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Lee Ming-che was born in Taiwan in 1975. From 2000 to 2012 he worked in politics: as an assistant to legislator Hsu Chung Pi-hsia starting July 2000, on Tsai Ing-wen's New Taipei mayoral campaign in June 2010, and as executive director of the Democratic Progressive Party's Hsinchu County chapter in April 2011. In the Taiwanese media's words, he was "never a high-profile person" — newspapers had barely heard his name before 2017.

An article friends later wrote, "Who Is Lee Ming-che," laid out the resume: assistant to legislator Hsu Chung Pi-hsia in July 2000, staffer on Tsai Ing-wen's New Taipei mayoral campaign in June 2010, executive director of the DPP's Hsinchu County chapter in April 2011. The years showed him Taiwan's inequalities — and pushed him toward labor and human rights work.

Born in 1975, he was 42 when taken — the age in Taiwan when you're sandwiched between aging parents and young children. He had gone to the mainland to get his mother-in-law medical care.

After leaving politics in 2012 he turned to workers' rights, and in January 2014 joined an NGO collecting historical materials on transitional justice, while working as a program officer at Taipei's Wenshan Community College. The college's president, Cheng Hsiu-chuan, later described him as "clear-thinking" and devoted to democracy and human rights.

Wenshan Community College sits in Taipei's Wenshan District, part of Taiwan's community-college system. Lee worked there as a program officer, teaching human-rights courses — taking the street into the classroom.

For years he followed civil society on both sides of the strait, sharing Taiwan's democratic transition experience with friends on the mainland online, and helping the families of some mainland rights defenders. To him, these were the most ordinary kinds of civic exchange.

He paid special attention to mainland rights lawyers and their families. After the 709 crackdown, many families sought help online — he reposted, spoke up, connected them with Taiwanese NGOs. All of it ended up as "evidence" in the indictment.

At 11:51 p.m. on March 19, 2017, he crossed from Macau into Zhuhai, Guangdong, through the Gongbei Port checkpoint. The trip was reportedly to arrange medical treatment for his mother-in-law and visit friends. After that, he went silent: no calls answered, no messages replied. Taiwanese authorities later established that there was no hotel check-in record after his entry, nor any record of formal arrest — he had simply vanished.

Gongbei is the busiest land crossing between Macau and Zhuhai, hundreds of thousands passing daily. He entered at 11:51 p.m., among the night's later travelers. After that: no hotel record, no call record — a man walked through immigration and disappeared.

On March 21, news of his disappearance broke and Taiwan was in uproar. His wife Lee Ching-yu contacted the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Macau, which could only confirm he had left Macau and knew nothing more. Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council and Straits Exchange Foundation made inquiries across the strait, but at first got nothing.

Lee Ching-yu first contacted the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Macau, which checked immigration records and could only confirm "he left Macau" — nothing after. For ten full days, Beijing offered no substantive response.

On April 10, Lee Ching-yu arrived at the airport with her bags packed for Beijing, only to be told the Ministry of Public Security was refusing her entry. A wife trying to find her husband, stopped at the border of her own journey.

Late on March 27 she learned indirectly from Taiwanese officials: her husband was being held by mainland state security. On March 28, the MAC publicly demanded an explanation from Beijing.

On March 29 the authorities spoke for the first time. Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Ma Xiaoguang confirmed that Lee was "suspected of endangering national security" and under investigation, and in "good" physical condition. Where he was held, when he could see a lawyer — none of that was said.

At the March 29 Taiwan Affairs Office press conference, Ma Xiaoguang was asked about Lee Ming-che and would only say "under investigation," refusing to name the detention site or say anything about lawyers. Ten days of enforced disappearance, answered with a boilerplate line.

On April 10, Lee Ching-yu booked a flight to the mainland and was refused entry by the Ministry of Public Security. In May came a second confirmation: Lee had been formally arrested for "subverting state power" and was being held in Hunan. From May 16 to 18, his wife flew to the United States to lobby Congress and the U.S. government to speak up for her husband.

In Washington she met lawmakers, officials and rights groups, laying out her husband's case file by file. Back in Taiwan she became the steadiest figure before the cameras: no accepting the "confession," no recognizing that court.

On September 6 she got a sudden call from a mainland lawyer claiming to have been "hired by Lee Ming-che," notifying her that the trial would open September 11 and telling her to prepare to go to the mainland. Until that call, she hadn't even known whether her husband had a lawyer. She rushed to Yueyang with a team of Taiwanese legal advisers.

