Li Xiongbing, July 15, 2021 July 13, 2021, a summer day in Beijing. The sun was emerging after a rain shower. I waded through puddles on the road heading for Beijing South Railway Station. It was getting pretty late when the high-speed train arrived in Linyi. Getting off the train, I ran into a former colleague whom I hadn’t seen for years but ha [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 28, 2021 On the afternoon of July 28, 2021, after 14 consecutive days of trial, the Gaobeidian Municipal Court of Baoding City, Hebei Province, pronounced the verdict and sentences in the Dawu case in court. Sun Dawu was sentenced to 18 years in prison and the Dawu Group was fined more than 1 billion yuan for the recovery and [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 23, 2021  July 23, 2021, the ninth day of the Dawu trial. As today’s session started, lawyer Hao Yachao (郝亚超) lodged a formal statement with the court: we do not accept the court’s overtime schedule, and the Gaobeidian Court should comply with the Labor Law and protect the right to rest of the defense lawyers and th [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 22, 2021 Today’s court session mainly focused on three crimes — “disrupting market operations,” “coercing business transactions,” and “fraud” — as charged by the procuratorate. The court investigation specifically involved charged offenses numbered (6), (7), (8), and (10) alleged in the indictment. Th [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 21, 2021 The Dawu trial has been in session for seven days. After working overtime on weekends and with three consecutive days of 12-hour or longer sessions, the court has now completed its investigation of the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” the crime of “obstructing officers in the discharge of dutie [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 20, 2021 The court session ended late [three days in a row]: at 23:30 the day before yesterday; at 22:30 yesterday; and at 22:40 today. During today’s session, the prosecutors finished presenting their evidence relating to the September 14 [2015] incident and the June 21 [2020] incident, and the defense lawyers completed the [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 19, 2021 As the trial continues and the arguments get into the nitty-gritty details of various incidents, the daily briefings, written in what short time the defense lawyers have after long hours of court sessions, may not always be immediately clear in terms of who is who and what is what. We are doing our best to provide cla [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 18, 2021 On the fourth day of the trial, the sky in Gaobeidian City was gloomy with light rain, as if it were grieving! The trial started at 9 o’clock in the morning. The Gaobeidian Municipal Court continued yesterday’s trial proceedings of evidence production and cross-examination of the alleged crime of “gather [...] Keep reading »

Dawu Legal Team, July 17, 2021 At 9 a.m., on July 17, 2021, the Dawu trial continued. In the morning, the defense lawyers continued to question the defendants who are suspected of “gathering a crowd to assault state organs”. The defense counsel once again filed an application to exclude illegal evidence based on new clues he learned about illeg [...] Keep reading »