第118案 | 覃德富Case 118 | Qin Defu
覃德富（约1981年生，四川德阳农村人，父亲是乡下传道人，1989年信主、曾两次因信仰被关押），初中毕业后经商，2014年与妻子定居成都加入秋雨圣约教会，2017年关闭店铺全职服侍，2018年被按立为长老、负责教会行政管理。2018年12月9日晚，成都警方发动「129」大抓捕，带走一百多名教会成员，覃德富被数十名警察押走（USCIRF数据库作12月10日被拘留，两说并列）；他被指未经出版许可为教会印制约两万册诗歌本与福音单张，关押期间家人被拒会见，当局先让他在关押中「自聘」两名不明律师，再许诺家属接受官派律师即可获释，许诺落空。2019年11月下旬，他在成都市青羊区人民法院受审（11月25日开庭一说、对华援助作11月29日秘密开庭），拒绝认罪，11月29日以非法经营罪判刑四年。2022年12月9日刑满出狱，回家重新认识四岁的女儿；此后其个人近况无公开记录，秋雨教会则持续受压至2026年。他被USCIRF列入宗教良心犯数据库，主条目拼作「Tan Defu」——姓名异写本身就是本案档案的一部分。Qin Defu (born c. 1981 in rural Deyang, Sichuan, son of a country preacher who came to faith in 1989 and was twice detained for it) left school for small trade, settled with his wife in Chengdu in 2014 and joined Early Rain Covenant Church, closed his business for full-time ministry in 2017, and was ordained an elder in 2018 with responsibility for the church's administration. On the evening of 9 December 2018, in the '129' mass raid that seized more than a hundred church members, dozens of officers took him away (the USCIRF database dates his detainment 10 December; the two are carried in parallel). He was accused of printing, without a publishing licence, some 20,000 hymnals and gospel tracts for his church; his family's visit applications were refused, he was made to 'hire' two unidentified lawyers inside custody, and his family was promised he would be freed if they accepted state-appointed lawyers instead — a promise that was broken. Tried in late November 2019 at Chengdu's Qingyang District People's Court (a 25 November hearing in one profile; ChinaAid's account has a secret hearing on 29 November), he refused to plead guilty and on 29 November 2019 was sentenced to four years for illegal business operations. He was released on completion of sentence on 9 December 2022 and came home to get to know his four-year-old daughter. Of his personal circumstances since there is no public record, while Early Rain itself remains under pressure into 2026. USCIRF lists him among its Religious Prisoners of Conscience — under the spelling 'Tan Defu,' a name variant that is itself part of this file.
What Happened
Qin Defu was not a preacher and never stood in a pulpit. At Early Rain Covenant Church he ran the unglamorous machinery — premises, supplies, printing, co-ordination — the work that keeps a congregation of several hundred people functioning. On the evening of 9 December 2018, Chengdu public security officers raided the church, one of China's best-known unregistered house churches, and took away more than a hundred people in a single night; the church, its school and its library were shut and their property confiscated. That night became known as the "129" crackdown (ChinaAid, narrative of 30 December 2019 and release report of 15 December 2022; USCIRF entry for Qin Defu). Most of those seized were released over the following days and months. In the end only two people were sent to prison: the founding pastor, Wang Yi, who got nine years — and the elder who managed the church's administration, Qin Defu, who got four.
The charge against him sounds, on paper, as if it had nothing to do with religion: "illegal business operations." The factual core of the accusation was a single thing — that the church had printed, for its own worship and evangelism, some 20,000 hymnals, gospel tracts and other Christian books without authorisation from the state publishing authority (Church in Chains prisoner profile of Qin Defu, compiled from ChinaAid, Early Rain Covenant Church and International Christian Concern material). At his hearing the prosecutors reportedly never mentioned his church or his identity as a Christian, deliberately cutting the case away from the church (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). Qin refused to plead guilty. In ChinaAid's account of his final statement, he said he was a Christian who had served in the church and served others according to the church's needs, that as an ordinary citizen he had done nothing against the law — and that faith is no crime (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative; the USCIRF entry records a closely similar courtroom exclamation, in a slightly different wording carried in parallel in the Verification Note).
One detail of the case deserves to be stated early, because it frames everything else. Before sentence was passed, the authorities had promised his family that if they accepted two state-appointed lawyers in place of his own lawyer, he "would only need to appear at the court before he can be released." The family accepted the arrangement. The promise was broken: on 29 November 2019 the Qingyang District People's Court in Chengdu sentenced him to four years (Church in Chains profile; the Christian Post, 2 December 2019, carrying the same ChinaAid account). From the night he was taken, 9 December 2018, to the day he walked out, 9 December 2022, is exactly four years. In that span he missed his younger daughter's entire growth from a nine-month-old baby to a child of four — and his father, the rural preacher who had first brought the family's faith into the home, had died in a car accident earlier that same year, 2018 (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative; Church in Chains profile).
Before the story can be told properly, one apparently trivial question has to be settled: how his name is actually written. In different databases this man appears under three different names, and a file under the wrong name is, in practice, a file that has been lost.
First, the Name: Qin, Tan, Derfu
This page uses 覃德富, romanised Qin Defu. That is the form used throughout by the church side and by ChinaAid — its profile page, its 2019 narrative and its 2022 release report all say Qin Defu — and the church's own prayer-letter list of March 2019, preserved in a Pathway Learning archive, writes his name in Chinese characters as 覃德富长老, "Elder Qin Defu (illegal business operations)," the closest thing to a primary Chinese-language attestation this page could find. The surname 覃 (read qín, homophonous with the far commoner 秦) is an established surname in Sichuan and China's southwest.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), however, files this same man in its Religious Prisoners of Conscience database under the main heading "Tan Defu," with "Qin Defu" relegated to the "Additional Name(s)" field (USCIRF database, Tan Defu entry, checked for this page on 4 November 2026). Tan reflects the character's alternative reading (tán) — 覃 is polyphonic, and its surname reading varies across dialect and transliteration traditions. The drift does not stop there. A December 2025 Bitter Winter article marking seven years since the crackdown uses "Elder Qin Defu" in one passage and "Elder Tan Defu" a few paragraphs later, both spellings inside a single piece; Human Rights Watch's January 2026 statement on the renewed raids against the church calls him, in the church's own spelling, "another church leader, Qin Defu." The Church in Chains profile additionally records the fused spelling "Derfu."
