1,296 Days in Limbo: The Trial of Xie Yang and the Eleven Notices That Delayed It for Thirty-Two Months By Way of Punishment

Yaxue Cao, July 29, 2025

I.

At 10 a.m. Beijing time on July 30, 2025, after 1,296 days in detention, lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳) is finally standing trial at the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court. He is charged with “inciting subversion of state power.”

This is the second time Xie Yang has been imprisoned since the internationally known “709 Crackdown” on human rights lawyers that began in 2015. On this occasion, it was for supporting Li Tiantian (李田田), a rural schoolteacher in western Hunan. Li had once published an article on WeChat criticizing China’s poverty alleviation campaigns in the area of education. She argued that it was depriving rural children of genuine learning, as teachers and students were overwhelmed with preparing for inspections from higher authorities, leaving little time for actual education. In response, the local education bureau issued warnings. Over a year later, in December 2021, after Li’s Weibo posts were reported by netizens, she was once again targeted—this time with threats from both the local education bureau and the public security bureau. When she refused to admit fault, the authorities forcibly committed her to a psychiatric hospital. She was pregnant at the time, and managed to send out a plea for help to friends, triggering an outcry on Chinese social media.

On December 26, Xie Yang attempted to visit her but was turned away. Braving the snow, he stood outside her school and the local police bureau, holding a banner that read: “Bring Teacher Li Tiantian and her unborn child home.” The next day, she was released and allowed to return home.

However, two weeks later, on January 11, 2022, lawyer Xie Yang was placed under criminal detention by the Changsha Public Security Bureau. He was accused of “inciting subversion of state power” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

After Xie Yang’s case was transferred to court in August 2022, Article 208 of China’s Criminal Procedure Law required that trials in public prosecution cases be concluded within two months of acceptance—and no later than three months under exceptional circumstances. Yet starting in November 2022, the court issued a detention extension notice every three months. By May of this year, it had issued 11 such notices, delaying the trial by a total of 32 months.

According to Article 210 of the Supreme People’s Court’s Interpretation on the Application of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China:

“In cases where the death penalty may be imposed, where an incidental civil action is also involved, or where any of the circumstances specified in Article 158 of the Criminal Procedure Law apply, a people’s court at the next higher level may approve a one-time extension of the trial period for up to three months. If a further extension is required due to exceptional circumstances, approval must be requested from the Supreme People’s Court.”

Yet the Xie Yang case neither qualifies as a death penalty case that also involves an incidental civil action, and it bears no connection to any of the circumstances outlined in Article 158 of the Criminal Procedure Law. In short, there is no legal basis for postponing the trial except treating the case of Xie Yang “special circumstances.”

II.

What “special circumstances” could possibly warrant 11 extensions and a delay of 32 months? The court has offered no explanation—neither to Xie Yang nor to his lawyers. The Supreme People’s Court, according to the Criminal Procedure Law and Supreme People’s Court’s Interpretation, 10 of the 11 extensions must have been approved by the highest court of the land. This constitutes a stark abuse of the law.

The answer may lie in six characters Xie Yang wrote on New Year’s Day, 2025: “Better to be beheaded than to bow in submission.”

To understand this, we need to return to the 709 crackdown a decade earlier. Xie Yang was one of the lawyers arrested in July 2015. After a year and a half in custody, he was finally allowed to meet his lawyer in December 2016—one of only two detained lawyers from the 709 arrests to do so.

Between late 2016 and early 2017, during several meetings with lawyers Chen Jiangang (陈建刚) and Liu Zhengqing (刘正清), Xie Yang—still in detention—took great personal risk to disclose the torture he had suffered during the six months of secret detention and another year held in a detention center. He named more than twenty individuals responsible.

The two defense lawyers, showing the same courage, released a detailed 20,000-character Transcript of Meetings with Xie Yang, which triggered a wave of international media coverage. It was the first time, a year and a half after the 709 arrests, that the public learned what had happened to the detained lawyers. The extreme brutality of the torture and the absurdity of the charges outraged the public in China and abroad, and brought intense public scrutiny upon the Chinese authorities.

In its aftermath, the public security bureau, procuratorate, and court in Changsha offered Xie Yang a “deal”: he would plead guilty and publicly deny being tortured; in exchange, he would be released and allowed to retain his law license. Xie Yang accepted. At a so-called “public” trial in May 2017, he stated that he had not been tortured and that he had been treated lawfully and humanely. He was released immediately.

But his release did not bring true freedom. He was held under soft detention at a police resort for two months before being allowed to return home. Once back, police rented an apartment on his floor, solely to monitor him, and installed a metal barrier outside his front door. The barrier was eventually removed following strong resistance from Xie Yang himself and mounting public outcry.

Xie Yang resumed legal practice and returned to the work of a human rights lawyer, taking on political and rights defense cases, and speaking out in support of fellow lawyers who had been arrested. But both his life and work faced constant obstruction. When he scanned his ID at airport checkpoints, the system would emit a piercing alarm—a signal within China’s stability-maintenance system marking him as a “key individual.” He was barred from leaving the country to visit his wife and two young daughters, who had fled China while he was in detention.

In August 2020, the Hunan Provincial Department of Justice revoked Xie Yang’s law license, citing his prosecution during the 709 crackdown and the subsequent conviction—though no sentence was imposed—by the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court. The so-called deal offered by the Changsha authorities had been a sham all along. Xie Yang learned this the hard way.

Even so, the Changsha authorities’ animosity toward him clearly has not faded. Xie Yang’s arrest in January 2022—for holding a banner in support of a pregnant rural teacher—bore all the marks of political retaliation. What followed only confirmed it.

On February 24, 2025, from Cell 107 in the Changsha No. 1 Detention Center, Xie Yang wrote an open letter addressed to all lawyers in China. In it, he disclosed to his fellow legal professionals—and to the public—the many procedural violations committed by police, prosecutors, and judges in handling his case. He wrote:

1. To facilitate torture by investigators, the Changsha Public Security Bureau invoked national security case restrictions and barred all meetings with my lawyer during the entire investigation phase.

2. At the prosecution review stage, the assigned prosecutor refused to meet with my lawyer to hear their opinions in person and refused to give her permission to copy case files.

3. During the pre-trial phase, the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court barred my lawyer from copying the case files and failed to inform the defense—contrary to legal requirements—about procedural developments such as suspension, resumption, or extension of the trial (which occurred nine times).

4. The Changsha No. 1 Detention Center deliberately obstructed my lawyer’s visits and treated them differently from other attorneys. They prohibited the use of laptops or phones, and at times forcibly entered the meeting room during our consultations, disrupting normal lawyer-client communication. They also confiscated letters between myself and my lawyer without legal basis, obstructing our lawful correspondence.

5. The Prosecution Office at the Changsha No. 1 Detention Center failed to perform its duties. It delayed handling my lawyer’s formal complaints, shielded and enabled those responsible for misconduct, and directly infringed on my lawyer’s right to seek redress through official channels.

III.

It’s clear that the “special circumstances” of Xie Yang’s case are that he’s a human rights lawyer, and that, this time around, he has refused to bow in submission and refused to admit guilt. This has incensed the police, the prosecutors, and the court in Changsha who have abused procedures as means of punishment. And China’s Supreme People’s Court has greenlighted these abuses against Xie Yang every step of the way.

Let that sink in.

Yaxue Cao is the editor of this website. Follow China Change on X @chinachange_org, or her @yaxuecao.