(Minghui.org) When Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party, ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, he gave three persecution policies, “Ruin their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and eliminate them physically.”
In recent years, suspending elderly practitioners’ pension benefits has become a major way to “bankrupt them financially.” Listed below are examples of such persecution cases in Jiangxi Province.
Case 1
Ms. Wang Shifan, a retired accountant with the Saichenghu Reclamation Farm, and her husband, Mr. Lu Zhenxiang, an electrician at a fish farm, were repeatedly targeted for upholding their faith since 1999.
Mr. Lu was arrested at least seven times, and his pension was suspended starting in the early 2000s. When Ms. Wang reached retirement age in 2002, the Jiujiang County Labor and Personnel Bureau refused to process her retirement application. Her employer stopped paying her after she applied for her pension. It wasn’t until 2005 that the Jiujiang County Social Security Bureau started issuing her a monthly 600-yuan pension, which was 60 yuan short of what she should have received given her years of service.
The couple repeatedly appealed to the authorities, but to no avail. After enduring years of the persecution, Mr. Lu died in 2016 at the age of 71, and Ms. Wang passed away in February 2026 at the age of 79.
Case 2
Ms. Yan Jinghua, 65, of Nanchang City, was sentenced three times for a total of 11 years and 10 months between 2006 and 2019. While she was still in prison in October 2022, the Xihu District Court that convicted her garnished 20,000 yuan from her bank account to pay her court fine. Her family was never notified of the fund withdrawal, and only found out about it when they went to the bank for some transactions. They also noticed later that her medical insurance was also stopped.
When Ms. Yan finished serving a third term of five years in April 2023, she was devastated to learn that she was required to pay back all retirement benefits issued during her three prison terms, totaling 137,397.14 yuan.
Ms. Yan went missing in June 2025, likely having been arrested again.
Case 3
Ms. Zhou Meili, a 70-year-old retiree in Jiujiang City, has been sentenced three times since the onset of the persecution. She was given three years after an arrest in July 2011, sentenced to four and a half years following her arrest in May 2016, and sentenced again to three and a half years in November 2022.
Shortly after Ms. Zhou finished serving her second prison term on November 8, 2020, the Jiujiang City Social Security Bureau ordered her to pay back the 110,000 yuan in pension funds she received while serving time. The agency claimed that a new policy barred all retirees from receiving retirement benefits while serving time, although there is no such Chinese labor law. Because Ms. Zhou couldn’t afford to repay the funds, the social security bureau suspended her pension. She relied on financial support from her children to get by.
Case 4
Ms. Liu Yongying, 63, was a senior lecturer at Jiangxi Civil Administration School in Nanchang City. She was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to two years. After she was released from prison in 2020, her husband told her that the authorities had forced her school to fire her in May 2018, only one month after her arrest. She was also deprived of her right to pension payments after she reached retirement age in September 2018.
Case 5
Ms. Yao Aiying, in her 60s, a retired accountant at a winery, was sentenced three times to Jiangxi Women’s Prison for a total of 10 years and nine months, including a three-year term in 2003, a 4.5-year term in October 2009, and the latest term of three years and three months given in July 2020. She was deprived of all of her social security pension, and the annual increase in her pension was also stopped. She was arrested again in 2025 and received another prison sentence of unknown length.
Case 6
Ms. Peng Xiaolan, 61, is a former employee of Nanchang Normal University. She was arrested at home on August 21, 2024, and given 14 days of administrative detention. Starting in October 2024, the school stopped her bonus and fringe benefits, using her detention as an excuse. They also lowered the salary base used to calculate her future retirement benefits by 30% (generally speaking, the higher the base, the higher the benefits, everything else being the same).
Case 7
Ms. Yu Cuihua, a 76-year-old retired state-enterprise employee, has had her pension suspended since 2016, with the excuse that she had been sentenced twice to a total of nine years and six months for practicing Falun Gong. The social security bureau also demanded that she return the pension she received during her prison terms.
Case 8
Ms. Xiong Meiying, a 78-year-old retired nurse in Nanchang City, was arrested on September 24, 2016, for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong. She was sentenced to three and a half years in Jiangxi Women’s Prison on June 27, 2017. In October 2019, while she was still serving time, the Shengmi Town Health Center she retired from stopped issuing her pension payments.
