2 Chinese Activists Sentenced to Over 10 Years on Subversion Charges

People last year protesting the detention of Chinese activists who support Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, including Lu Gengsong and Chen Shuqing, in Hong Kong. Alex Hofford/European Pressphoto Agency

BEIJING — Two longtime members of China’s beleaguered democratic opposition each received prison sentences of over a decade on Friday after being pronounced guilty of subversion by a court in Hangzhou, an eastern city that will host a gathering of world leaders later this year.

The court gave a sentence of 11 years to Lu Gengsong after declaring him guilty of subversion for publishing pro-democracy essays on overseas websites and promoting the banned China Democratic Party, and it handed down a sentence of 10 and a half years to Chen Shuqing, another supporter of the party, for the same charges, said Fu Yonggang, a lawyer for Mr. Chen. Mr. Fu said that Mr. Lu’s main defense lawyer could not be in court for the verdict because of another trial.

The heavy sentences for the relatively obscure activists came after a trial in September in which prosecutors dwelt on essays by the men that were published on overseas Chinese websites and on their support for the China Democratic Party, a small but determined group that a wave of arrests and trials in the late 1990s largely extinguished.