This page's handling: 覃德富 / Qin Defu throughout, following the church and family side, with the USCIRF "Tan Defu" heading and the "Derfu" variant archived in full here and in the Verification Note. The reason is practical. Anyone searching the United States government's prisoner-of-conscience list will find him only under Tan Defu; anyone searching the church's and ChinaAid's record will find him only under Qin Defu. That the two names denote one man is not in doubt: elder of the same church, seized in the same December 2018 operation, convicted of the same charge, given the same four years, released on the same day, 9 December 2022 — every waypoint matches. Getting the variants on the record is part of what an archive is for.
Rural Deyang: A Preacher's Household
Qin Defu was born in the countryside of Deyang, Sichuan. ChinaAid's 2019 narrative describes him as 37 years old at the end of 2018, which points to a birth year of about 1981; his exact date of birth appears in no public record, and this page archives only "37 at the end of 2018" rather than pinning down a year. His father was a rural preacher. ChinaAid's narrative is explicit about the sequence: in 1989 his father came to believe, opened his family to the Gospel and later became a preacher; after many years inside the state-sanctioned Three-Self church, the father concluded that the Three-Self system had problems, left it, and joined the house-church network (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). A correction belongs here. Some secondary compilations attach "became a Christian in 1989" to Qin Defu himself, and the Church in Chains profile's compressed English — his father was a preacher who "had become a Christian in 1989" — is easy to misread that way. ChinaAid's fuller church narrative leaves no ambiguity: 1989 was the father's conversion. Qin Defu was a second-generation believer, raised inside the faith from childhood.
The price his father's generation paid is recorded in a single sentence of that narrative, and it is worth preserving as written in substance: for religious reasons, the old man was twice detained by the authorities, once for half a month and once for a month (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). In this family, going to jail for one's faith did not begin with Qin Defu's generation. The father's dearest wish in life, the narrative adds, was that more Christians in the Three-Self churches would hear Pastor Wang Yi's preaching and correct what he saw as their mistaken theology — a wish fulfilled only on the day of his own memorial service, when many pastors and missionaries gathered and heard Wang Yi preach (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative).
In 2018 the father died in a car accident on his way home from preaching (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative; Church in Chains profile). That same year the family gained a daughter. A funeral and a birth in one year — and by the year's end, Qin Defu himself was in a detention cell. ChinaAid's narrative records that his devoted mother, in that single year, lost her husband, saw her son arrested, and suffered an injury of her own; asked by her daughter-in-law what she made of it all, she answered calmly, in substance: he has done nothing bad; those in authority are meant to make evildoers afraid, not those who do good; she was not afraid; her son had been sent to learn his lessons and do his work, and would come home when the lessons and the work were done (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative — a family account relayed by the church, archived here at that layer and not expanded into fact).
A Man in Trade: Video Rentals, a General Store, an Online Shop
There is no seminary and no overseas chapter in Qin Defu's biography. After junior high school he dropped out and went into business (ChinaAid profile: he started his own business after leaving school, grew up in a Christian atmosphere, and regularly attended the government-sanctioned Three-Self church with his father). Following relatives into small trade, he gradually built a comfortable life, serving regularly at local gatherings large and small outside working hours (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). The narrative keeps one detail that tells you what kind of tradesman he was: he ran a VCD rental shop, and while other shops sold pornographic discs, he refused to, and won his customers' respect for it; ChinaAid describes him as intelligent, honest, loyal and trustworthy (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative).
In 2011 Qin Defu married — his wife, who later earned a master's degree, is named in the English-language sources only in pinyin, as Xiao Hongliu; the Chinese characters of her name could not be verified by this page in any reliable primary source and are therefore not asserted (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). The couple settled in Chengdu. He ran a general store and, in the sources' slightly divergent wording, an online shop on Taobao: ChinaAid's profile says that in 2017 he closed his general store, its 2019 narrative that he closed his Taobao shop. Both point at the same act — in 2017 he wound up his business — and the two wordings are archived in parallel. A countryman who had made himself comfortable on small trade was about to close the shop for good.
To Chengdu, and Into Early Rain
In 2014 Qin Defu and his wife settled in Chengdu and both became members of Early Rain Covenant Church (ChinaAid profile and 2019 narrative, consistently). Before that, most of his childhood had been spent in a Three-Self church (ChinaAid, release report, 2022). From the Three-Self system to a house church: he walked the same road his father had walked, one generation later.
The church he joined needs a short introduction. Early Rain Covenant Church was founded by Pastor Wang Yi, a former legal scholar and human rights lawyer, and grew from home meetings into one of China's most prominent unregistered congregations; Wang Yi's own story and sentence have their own page on this site (see this site's Wang Yi case, and this site's Early Rain church event page). Its size is given differently in different sources, and this page keeps the layers separate: the church side and Chinese Wikipedia put its membership at the time at over 500; the Church in Chains profile says more than 800 members, plus an affiliated primary school and Bible school; the Christian Post's December 2019 report on Qin's sentencing called it a "5,000-member church" — a figure out of line with the church's own and every other source's range of five to eight hundred, graded unverified here and not used. On one point there is no dispute: this was a large urban house church that met openly, existed openly, and refused to register — its membership, sermons and prayer letters were all published online. It was never a secret organisation.
In 2017 the couple travelled to Jakarta for a conference marking the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, and both came home resolved to serve for life (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). That year Qin felt called to full-time ministry: after the church elected him a deacon, he closed his shop and gave himself wholly to the work (ChinaAid profile and 2019 narrative). The narrative is candid that family life grew harder after the decision, and his faith, it says, grew more fervent. In 2018 he was ordained an elder, with primary responsibility for the church's administration and management (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative; the 2022 release report likewise stresses that he "was not a preacher" but helped manage the church internally). Wang Yi once told, in a sermon, how on the Sunday the church ordained elders Li Yingqiang and Qin Defu he had been typing his sermon notes and his input method, fed the initials for "elder," offered up a word from the prison family instead — so that his draft read, in effect, "Li Yingqiang 'imprisoned' and Qin Defu 'imprisoned'" (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative, relaying Wang Yi's sermon). It is a piece of church lore, archived at that layer; it is retold because within the year it had come true.
