Gao Zhen, a 70-year-old Chinese artist renowned for provocative satirical depictions of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, has been sentenced to three years in prison after a court in Sanhe, a city in Hebei province near Beijing, found him guilty of defaming China's "heroes and martyrs." The verdict, which carries the maximum penalty under the relevant law, was handed down after Gao had already spent two years in detention following his arrest in August 2024.
Gao, a Chinese citizen and longtime US permanent resident who had moved to America as political repression under President Xi Jinping intensified, was detained on the street by approximately thirty officers while visiting family in China. Police subsequently raided his Beijing studio. The case has drawn widespread international criticism in part because the artworks cited in the charges were created more than a decade before the law used to prosecute him even existed. China's legislation banning defamation of "heroes and martyrs" came into force only in March 2018 and has since been used to silence those who challenge official versions of Chinese history.
Among Gao's most celebrated works, created in collaboration with his brother Gao Qiang under the name the Gao Brothers, are "Mao's Guilt" — a sculpture of Mao kneeling in apparent remorse — and "The Execution of Christ," in which a firing squad composed entirely of Mao figures points rifles at Jesus. The brothers' father had been imprisoned as a so-called class enemy under Mao and did not survive. A third series, "Miss Mao," depicted the leader in cartoonish form with exaggerated feminine features. Gao plans to appeal the sentence.
His wife, Zhao Yaliang, who along with the couple's young son has been barred from leaving China since Gao's detention — she on national security grounds, and their son, a US citizen, effectively stranded without his parents — described two years of anguish. Gao's family reported that he had fainted in custody and suffered from back, knee, and respiratory problems, including a serious bout of heatstroke. Despite these conditions, artwork he produced while detained, including colourful paper cuttings, reached the outside world.
Human rights organisations have condemned both the arrest and the conviction as a violation of the right to free expression. Amnesty International's China director said the maximum sentence reflected "the authorities' determination to deter others from engaging in independent artistic expression," while a longtime China human rights campaigner described the prosecution as punishment for conduct "that has never been criminal." Gao's brother, Gao Qiang, said from outside China: "Art should never be a crime scene waiting to be discovered."