In February 2020, as residents of Wuhan, China sought to flee the city at the epicenter of the highly contagious novel COVID-19 virus, Zhang Zhan instead rushed in. She was moved by an online post from a Wuhan resident who said he felt the city had been abandoned and he had been left there to die. So Zhang purchased a train ticket from her home in Shanghai to Chongqing, stepping off the train when it passed through Wuhan.
What she found stood in stark contrast to what China’s government was saying publicly, which was – essentially – that there was nothing to see here and the situation was under control.
While Chinese authorities sought to limit not only the spread of the new virus but the spread of information about the epidemic’s severity, Zhang published a “Wuhan Diary” over the next three months on social media to document the devastation and despair occurring under severe lockdown in the city of more than 11 million people.
Her 122 videos revealed a dystopian backdrop of empty streetscapes and business districts, struggling citizens desperate for work, overwhelmed medical facilities, heightened activity at the city’s crematoriums, and reprimands from security officers and health screeners who didn’t want her to reveal how massive the outbreak was.
Although the world has largely moved on from COVID-19, Zhang remains confined to the Shanghai Women’s Prison five years later, paying the price for bearing witness to the Chinese government’s coverup of COVID-19’s initial outbreak.
As part of the pursuit for accountability about how the COVID-19 global pandemic began, the United States and the international community should raise questions about Zhang’s treatment with China’s leadership. Zhang’s punishment for illuminating the origins of a catastrophic pandemic that killed millions around the globe has highlighted why the world cannot afford to let the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) iron grip on power and information go unchecked.
Spotlighting Zhang’s case could improve the conditions of her detention and signal to other Chinese freedom and human rights advocates that their voices matter and are heard far and wide, despite Beijing’s attempts to censor and obscure what happens inside China.
Fighting fear, again and again
In her Wuhan Diary videos, Zhang repeatedly acknowledges her own fear of falling ill herself or being detained as she regularly encountered security officers who threatened her for filming. Determined to show the people of Wuhan they weren’t alone and to share with the rest of China what was taking place, she said, “If all that is left in life is fear, then all I can do is to fight fear again and again until I get over it.”
After ongoing harassment and intimidation, Zhang was eventually arrested in May 2020 and sentenced to four years in prison on vaguely worded charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Such nebulous charges are commonly levied to detain human rights defenders in China.
Zhang served her full prison term and was released in May 2024 but kept under close surveillance. Unwilling to stay silent about ongoing abuses of power, her relative freedom was cut short when Zhang was rearrested only three months later, likely in connection with online comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
It would take more than another year in detention for prosecution to play out, and in September 2025, she was handed a second four-year prison sentence after again being convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
As a former lawyer, Zhang attempted to appeal her sentencing, but she was impeded from meeting with independent counsel. China’s authorities regularly intimidate, slander, disbar, and even prosecute lawyers who attempt to defend human rights advocates.
In mid-November, it was discovered that Zhang’s appeal had been summarily denied in a closed-door hearing, and she was transferred between detention centers without notification to her family or lawyer.
Little is known about her current condition, but intermittent hunger strikes during her current and previous imprisonment have certainly weakened her health. While serving her first prison sentence, she was tortured and hospitalized for severe malnutrition. During some of her longer hunger strikes, prison authorities repeatedly subjected her to forced feeding, physically restraining her 24 hours a day to prevent her from removing a nasal feeding tube.
Zhang’s Christian faith has sustained her through these grueling hunger strikes and suffering in detention despite efforts by prison and security officials to deny her access to a Bible and singing hymns with other detainees on Sundays. She would pray for other inmates who were ill, according to Jane Wang, who has followed Zhang’s case closely and leads an international advocacy campaign to support her.
During the few months which Zhang enjoyed outside of prison in 2024, she could not attend church or receive communion because security officials followed her everywhere. When Zhang invited other Christians via WeChat to join her for Bible study meetings in a public park, they were interrupted by plainclothes police officers.
Zhang’s reporting on daily life in Wuhan under lockdown was not her first attempt to call for accountability from the CCP. She was detained twice in 2019 for a total of more than 100 days over public criticism of China’s leadership, during which she was subjected to two separate psychiatric evaluations. The second of these detentions occurred after Zhang conducted a solitary demonstration on a major pedestrian thoroughfare in Shanghai, in which she stood under an umbrella in solidarity with the Hong Kong democracy movement and called for the CCP to relinquish power.
A month before she traveled to Wuhan, Zhang wrote, “We should seek the truth and seek it at all costs. Truth has always been the most expensive thing in the world. It is our life.” Her case not only illuminates the CCP’s censorship and repression of the Chinese people, it illustrates the devasting effects of hiding the truth during a major crisis scenario like the COVID-19 pandemic.
The international community should honor and recognize the high price Zhang has paid – and continues to pay – in her pursuit of the truth.