The First Half of 2018: A "Wanted List" and 12 May
Qin Defu's arrest did not begin on 9 December. At the end of April 2018 he travelled with brothers and sisters from the church to the Wenchuan earthquake zone for a short preaching tour. While they were still on the road, police put them on an official "wanted list" and circulated Qin's photograph to police stations along the route, warning that Qin Defu, a backbone of Early Rain Covenant Church, would soon be in their areas engaging in illegal religious activities (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative and profile). Home again, he joked with his wife that whether he was the backbone was up to the Lord — all he knew was that he was very skinny. Over two days and three nights the group met mass reporting by locals, police at the door and state-security tracking, and was taken to police stations several times, yet finished the tour singing hymns (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). The label matters: "backbone" was the police's own word, and it shows that more than half a year before the raid, the authorities had already marked this administrative elder as one of the church's key people.
On 1 February 2018 the revised Religious Affairs Regulations had come into force, further narrowing the space for unregistered religious groups — the institutional backdrop to a full year of pressure. Early Rain was hit repeatedly through 2018: according to the Church in Chains profile, the authorities raided the church in May and June and briefly detained hundreds of members. The 12th of May was the tenth anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake, which the church marks each year with a prayer meeting. The day before, the authorities secretly took Wang Yi and Li Yingqiang away; Qin Defu and several brothers searched for them until 3 a.m. without result, then went back to the church to prepare the next day's prayer meeting. In the small hours police surrounded the church to stop members going upstairs; at about ten in the morning, as Christians upstairs and downstairs sang and prayed together, a loud noise cut through — police broke in and took Qin Defu and another elder away (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). He was released the next day and testified in church that on arriving at the police station he had already made ready never to come home (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). That was the rehearsal. The real arrest came at the end of the year.
The Night of "129": 9 December 2018
At the beginning of December 2018, Qin Defu told his wife it was time to write the family's New Year intercession letter. A few days later the letter was still unwritten (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative: his wife did not finish it until 4 February 2019). The 9th of December was a Sunday. That evening Chengdu police launched their mass raid on Early Rain Covenant Church: Pastor Wang Yi, Elder Qin Defu and more than a hundred co-workers and members were taken away, homes were searched, interrogations ran through the night; the church premises were sealed, church property confiscated, the church's school and library shut down, and many families were driven out of Chengdu (Bitter Winter, 2025 retrospective; ChinaAid, release report of 2022). The Church in Chains profile counts further: by the end of that week, at least 150 members and Bible-school students had been seized at home, at work or in the street. The church's own fifth-anniversary retrospective gives the formal outcomes: 28 people administratively detained and 29 criminally detained in the operation's wake (ChinaAid, 13 December 2023, reporting the church's figures). The three numbers describe one raid at three levels of counting — over a hundred taken on the night, at least 150 within the week, 57 formally processed into administrative or criminal detention — and are archived in layers, not merged.
The detail of Qin's own seizure, as the church narrative preserves it, is stark: on the evening of 9 December, dozens of police officers escorted him away (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). His wife and his lawyer afterwards went to the detention centre again and again to apply for a visit; every application was refused (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). One dating conflict must be carried in parallel: the church and ChinaAid date his seizure to the evening of 9 December, the raid night, while the USCIRF database records his detainment date as 10 December 2018. The one-day gap may reflect how custody paperwork was timed across midnight; the public record does not settle it. This page takes 9 December, the church dating, as the event's main date — it is also this page's sort date — and preserves USCIRF's 10 December alongside, unmerged. On 10 December the Chengdu Religious Affairs Bureau issued a notice declaring that the church's activities violated the newly revised Religious Affairs Regulations (Church in Chains timeline).
In the week after the raid, on 16 December, the members still at liberty arrived at the church premises to find every entrance guarded by police who would not let worshippers in; some began a small worship meeting in a nearby park, and police shut that down too (Church in Chains profile). And that was only the start: on 24 February 2019 police raided two meetings in private homes and took away 44 people, among them elderly people, pregnant women and eleven children, at least eleven of whom received ten to fourteen days' administrative detention; on Easter Day, 21 April, at least seven members meeting in a park, children among them, were seized and interrogated until the early hours; on 4 June, church families were ordered to stay home and meet no one, and some homes had their water and power cut (Church in Chains timeline). Through those months Qin's case hung in the air: the man in custody, the charge illegal business operations, no public progress. The church's prayer-letter list of 8 March 2019 names the twelve people still criminally detained, and among them stands the line "Elder Qin Defu (illegal business operations, 9 December)," alongside Wang Yi (inciting subversion), Ge Yingfeng, Li Xiaofeng and Liang Huaili (also illegal business operations) and others (Early Rain Covenant Church prayer letter, archived via Pathway Learning).
Twenty Thousand Books: How "Illegal Business Operations" Was Built
The whole of the alleged criminal conduct, once laid out at the hearing, was one thing: about 20,000 books. According to the Church in Chains profile, it emerged at the trial that the charge concerned the printing and publication of 20,000 hymnals, gospel pamphlets and other Christian books, printed without authorisation from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. Zhang Peihong, Wang Yi's former lawyer, put it more precisely after the hearing, in substance: the charge concerned only 20,000 books for the church's own use, most of them small gospel tracts of the "Good News You Don't Want to Hear" type, and Wang Yi had actively taken most of the responsibility for the books upon himself in his own testimony (Church in Chains profile, quoting Zhang Peihong; the Christian Post of 2 December 2019 carried a materially identical ChinaAid account; this page paraphrases rather than quoting at length).
Three points need to be kept distinct. First, the quantity: some 20,000 items, consistently reported — ChinaAid, Church in Chains, the Christian Post and Evangelical Focus all give the same figure. Second, the use: the books were for the church's internal use, for worship and evangelistic distribution; no source alleges that a single copy was sold for profit. The prosecution's framework was "printing without a licence is business," not "selling books for money." Third, the method: according to ChinaAid's narrative, the prosecutors in court did not mention Qin's church or his Christian identity at all, deliberately separating the case from the church (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). Separated that way, the case on paper becomes a publishing-administration matter: a man printed 20,000 items without a permit. Yet the same man had been seized, on raid night, as an elder of Early Rain Covenant Church, together with over a hundred of his fellow believers — and the books he was tried for, alone, were the books the whole church used. This page returns to that method in "Our Take."