The Yueyang court was under heavy guard for the trial. The Taiwanese legal advisers she brought could only sit in the gallery — the two mainland lawyers assigned to her husband were strangers to her.

The official case against him rested almost entirely on his online speech: articles and videos posted on WeChat, QQ and Facebook discussing June 4th, the fall of the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe's color revolutions, and promoting Western-style democracy. Prosecutors also said he had teamed up with a mainland man, Peng Yuhua, to run chat groups and write essays that "viciously attacked" the Chinese government and the Communist system.

On September 7, 2017, the court posted a notice online: the trial would open September 11 at the Yueyang court. Only then did the outside world hear the name "Peng Yuhua" for the first time — seven months of official statements had never mentioned a co-defendant.

The trial opened September 11 — the first public trial of an NGO worker since the mainland's Foreign NGO Law took effect, livestreamed on Weibo. In court, Lee "offered no objection" to charges including "subverting state power" and "toppling the pillars of the socialist system," admitting to disseminating speech attacking the Communist system. Co-defendant Peng Yuhua, 37, admitted to setting up instant-messaging groups and founding an organization to promote political change.

The trial was livestreamed on Weibo for the world to watch. Prosecutors read out his "crimes" item by item: WeChat groups, QQ groups, Facebook posts. A Taiwanese NGO worker's online speech, weighed on a courtroom scale.

His wife traveled to Yueyang to observe and rejected the court's legitimacy on the spot, saying her husband had been forced to confess. Amnesty International called the prosecution politically motivated and the evidence baseless. An unnamed mainland lawyer told media at the time that, judging by the trial, Lee looked more like an accomplice than a ringleader. The trial video was released by the authorities; whether Lee was confessing voluntarily could not be independently verified by outsiders.

An unnamed mainland lawyer told media after watching the stream: judging by the case, Lee looked more like an accomplice than a ringleader. But the five-year term said it all — in this case, the sentence wasn't measured by the "crime." It was measured by need.

On November 28, 2017, the verdict came down: five years for Lee, seven for Peng. Lee said in court he would not appeal. He was sent to Chishan Prison in Hunan.

After sentencing, Lee said he would not appeal. In mainland national-security cases, appeals almost never change anything — sometimes not appealing isn't admission of guilt. It's resignation.

According to his wife, he was forced to work ten hours a day in prison, given rotten food, had his warm clothing thrown away, received letters six months late, had his bank account frozen — and was not even allowed to receive medication. She said he was at one point transferred to Yancheng Prison in Hebei, then moved back to Chishan just as inexplicably, with no explanation ever given.

Speaking out about it came at a price: from September to December 2018 the prison barred her visits; she was allowed in once in December, then barred again until April 2019. Over the five years, she and family members managed only five visits in total. In February 2019, Amnesty International issued an urgent action on his behalf.

Others kept the flame besides his wife: Taiwanese rights groups formed a "Search for Lee Ming-che" team, holding street stalls and press conferences in Taipei for years. Hong Kong's Joshua Wong and New Power Party chairman Huang Kuo-chang spoke out too — in 2017, activist circles across Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland could still link up.

In prison his only links to the outside were his wife's visits and letters arriving half a year late. Five visits in five years — one a year. Most families in Taiwan would find a single year without seeing kin hard to bear.

Over those five years, Taiwan's MAC and SEF pressed Beijing repeatedly; the U.S. Congress and the European Union voiced concern; Amnesty declared him a prisoner of conscience; Hong Kong's Joshua Wong and New Power Party chairman Huang Kuo-chang spoke out. Beijing's line remained that the trial was lawful.

The European Union voiced concern more than once. Amnesty named him a prisoner of conscience and issued repeated urgent actions — his case became a window through which the world watched the mainland's human rights record.

Five years, not a day less. On April 14, 2022, Lee Ming-che completed his sentence. On April 15 he flew back to Taiwan, landing at Taoyuan Airport and going straight into ten days of quarantine, greeted by the rights groups that had campaigned for him for five years.

The vaccines he received in prison were Chinese-made, which the U.S. CDC didn't recognize at the time — a freed man, invited to testify in Washington, stopped by a vaccine. Foreign media picked it up as an absurd footnote of the "zero-COVID" era.

