709 crackdown


The 709 Crackdown was a nationwide crackdown on Chinese lawyers and human rights activists during the summer of 2015. It is known as the "709 crackdown" as it started on 9 July 2015.
Yaqiu Wang of Human Rights Watch commented that "the 709 crackdown dealt a terrible blow to China's rights-defense movement, which significantly contracted as rights lawyers were jailed, disbarred or placed under surveillance".

Targets

More than 300 people were detained as part of the 2015 crackdown. Some of the notable people affected by the crackdown are listed below.
On 17 June 2020, according to a Deutsche Welle report, Yu Wensheng, who had defended Wang Quanzhang and publicly called for the removal of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping as well as for reforms in the legal and political systems, was sentenced to four years in prison and deprived of political rights for three years.

Aftermath

A decade later, in 2025, some of the lawyers affected have begun to speak out publicly about the continued deterioration of legal freedoms in China.
Ren Quanniu, a disbarred human rights lawyer who initially avoided repercussions during the 709 crackdown, has described a sharp decline in the legal environment for rights defenders, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. He likened the current state of the rule of law in China to the Cultural Revolution, a period during which judicial institutions were largely dismantled. Ren, who had represented citizen journalist Zhang Zhan after her arrest for reporting on the early COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, was formally disbarred in 2021. He and other former rights lawyers contend that the legal profession in China has been fundamentally transformed, leaving little to no space for human rights advocacy under current conditions.
Jiang Tianyong, a former lawyer who was imprisoned for "inciting subversion", emphasized that the rights defense movement was not intended to challenge the state but to work within China's existing legal framework. He noted that while the movement achieved limited success, its efforts made it more difficult for authorities to target vulnerable groups.
According to human rights organizations and researchers, the crackdown has become more systematic and less visible in recent years, involving increased restrictions on legal professionals and greater control by the Chinese Communist Party over law firms. Lawyers handling politically sensitive cases have had their licenses revoked, and many are subjected to ongoing surveillance and travel bans.