One procedural waypoint must also be recorded. At the beginning of August 2019 the family received a notice stating that Qin had, inside custody, "hired two lawyers for himself," and officials accordingly refused the involvement of the lawyer the family had retained — while also refusing to give any information about the two "new lawyers" (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). Then came the promise that was not kept: the authorities assured the family that if they accepted two state-appointed lawyers to replace his own, he would be released after merely appearing in court (Church in Chains profile; Evangelical Focus, December 2019, on the ChinaAid account). The family accepted. The outcome was four years.
A Rumour from Inside, Graded as Such
ChinaAid's profile reports that, according to its sources, Qin preached the gospel to his cellmates during his detention (ChinaAid profile). Its 2019 narrative is more cautious — it says only that he was "said" to have been preaching to fellow inmates, and concedes that family and outsiders heard little of his life inside (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). This page archives the claim as single-chain, church-side sourcing and grades it unverified: it may be entirely true, and it fits the man, but no second independent source corroborates it, so it is not written into the factual layer. In the same spirit of marking the gaps: which detention centre held him, and in which prison he later served his sentence, appear in no public record this page could find. The church's prayer letter names the Chengdu City Detention Centre for others detained in the case, but not for Qin; neither ChinaAid, nor USCIRF, nor Church in Chains names his prison. Both items are recorded here as: no public record.
The Hearing: 25 November, or 29 November
The hearing date is this case's second conflict that must be carried in parallel. The Church in Chains timeline is specific: on 25 November 2019 Qin was tried at the Qingyang People's Court; the court gave his wife only two passes to attend, so no one from the church was present; many plainclothes officials reportedly gathered outside to intimidate his supporters; the court pressed him to plead guilty and he refused; the judge declared his criminal act especially grave (Church in Chains profile). His wife's social-media post after that day, as the profile relays it, records that she and her father returned home accompanied by police, that the prosecutor accused Qin of illegal business, that the lawyer defended his innocence, and that Qin himself testified that it is not a crime to have faith. ChinaAid's narrative gives a different frame: on 29 November 2019 the Qingyang District Court "secretly tried" the case, by which time he had been detained for almost a year; in the days before, police again interviewed church members on a large scale and warned them not to go near the court; on the day itself plainclothes officers surrounded the court, blocked roads within a radius of a kilometre, and posted a notice at the gate reading "No visitors due to system upgrade"; his wife received two gallery passes, and more than ten people attended (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative).
The two accounts agree closely on the passes, the plainclothes cordon and the refusal to plead guilty; they differ on the date and the degree of secrecy — a hearing on 25 November with sentence on 29 November, or hearing and sentence together on 29 November. USCIRF records only the sentencing date, 29 November, which conflicts with neither. This page archives both versions and states the common floor: the hearing took place in late November 2019 at the Qingyang District People's Court in Chengdu, and judgment was pronounced on 29 November 2019 — four years. The court's own documents were not obtainable; of the full judgment text there is no public record.
The hearing's picture, assembled from both narratives, is this: Qin, in a grey-green coat, answered the judge's questions calmly; the prosecution laid out the numbers of hymnals and tracts, and the judge responded that the defendant's crime was "particularly serious" and the numbers "extremely large"; he refused to plead guilty (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). His final statement, in ChinaAid's version, runs in substance: he was a Christian who served in the church and served others according to the church's needs; as an ordinary citizen he had done nothing against the law or the regulations; faith is no crime (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative, retranslated here from its English rendering and quoted only in short phrases; USCIRF's entry instead records that he shouted words to the effect of "religious belief is not a crime" during the trial — the two wordings differ slightly and point to the same declaration; both are archived in the Verification Note). After sentence, he asked police to carry a message to his wife: not to submit to police pressure and plead guilty (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative, relaying his words to the effect that his conscience did not allow it; the layering is noted in the Verification Note).
The Sentence and Its Chain Reaction: Four Years, Then Nine
On 29 November 2019 the Qingyang District People's Court sentenced Qin Defu to four years' imprisonment for illegal business operations (USCIRF entry; Church in Chains profile; ChinaAid). Whether he appealed is a matter of no public record — none of the three archives mentions an appeal, and this page does not invent one. The term ran from his seizure in December 2018 and expired on 9 December 2022, matching his actual release date exactly, which in turn confirms that the four years were served in full, with no public record of reduction or early release.
Qin's sentence was widely read as the weather vane for Wang Yi's. Lawyer Zhang Peihong estimated immediately after the hearing that Wang would receive no less than ten years (Church in Chains profile, quoting Zhang) — slightly high, but right in direction. A month later, on 26 December 2019, Wang Yi was tried at the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court, and on 30 December that court sentenced him to nine years for inciting subversion of state power and illegal business operations, with three years' deprivation of political rights and confiscation of personal assets of 50,000 yuan (announcement of the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court, corroborated by multiple outlets and by USCIRF's Wang Yi entry; for the full case see this site's Wang Yi case). Amnesty International responded the same day, calling the nine-year sentence appalling and unjust and Wang Yi a prisoner of conscience who must be released immediately and unconditionally (Amnesty International, 30 December 2019). Note how the charges interlock: the same "illegal business operations" count sits inside Wang's nine years too, and one of its sources is this same batch of church-printed books — books for which the pastor, in his testimony, had actively taken most of the responsibility onto himself (per Zhang Peihong). The elder still served his four years first, in full. One batch of 20,000 internal-use booklets was thus spent twice, in two separate judgments.
What It Cost the Family
The family's account in this case has to be reckoned in three parts. The first is his wife. After 9 December 2018 she and the lawyer went to the detention centre again and again to apply for a visit, and were refused every time (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). Her younger child had been born that March — the daughter arrived in March 2018 (ChinaAid profile: at his release she was four years old and had been born in March 2018; the 2022 release report says the youngest was born about nine months before his arrest — the two accounts agree). Not until 4 February 2019 did she manage to finish the New Year family intercession letter the couple had planned in early December (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). On the hearing day she went in on one of the court's two gallery passes, was escorted home by police afterwards, and posted that the prosecutor had accused, the lawyer had defended his innocence, her husband had testified that faith is not a crime, and that for the outcome they could only pray and look up — justice, she wrote, is in God's hand (Church in Chains profile, relaying her post in substance). After sentencing, the message her husband sent out through the police was: do not submit to the pressure and plead guilty (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative).