After quarantine he gave an interview to Radio Free Asia, describing the five years as "field research" into the mainland's human rights conditions. He said the relentless advocacy by his wife and the international community had slightly improved his treatment inside. He also revealed he had been invited to testify in Washington, but could not enter the United States because the Chinese-made vaccines he received in prison were not recognized — even his post-release plans tripped over the traces of those five years.

He was reported to be the first Taiwanese citizen sentenced by the mainland for "subverting state power." Peng Yuhua, his mainland co-defendant, got seven years — the two men's fates a stark footnote to the human rights gap across the strait.

He did not go quiet after release. In December 2024, over the detention of three elderly I-Kuan Tao adherents on the mainland whose families' pleas went nowhere, he publicly urged Taiwan's government to strictly restrict religious exchanges tainted by united-front work, and kept speaking up for human rights.

The December 2024 I-Kuan Tao case: three Taiwanese in their seventies detained in Guangdong since that October, their families' pleas unanswered. Lee said publicly that Beijing only permits "religious exchanges" that serve united-front work, urging Taipei to tighten scrutiny. The MAC soon warned: until the mainland releases them, travel risks for Taiwanese are rising.

His case set a grim precedent: before him, "subverting state power" sentences fell on mainlanders; after Lee Ming-che, the charge officially landed on a Taiwanese head. Taiwanese traveling to the mainland gained a new fear: every word online could become courtroom evidence.

Five years in prison — no reduction, no parole, not a day less. Released on expiry, which by mainland practice counts as a "good ending." Many convicted of the same charge face residential surveillance on release, or simply "disappear" again.

Nearly four years out, he's still campaigning for other people's cases. From victim to advocate — a road that took him five years in prison to travel. Now it's his turn before the cameras, speaking for those still inside.

A rarely mentioned aftermath: after sentencing, mainland state media cut the trial footage into widely shared "confession" clips, while Lee Ching-yu held press conferences in Taiwan rebutting point by point. The dueling narratives have run since 2017 — neither side convincing the other, but the world watched the trial.

As of October 2026 he remains in Taiwan. From "disappeared" to "forced confession" to "released," the Lee Ming-che case leaves every Taiwanese traveling to the mainland with one question: over there, where exactly does the law end?

The institutional chain of this case deserves to be written out: the investigating organs were the Guangzhou Municipal and Changsha Municipal state security bureaus — Lee was in state security hands from the moment he entered Zhuhai; the prosecuting organ was the Changsha Municipal People's Procuratorate of Hunan, on the charge of "subverting state power"; the trial court was the Yueyang Intermediate People's Court, which delivered the verdict on November 28, 2017. (Sources: Chinese Wikipedia, "Lee Ming-che incident," criminal-procedure information; Reuters, November 28, 2017) One detail of the judgment is often missed: in addition to their prison terms, both Lee and Peng were deprived of political rights for two years. (Source: ibid.) The case was also listed by the Supreme People's Court system's People's Court Daily among the "Top Ten Criminal Cases of 2017" — displayed by the authorities as an achievement, and read by Taiwanese society as a warning: one case, two exhibits.

The court's principal–accomplice finding ran opposite to outside impressions. The judgment held Peng Yuhua to be the "principal offender" and Lee Ming-che an "active participant." (Source: Reuters, November 28, 2017, citing the court) Peng, from Hubei by public reporting, had built a series of instant-messaging groups from 2012 gathering people to discuss political change; Lee, who met him online, joined as a participant, sharing Taiwan's democratization experience and forwarding articles in the groups. A program manager at a Taipei community college thus found himself written into a "subversion of state power" narrative beside its lead defendant — and received five years, two fewer than the "principal." Peng was sentenced to seven years counted from his 2017 detention, his term running to about 2024; no public information about him after release has been found, and this page makes no speculation.

Two institutional steps of Lee Ching-yu's rescue campaign complement the U.S. trip recorded in the main text. First, from May 16 to 18, 2017, she attended hearings and meetings connected with the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) in Washington, placing her husband's case into the congressional record. Second, Taiwanese rights groups submitted the case through UN human rights mechanisms as an urgent appeal — the first case from Taiwan formally taken up by UN human rights mechanisms. (Source: Chinese Wikipedia, "Lee Ming-che incident") On July 6, 2017, the European Parliament adopted a resolution (RC-B8-0459/2017) treating Lee Ming-che's case together with Liu Xiaobo's and demanding Beijing release both men immediately. (Source: European Parliament resolution text) Liu Xiaobo died in custody a week later, on July 13, 2017 — the pairing of the two cases was the international community's overall judgment on China's human rights situation at that moment.

