Guo's very public open letters to President
Hu Jintao demanding multi-party elections and the depoliticisation of the
People's Liberation Army, were widely published in the internet blogosphere as well as the traditional media. Since then the Chinese cyber-police had begun to black out his blogs. • On 21 May 2008 Jonathan Watts of
The Guardian reported: Chinese police have detained Guo Quan, a political dissident who criticized the government's handling of the Sichuan earthquake. Guo was seized outside his home by seven or eight police officers on 17 May 2008. They searched his house and confiscated his computer On 6 February 2008 Guo Quan told Jane Macartney, of
The Times that the Chinese
Yahoo! site had also blocked his name, and as a result was planning on suing Yahoo! as well. The
PEN American Center wrote: On 13 November 2008 cnews reported that Guo Quan, was arrested Thursday in the city of Nanjing. According to his wife, the police's charge was "subversion of state power". Chinese police routinely uses the charge of "subversion of state power" to imprison dissidents for years. On 17 October 2009, Reuters reported that he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He has been described as a political prisoner. On 31 January 2020, Guo was detained by police in Nanjing. On 20 December 2022, he was sentenced to a further four years in jail for "incitement to subvert state power", the charges stemming from his criticism of officials during the early stages of the
COVID-19 pandemic. On January 30, 2024, Guo Quan was released from prison after serving his sentence. (https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202402010364.aspx) == See also ==