The second part is the two children. The couple have two children (ChinaAid, release report of 2022; the Church in Chains profile names the younger child Zhuoling, born in 2018 — the Chinese characters of the name are not verified in any public record available to this page). The Church in Chains profile records that from his arrest he was not allowed to see his family — a statement made of his imprisonment years, and consistent with the record of refused visit applications. In plain terms: the younger daughter was nine months old when her father was taken, and past her fourth birthday when he came home; for the first four years of her life she could know him only from photographs and her mother's telling. ChinaAid's profile puts his homecoming in one quiet phrase: he is "getting to know his four-year-old daughter" (ChinaAid profile). Getting to know — that is the whole of this part of the account.
The third part is his mother. In 2018 the family first buried the father; by the year's end the son had been taken too, and the old woman had also suffered an injury of her own (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). The church narrative preserves her "I am not afraid" answer (see the Deyang section above, archived at the church-account layer). Beyond that, whether the family faced other harassment in those four years, whether the wife's work was affected, how the household lived — the public record contains no systematic account, and this page records it as no public record rather than writing the family's life for them.
Four Years Inside: The Emptiest Stretch of the File
From sentencing on 29 November 2019 to release on 9 December 2022 — over three years — the public record about Qin Defu himself is close to blank. That is not for want of searching on this page's part: ChinaAid's profile, updated after his release, says it plainly — besides his arrest and the false charge of illegal business operations, not many details surround Qin and his imprisonment (ChinaAid, release report of 2022). In which prison he served: no public record. Whether family visits were permitted: the profile written during his imprisonment says he had not been allowed to see them (Church in Chains profile). His health in custody: no public record until release, when ChinaAid's sources said he looked well (ChinaAid, release report of 2022).
The blank itself belongs in the archive, because it is the norm in cases like this. A church administrator who is neither a public figure nor a pulpit preacher, once shut inside, leaves almost no trace the outside world can follow; what the outside can do is speak his name and his sentence aloud on anniversaries. Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) did exactly that in its statement of 9 December 2020, marking two years since the crackdown: two years on, it noted, Wang Yi and church elder Qin Defu remained in prison serving sentences of nine and four years respectively, and it reiterated its call for the release of both men and an end to the harassment of church members (CSW statement, preserved via Lord David Alton's website). Beyond that, this page found no further international appeals naming Qin personally between 2020 and 2022, and records that absence as it stands: no public record.
9 December 2022: Home, Sentence Complete
On 9 December 2022, exactly four years on, Qin Defu was released on completion of his sentence (ChinaAid, 15 December 2022; USCIRF entry; Church in Chains profile — three sources in agreement). ChinaAid's sources reported that he looked well after his release and had returned home to his wife and two children; fellow church leaders and members were glad to see him back at a video conference commemorating four years since the crackdown (ChinaAid, release report of 2022). The church and ChinaAid voiced gratitude for his release, in terms of his having endured four years of persecution since the "129" operation (ChinaAid profile).
The date is worth a line of its own: he walked out on the same calendar day he had been taken in, four years to the day. That both confirms the sentence was served in full and settles what the "accept state-appointed lawyers and go home" promise was worth from the start. The first task of his homecoming was to get to know his four-year-old daughter (ChinaAid profile). Whether, after release, he was required to report regularly, kept under surveillance, or able to work normally — the public record says nothing, and this page records it as no public record. That must not be confused with the position of the church as a whole, which is documented in detail, and continuously — as the next section shows.
Latest Status: Silence for the Man, Pressure Without Pause for the Church
The last reliable record this page's verification (4 November 2026) could find concerning Qin Defu personally ends in December 2022: his release home and his appearance at the fourth-anniversary video conference (ChinaAid). From then until the verification date, whether he has attended church gatherings, been summoned or detained again, or how his health stands — of all of this there is no public record. This page draws neither the inference that he is "safe and undisturbed" nor that he is "still under pressure"; it records the archive's actual edge: after his release, this man disappears from the public record.
The church-level record runs in exactly the opposite direction, entry after entry. In December 2023, around the fifth anniversary of "129," Chengdu police mounted another sweeping stability-maintenance operation: on 8 December Elder Li Yingqiang was visited at home and explicitly warned not to go online around 9 December, and on the 9th he and his wife were taken to a police station and held until late at night; preacher Dai Zhichao was taken on the afternoon of the 9th, his home searched, and the next day he was criminally detained by the Chengdu Public Security Bureau for picking quarrels and provoking trouble, before completing thirty days' criminal detention and being released on 9 January 2024 on a year's bail pending trial; deacon Jia Xuewei was unreachable from the early hours of 8 December and was later confirmed to have been administratively detained for fifteen days by the Shuangnan Police Station of the Wuhou sub-bureau; other co-workers were blocked at home by national-security officers and community workers, some families had their power cut, and some spent the night in police stations (ChinaAid, 13 December 2023 and 19 December 2024; CSW as compiled by Human Rights Without Frontiers). Around the sixth anniversary in December 2024, nearly ten members were summoned by community officials in November, and a teahouse gathering was subjected to a surprise police ID check (ChinaAid, 19 December 2024). At the seventh anniversary in 2025, police again pre-emptively detained several core co-workers at a police station, releasing them only after that evening's global prayer meeting had ended (Bitter Winter, 2025 retrospective, church-side sourcing). On 6 January 2026 the church was raided again in a coordinated operation — Li Yingqiang, Dai Zhichao and others were taken, and were later formally arrested on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power (ChinaAid, 23 September 2026; Human Rights Watch, January 2026 statement, archived via ecoi.net). And on 11 September 2026, eleven church members reading together in a Wuhou District teahouse were all taken away; elder Wu Wuqing and member Shen Xiaoqing were each given ten days' administrative detention (ChinaAid, 23 September 2026).
The status conclusion of this page is therefore written in two layers. Qin Defu himself: released on completion of sentence on 9 December 2022 and home; of his personal circumstances since, no public record. Early Rain Covenant Church: pressure unbroken from 2018 to the present, with fresh arrests still occurring in 2026. Keeping the layers separate matters — so that the church's documented ordeal is not passed off as the man's own current situation, and so that his silence is not misread as the persecution having ended.
