen years of cross-strait crossings. A media profile; details used with attribution.
- New Bloom Magazine, 16 June 2026, "Fucha Released, But Prevented From Returning to Taiwan" (Brian Hioe): the release and exit-bar facts on CNA's wording; Gusa catalogue examples (He Qinglian's Red Infiltration; the Chinese edition of Louisa Lim's The People's Republic of Amnesia); the analysis of deprivation of political rights as the mechanism for holding Taiwanese after their terms; the Lee Meng-chu precedent (one year and ten months, two years' deprivation, eventual return via Japan) and the "delay to avoid media attention" analysis.
- Taiwan News Wire, 26 March 2025 (relaying CNA/Focus Taiwan): Chen Binhua's disclosure of three years, one year's deprivation of political rights and confiscation of RMB 50,000 in personal property (US$6,889), no appeal, judgment final; the recollection of the 350-signature campaign; the institutional explanation that mainland spouses must cancel their hukou for settlement; Gusa "saddened" and the condemnation statement of Lee Chih-te's monitoring group.
- Commentary by an author acquainted with Fucha, March 2026, Two Sessions period (carried by Westca): why the session reports mentioned Fucha again; the term-conversion arithmetic and a mid-2026 release expectation; the Lee Ming-che and Lee Meng-chu precedent of documents held after release over deprivation of political rights; the acquaintance's testimony that he never heard Fucha advocate separatism; the recollection of learning of the identity-card application only after the arrest. Commentary in genre; the report-naming item could not be verified against the published text — see the Verification Note.
- Taiwan Insight (University of Nottingham Taiwan Studies Programme), 30 September 2026 analysis: the institutional risk of hukou-cancellation proof; the 2025 measures allowing alternative documents in high-risk cases; the Fucha case as the demonstration of that system's consequences. A policy-analysis source.
- Wikipedia, entry "Fucha" (checked by this site on 30 October 2026): the Xiuyan birthplace, the East China Normal University doctorate, the deputy directorship of the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, the 2005 marriage, the 2013 residence permit, the RTI programme's start on 3 February 2020 and end on 31 December 2023, the September 2024 TAO "physical condition good" summary, and the Manchu–Mongol historiography analysis. A biographical secondary source; wherever the text leans on it alone, that reliance is flagged.