A few more strokes of personal background. Lee Ming-che was born in Taipei on February 25, 1975, graduated from Chinese Culture University's philosophy department, and as a student campaigned against high tuition fees alongside his future wife Lee Ching-yu. (Source: Chinese Wikipedia) In his early years he had even joined the youth wing of a pro-unification party, before labor and human-rights work moved him elsewhere — a trajectory showing his later speech was no script "directed by foreign forces," but the twenty-year daily routine of a Taiwanese civil-society worker: mailing books (a batch of humanities and social-science books he sent at his own expense to mainland friends was seized and confiscated by customs in August 2016), reposting articles, supporting defendants' families. The indictment itemized that routine as criminal evidence — in effect declaring that the boundary of cross-strait civic exchange is drawn by state security indictments.

In 2025 he stood at another parliament's podium. Taiwan's Central News Agency reported that Lee Ming-che spoke publicly at Sweden's parliament in 2025, charging that Beijing imposes Chinese law on Taiwanese people and punishes online speech as "subversion of state power" — cross-border repression; Swedish lawmakers responded that they would keep supporting Taiwan. (Source: CNA reporting, 2025; exact date of the speech unverified) From the defendant's bench in Yueyang to a lectern in Stockholm eight years later, his identity changed from "the man made to confess" back to narrator. That is also this case's status in 2026: the man himself still speaks in public, while his co-defendant Peng Yuhua has vanished from all news — one judgment, two post-prison lives.

The most consequential step in Lee Ching-yu's rescue strategy was refusing the "quiet deal." After her husband vanished, intermediaries claiming channels to Beijing approached her, hinting that if the family kept quiet and admitted the "crime," an early release might follow. At an April 2017 press conference she publicly refused that path — her reasoning: a release bought with a confession would concede the trial's legitimacy, selling out both her husband's name and the speech boundaries of every Taiwanese. (Source: multiple Taiwanese media reports, April 2017) She took the opposite road instead: press conferences, testimony in Washington, a UN appeal, and public briefings on prison conditions after every visit. When Amnesty International and other rights groups later summed up the case, they noted it was precisely this "loud rescue" that spared Lee worse outcomes — a man tried in public could not then be dealt with in secret. The experience later became a reference for Taiwanese groups handling similar cases.

• March 19, 2017 — Lost contact after entering Zhuhai, Guangdong, from Macau via Gongbei Port
• March 29, 2017 — Authorities first confirmed his detention, "suspected of endangering national security"
• May 2017 — Formal arrest confirmed on "subverting state power" charges; held in Hunan
• September 11, 2017 — Tried at the Yueyang Intermediate People's Court; Lee "pleaded guilty"; his wife said the confession was forced
• November 28, 2017 — Sentenced to five years (co-defendant Peng Yuhua got seven); sent to Chishan Prison, Hunan
• February 2019 — Amnesty International issued an urgent action, reporting ill-treatment in prison (rotten food, inadequate winter clothing)
• April 14, 2022 — Released on completing his sentence; returned to Taiwan on April 15
• March 21, 2017 — News of his disappearance breaks; Taiwan in uproar
• April 10, 2017 — Lee Ching-yu refused entry to the mainland; lobbies the U.S. Congress May 16–18
• September 2018 – April 2019 — Lee Ching-yu barred from visits after exposing prison conditions (only 5 visits in five years)
• April 15, 2022 — Returns to Taiwan, Taoyuan Airport; ten days of quarantine
• June 2022 — Tells RFA the five prison years were "field research"
• December 2024 — Urges Taiwan to restrict united-front-tainted religious exchanges over detained I-Kuan Tao adherents
• July 6, 2017 — The European Parliament adopts a resolution (RC-B8-0459/2017) pairing Lee's case with Liu Xiaobo's and demanding immediate release (EP resolution text)
• 2017 (institutional chain) — Investigation: Guangzhou and Changsha state security bureaus; prosecution: Changsha Municipal People's Procuratorate; trial: Yueyang Intermediate People's Court; both men also deprived of political rights for two years (Chinese Wikipedia)
• 2025 — Speaks publicly at Sweden's parliament on cross-border repression (CNA; exact date unverified)