The International Response
For Qin Defu personally, the most formal international record comes from a United States federal body: USCIRF lists him in its Religious Prisoners of Conscience database — religion given as Christian (Protestant), status as a religious leader, grounds as religious activity and unregistered religious activity, charge type as illegal business activity, current status as released (USCIRF database, Tan Defu entry; on the name variant, see the dedicated section above). USCIRF is an independent commission of the United States federal government, and its database is among the sources governments and parliaments most commonly draw on for China's religious prisoners of conscience — Qin Defu's firmest place in the official international record sits there, under the spelling "Tan Defu."
From churches and rights organisations, the response ran the length of his imprisonment. ChinaAid tracked the case from December 2018, published the long church narrative centred on him at the end of 2019, and followed his release in 2022 (ChinaAid profile; 2019 narrative; 2022 release report). Christian Solidarity Worldwide, in its second-anniversary statement of 9 December 2020, named Wang Yi and Qin Defu and called for the release of both (CSW statement, 9 December 2020). News of his sentencing, carried out by ChinaAid in late November and early December 2019, was taken up by the Christian Post, Evangelical Focus and other Christian outlets, most of them noting the broken "change lawyers and go home" promise (Christian Post, 2 December 2019; Evangelical Focus, December 2019). Amnesty International's statement of 30 December 2019 designating Wang Yi a prisoner of conscience addressed the same raid and the same construction of charges; it did not name Qin, and this page records it as same-case background, not as a statement about him. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention opinion adopted in the "129" cases concerned Wang Yi (noted in Human Rights Without Frontiers' 2023 compilation) and did not reach Qin personally; of any government statement addressed to Qin's case alone, this page found no record, and records it as such: no public record.
Timeline
1989: Qin Defu's father comes to believe and later becomes a rural preacher in Deyang; he is twice detained for religious reasons, for half a month and for one month (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). c. 1981: Qin Defu is born in rural Deyang, Sichuan (year inferred from "37 at the end of 2018"; exact date of birth of no public record). Youth: raised around the Three-Self church with his father; leaves school after junior high and goes into trade — video rentals, a general store, an online shop (ChinaAid profile and 2019 narrative). 2011: marries (his wife is given in pinyin as Xiao Hongliu) (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). 2014: the couple settle in Chengdu and join Early Rain Covenant Church (ChinaAid profile). 2017: attends the Reformation 500 conference in Jakarta; the same year closes his business for full-time ministry and is elected a deacon (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative and profile). 2018: ordained an elder, responsible for church administration (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). March 2018: his younger daughter is born (ChinaAid profile). 2018: his father dies in a car accident on his way home from preaching (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative; Church in Chains profile). Late April 2018: on a preaching tour to the Wenchuan disaster area, he is placed on a police wanted list, his photograph circulated to stations along the route (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative). 12 May 2018: the tenth-anniversary Wenchuan prayer meeting is raided; he and another elder are taken away and released the next day (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative).
Evening of 9 December 2018: Chengdu police launch the "129" mass raid; dozens of officers take Qin Defu away (ChinaAid dating; USCIRF gives 10 December — carried in parallel); more than a hundred church members are seized, and the church, its school and its library are shut (ChinaAid; Bitter Winter, 2025). 10 December 2018: the Chengdu Religious Affairs Bureau declares the church's activities in violation of the revised Religious Affairs Regulations (Church in Chains profile). 8 March 2019: the church's prayer letter still lists Qin Defu as criminally detained, charge illegal business operations (church prayer letter, archived). Early August 2019: the family is told he has "hired" two lawyers inside custody and the family-retained lawyer is shut out; the authorities' promise that accepting state-appointed lawyers would free him comes to nothing (ChinaAid, 2019 narrative; Church in Chains profile). 25 November / 29 November 2019 (versions in parallel): he is tried at the Qingyang District People's Court, Chengdu — Church in Chains dates the hearing 25 November; ChinaAid's narrative has a secret hearing on 29 November — and refuses to plead guilty (both sources). 29 November 2019: the Qingyang District People's Court sentences him to four years for illegal business operations (USCIRF; Church in Chains; ChinaAid). 30 December 2019: in the same case, Wang Yi is sentenced by the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court to nine years for inciting subversion and illegal business operations (court announcement; USCIRF Wang Yi entry). 9 December 2020: CSW's second-anniversary statement names Wang Yi and Qin Defu and calls for their release (CSW statement). 9 December 2022: released on completion of sentence; home to his wife and two children (ChinaAid; USCIRF; Church in Chains — three sources in agreement). December 2023: at the fifth anniversary the church is subjected to mass stability maintenance — Dai Zhichao criminally detained, Jia Xuewei administratively detained for fifteen days, Li Yingqiang and his wife taken to a police station (ChinaAid). 6 January 2026: Early Rain is raided again in a coordinated operation (ChinaAid; Human Rights Watch). 4 November 2026: this page's verification — of Qin Defu's personal circumstances since his release there is still no public record.
Our Take
The most instructive thing about the Qin Defu case is the seam between the charge and the facts. Twenty thousand books, printed by a church for itself, most of them gospel tracts distributed free — no source alleges that a single copy was ever sold. Yet once "printing without a licence" is fitted into the pocket of "illegal business operations," the elder who managed a church's administration becomes a criminal defendant, and the tariff is four years. In court the prosecutors did not mention the church or the faith; the judge counted booklets — the larger the number, the "particularly serious" the crime. The convenience of the method is that the word "religion" never appears in a judgment, and in every later statistic and briefing this registers not as religious persecution but as a publishing-administration case. This page files it under persecution records not on the strength of its own stance but on the case's own provenance: he was seized as an elder of Early Rain Covenant Church, on raid night, together with his pastor and over a hundred fellow believers; and the books he was tried for, alone, were the books the whole congregation used. Cutting a man out of his church, trying him in isolation, and then declaring the case unconnected to faith is precisely the technique this case exists to document.