When Ms. Xiong was released in March 2020 with poor vision from torture while in custody, she found that her house had collapsed and valuable items were stolen. She was even more devastated to find that her pension had been suspended. The local Honggutan District Social Security Bureau told Ms. Xiong that after a recent pension reform, her workplace failed to make contributions to her pension account, which disqualified her from receiving any future pension payments.
Two staff members from the social security bureau further demanded on August 20, 2021, that Ms. Xiong return the 131,946.14 yuan she had received between September 2016 and October 2019, citing a policy from the Jiangxi provincial government that bars retirees from receiving retirement benefits while serving time. They threatened to take legal action against her if she didn’t return the money in time.
To seek justice, Ms. Xiong filed an administrative motion to reconsider her case with the Honggutan District government in August 2021. Despite that she won the case, the social security bureau still refused to reinstate her pension.
Case 9
Ms. Liang Meihua, a 78-year-old retired state-enterprise employee, was arrested in 2002, while in Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. Her employer sent people to escort her back, who garnished her salary to pay for the travel expenses of those people. After she was arrested and sentenced in March 2003, she had her pension suspended for five years (she retired in late 2003). In 2016, the authorities suspended her pension again. She appealed with the social security bureau, but her pension was never reinstated.
Case 10
Ms. Kuang Zhihua, a 63-year-old former teacher at the Liantang First Middle School in Nanchang County, was sentenced to seven and a half years on June 21, 2019. While serving time in the Jiangxi Province Women’s Prison, she was ordered to return 94,000 yuan pension she had received. Now, over a year since she was released, her pension still hasn’t been reinstated.
Case 11
Ms. Zheng Yinxiu, a 73-year-old former teacher at the Wuyang Township Central Elementary School in Nanchang County, was sentenced to seven years on June 21, 2019. While serving time in the Jiangxi Province Women’s Prison, the social security bureau suspended her pension of over 150,000 yuan. Although they promised to reinstate her pension payments upon her release in September 2024, this has not yet happened.
Case 12
Ms. Xuan Haijin, a 71-year-old retired state-enterprise employee, was sentenced to nine years in 2006 for distributing Falun Gong materials. She only received pension for six years during her prison term. The authorities suspended her pension again beginning in 2018, and she hasn’t had any income since.
Case 13
Ms. Meng Zhengfen, in her 60s, was sentenced to three years in 2015. She has had her pension suspended shortly after. She relies on her husband’s pension to get by.
Case 14
Ms. Zou Liumei was given a two-year labor camp term in 2006 and sentenced to two years in prison in February 2013. Her pension has been suspended since August 2020.
Case 15
Ms. Deng Guiying, a 72-year-old former worker at Dongfeng Printing Factory, was sentenced to three years in 2019. After being released on September 18, 2022, she was ordered to return the pension benefits issued to her during her imprisonment. She refused to comply, as China’s labor law protects her lawfully-earned retirement benefits. The social security office then suspended her pension in an attempt to “claw back” the already-issued benefits.
Case 16
Ms. Ge Ling, a 75-year-old retired pharmacist, was arrested on April 21, 2016. She endured four years of torture in Jiangxi Province Women’s Prison, and had a leg amputated as a result. On April 20, 2021, one year after Ms. Ge was released from prison, the local Yongxiu County Human Resources and Social Insurance Bureau informed her former employer, the Yongxiu County Chinese Medicine Hospital, that they were going to suspend her pension and medical insurance, as well as seek the return of the 270,741 yuan in pension funds issued to her from October 2014 to April 2021.
Ms. Ge wrote several letters to various government agencies to seek justice, but to no avail. She then filed an administrative lawsuit against the local social security bureau with the Chaisang District Court. But only one month after the court accepted the case, it was dismissed, with the excuse that her case didn’t qualify for administrative litigation. Ms. Ge appealed with the Jiujiang City Intermediate Court, which ruled on June 14, 2022 to uphold the lower court’s ruling.
Case 17
Ms. Xiong Quanmei, a 75-year-old retired worker, was sentenced twice, totaling eight years. In addition to the court fines, the social security bureau also ordered her to return the funds she received during her terms. She refused to comply and her pension was suspended.
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