The second point is the broken promise. First the detained man "hires," inside custody, two lawyers nobody can identify; then his family is quoted a price — surrender your own lawyer, accept the appointed ones, and he walks out after a court appearance. The family paid the price; the sentence was four years (the record on the church and ChinaAid side is consistent; the authorities have made no public statement on it). That is not a small defect in a defence system; it is the right to a defence itself used as bait — sever the family's link to its own counsel first, then trade on the hope of release to obtain a courtroom in which no real defence will be offered. What Qin did inside that arranged courtroom was refuse to plead guilty and say that faith is no crime; after sentence he sent word out that his wife should not submit to the pressure and plead guilty either. A month later Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years on a charge sheet that included the same illegal-business count, over books whose responsibility the pastor had already taken onto himself in testimony — and the elder's four years did not shrink by a day. Set the two judgments side by side and the phrase "handled according to law" does not survive the comparison.
The third point is who pays. Qin Defu was not a public figure. He preached no famous sermon and wrote no famous essay; in his church he managed administration. What a four-year sentence looked like inside his household was this: a daughter who grew from nine months to four years old with her father present only in photographs; a wife who carried two children alone, whose every application to visit a detention centre was refused, who was given two gallery passes for the hearing and escorted home by police afterwards; an old mother who, in a single year, buried her husband and lost her son to a cell. The case is also a reminder of how attention works in a mass arrest: when over a hundred people are taken, the public gaze settles on the most famous one — but sentences are served one person at a time. Alongside Wang Yi's nine years there is Qin Defu's four, and one family's four years. This page gives him a file of his own because an archive keeps its records by the person, not by the fame.
Verification Note
The evidence for this page is layered as follows. Layer one (government and quasi-official records): the USCIRF Religious Prisoners of Conscience database entry "Tan Defu" — establishing his religious-leader status, the grounds of religious activity and unregistered religious activity, the illegal-business character of the charge, the four-year sentence, sentencing on 29 November 2019, release on 9 December 2022, "released" status, and its 10 December detainment-date version; the USCIRF Wang Yi entry and the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court announcement (as carried by multiple outlets) establishing the same-case nine-year sentence. Layer two (church and specialist rights organisations): ChinaAid's profile, its long church narrative of 30 December 2019, its release report of 15 December 2022, and its 2023, 2024 and 2026 anniversary and renewed-raid reporting — establishing his biography and family, the 2018 wanted-list episode and May seizure, the "129" night seizure by dozens of officers, the refused visit applications, the appointed-lawyer episode and broken promise, the hearing and final statement, the cellmate-preaching report (single chain, below), and the release home to a four-year-old daughter; Christian Solidarity Worldwide's statement of 9 December 2020 — the named call for his release during imprisonment; Amnesty International's statement of 30 December 2019 — same-case background on Wang Yi. Layer three (a church-compiled profile): the Church in Chains (Ireland) Qin Defu profile, sourced to ChinaAid, Early Rain Covenant Church and International Christian Concern — establishing the 25 November hearing version, the two gallery passes, the 20,000 unlicensed hymnals and the publishing authority detail, Zhang Peihong's post-hearing assessment, the family composition, and the 2018–2019 church timeline. Layer four (news reporting): the Christian Post of 2 December 2019 and Evangelical Focus of December 2019 — the first wave of international coverage of the sentence on the ChinaAid account, including the anomalous church-size figure (5,000 members, unverified, below). Layer five (primary church material in archive): Early Rain Covenant Church's prayer-letter list of March 2019 (via Pathway Learning) — establishing the Chinese-character form of his name, 覃德富, his criminal-detention status in March 2019 and the charge as the church recorded it.
Conflict list (all carried in parallel, none merged): (1) Name forms: 覃德富 / Qin Defu (church and ChinaAid) alongside Tan Defu (USCIRF main entry, with Qin Defu as additional name only) and Derfu (a Church in Chains variant spelling); this page's main form follows the church, with the variants archived in a dedicated section. (2) Detainment date: the evening of 9 December 2018 (church and ChinaAid) versus 10 December 2018 (USCIRF) — one day apart; this page's sort date is 9 December, with both versions in the text. (3) Who became a Christian in 1989: ChinaAid's narrative states explicitly that it was his father; compressed secondary wording, including the Church in Chains profile's ambiguous pronoun, is easily misread as Qin himself, and this page follows ChinaAid and corrects the point here. (4) Hearing date and form: a hearing on 25 November (Church in Chains) versus a secret hearing and sentencing on 29 November (ChinaAid); the sentencing date of 29 November is common to all sources. (5) Wording of the final statement: ChinaAid's long version ("a Christian who served in the church… faith is no crime," retranslated here from its English rendering) alongside USCIRF's version (a courtroom shout to the effect of "religious belief is not a crime"). (6) Arrest figures: over a hundred taken on the night (ChinaAid; Bitter Winter), at least 150 within the week (Church in Chains), and 28 administrative plus 29 criminal detentions (the church's 2023 retrospective, via ChinaAid) — different counting frames, archived in layers. (7) Church size: over 500 (church and Chinese Wikipedia), over 800 (Church in Chains), 5,000 (the Christian Post alone, out of line with all other sources, graded unverified and not used). (8) The business he closed: a general store (ChinaAid profile) versus a Taobao shop (ChinaAid 2019 narrative) — slightly different wordings, archived in parallel. (9) Age: 37 at the end of 2018 (ChinaAid narrative) and "(39)" in the Church in Chains profile heading (its age at that profile's c. 2020 publication) are not in conflict, but neither is a birth record; this page infers only "born c. 1981" and pins nothing down. Unverified item: "preached the gospel to his cellmates in detention" rests on a single ChinaAid sourcing chain — its own 2019 narrative hedges it as "it is said" — and is archived as unverified in the text. Missing items (each: no public record): his exact date of birth; the Chinese characters for his wife's and younger daughter's names; the detention centre that held him and the prison where he served; the full text of the judgment; whether he appealed; visit and health records from his imprisonment; his personal circumstances from his release to today, including any later summons, surveillance or restriction; any government statement addressed to his case alone; and any UN body opinion on his individual case.
Sources
- United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Religious Prisoners of Conscience database, "Tan Defu" entry: establishes the additional name Qin Defu, his status as an Early Rain Covenant Church elder, the 10 December 2018 detainment-date version, sentencing by the Qingyang District People's Court on 29 November 2019 to four years for illegal business activity, its version of the courtroom "religious belief is not a crime" declaration, release on completion on 9 December 2022 and "released" status. https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/tan-defu
- ChinaAid, "Elder Qin Defu" profile: establishes his leaving school for business, his Three-Self upbringing, joining Early Rain in 2014, closing his general store for full-time ministry in 2017 and becoming a deacon, managing church activities alongside Wang Yi, the police "backbone" label, the secret trial of November 2019 and the full final statement, the single-chain report that he preached to cellmates, his release on 9 December 2022, and his getting to know his four-year-old daughter, born in March 2018. https://chinaaid.org/elder-qin-defu/
- ChinaAid, "Early Rain Covenant Church — They Passed Through the Valley of Tears: Part 2," 30 December 2019: establishes his father's conversion in 1989 and two detentions, the father's death in a car accident in 2018, the daughter's birth in 2018, the 2011 marriage, the 2017 Jakarta conference and ordination as elder, the April 2018 Wenchuan tour and wanted list, the 12 May 2018 seizure and next-day release, the seizure by dozens of officers on the evening of 9 December, the refused visit applications, the August 2019 "self-hired lawyers" notice, the secret hearing of 29 November 2019 and final statement, and the message sent to his wife after sentencing. https://chinaaid.org/news/featured/early-rain-covenant-church-they-passed-2/
- ChinaAid, "Elder Qin Defu of Early Rain released," 15 December 2022: establishes his release on 9 December 2022 after serving his four-year sentence, the closure of the church's school and library in the "129" raid, his internal-management (non-preaching) role, that he looked well after release, his return to his two children with the youngest born nine months before his arrest, his appearance at the fourth-anniversary video conference, and the background of Wang Yi still serving nine years. https://chinaaid.org/news/stories-by-issue/religious-freedom/elder-qin-defu-of-early-rain-released/
- Church in Chains (Ireland), prisoner profile "Qin Defu": establishes the 25 November 2019 hearing version at the Qingyang People's Court, the two gallery passes for his wife, the printing of 20,000 hymnals, pamphlets and books without authorisation from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the judge's "especially grave" remark, his wife's post-hearing social-media post, the broken promise that accepting two state-assigned lawyers would free him, Zhang Peihong's post-trial assessment, the two children with the younger, Zhuoling, born in 2018, the father's 2018 car-accident death, and the 2018–2019 timeline of pressure on the church. https://www.churchinchains.ie/prisoner-profiles/qin-defu/
- The Christian Post, "China: Early Rain Church leader sentenced to four years in prison over Gospel tracts," 2 December 2019: establishes the first wave of international reporting of the sentence on ChinaAid's account, the 20,000 church-use books and the broken promise, and Zhang Peihong's relayed account of Wang Yi's testimony; its "5,000-member church" figure conflicts with all other sources and is graded unverified on this page. https://www.christianpost.com/world/china-early-rain-church-leader-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-over-gospel-tracts.html
- Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), second-anniversary statement on the Early Rain crackdown, 9 December 2020 (preserved via Lord David Alton's website): establishes that at the second anniversary Wang Yi and Qin Defu remained in prison serving nine and four years respectively, and CSW's call for the release of both men and an end to the harassment of church members. https://www.davidalton.net/2020/12/09/9-december-2020-china-csw-marks-anniversary-of-crackdown-on-early-rain-church-as-conditions-worsen/page/15/?et_blog
- ChinaAid, "Preacher Dai Zhichao criminally detained around the fifth anniversary of Chengdu Early Rain Covenant Church crackdown," 13 December 2023: establishes the fifth-anniversary stability-maintenance details — Li Yingqiang and his wife taken to a police station, Dai Zhichao criminally detained, Jia Xuewei administratively detained for fifteen days — and the church's retrospective figures of 28 administrative and 29 criminal detentions from 2018. https://chinaaid.org/news/preacher-dai-zhichao-criminally-detained-chengdu-early-rain-covenant-church-crackdown/
- ChinaAid, "Early Rain Covenant Church members warned and raided by police on eve of '129' crackdown anniversary," 19 December 2024: establishes the summonses of nearly ten members ahead of the sixth anniversary, the retrospective account of the 2023 anniversary controls, Dai Zhichao's January 2024 release on bail, and the continuing timeline of pressure on the church. https://chinaaid.org/persecution-by-province/sichuan/early-rain-covenant-church-members-warned-and-raided-by-police-in-teahouses-on-eve-of-129-crackdown-anniversary/
- ChinaAid, "Two Early Rain Church members released; Chinese police crackdown continues," 23 September 2026: establishes the coordinated raid of 6 January 2026, the 11 September 2026 teahouse reading detentions with ten days' administrative detention each for Wu Wuqing and Shen Xiaoqing, and its retrospective confirmation that Qin Defu was detained in 2018, sentenced to four years and released in December 2022. https://chinaaid.org/news/two-early-rain-church-members-released-chinese-police-crackdown-continues/
- Amnesty International, "China: 'Appalling' jail sentence for outspoken pastor makes mockery of religious freedoms," 30 December 2019: establishes the prisoner-of-conscience designation and call for immediate and unconditional release in the same-case sentencing of Wang Yi (same-case background). https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/12/china-appalling-jail-sentence-outspoken-pastor-makes-mockery-of-religious-freedoms-2/
- USCIRF, Religious Prisoners of Conscience database, "Wang Yi" entry: establishes Wang Yi's detention on 9 December 2018, his sentencing on 30 December 2019 by the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court to nine years for inciting subversion and illegal business activity with three years' deprivation of political rights, and his imprisonment at Jintang Prison, Chengdu. https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/wang-yi
- Early Rain Covenant Church prayer letters (compilation no. 32, archived via Pathway Learning): establishes Qin Defu as still criminally detained as of 8 March 2019 on the illegal-business-operations charge (dated 9 December), the Chinese-character form of his name, 覃德富, and the list of those detained with him. https://www.pathwaylearning.org/pathway-blog/5862-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2
- Bitter Winter, "A Prayer for the Chinese Church: Seven Years After the Early Rain Case," 2025: establishes the commemorative account of the "129" night, the catalogue of stability-maintenance methods used around each 9 December anniversary, the detentions at the fifth anniversary in 2023 and the seventh in 2025, and — as corroboration of the name-variant problem — its own mixed use of "Qin Defu" and "Tan Defu" in a single article. https://bitterwinter.org/a-prayer-for-the-chinese-church-seven-years-after-the-early-rain-case/