Winners Named for the 2025 Cao Shunli Memorial Award for Human Rights Defenders
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Two jailed human rights defenders, Quan Shixin (全世欣) and Shi Tingfu (史庭福), are the recipients of the 11th Annual Cao Shunli Memorial Award for Human Rights Defenders. The 2025 award recognizes Quan and Shi for their courageous human rights activism. Despite the risks they faced from state reprisals, their efforts sought to hold the Chinese government accountable for violations of its international human rights obligations.
March 14, 2025, marks the eleventh anniversary of Cao Shunli (曹顺利)’s death in police custody in Beijing. Rights activists in China have designated March 14 as “Human Rights Defenders Day.” Several Chinese human rights organizations established the award in 2014 to honor the memory of Cao Shunli, her life, and her work. The award has been given to those who carry on Cao Shunli’s legacy of grassroots human rights advocacy and who have made great efforts to hold the government accountable for its rights violations, despite threats of reprisals. The award includes a monetary component to assist the recipients in their recovery and recuperation from reprisals upon their releases from jail.
Meet the honorees:
Human rights defender Quan Shixin (全世欣), 49, became a leading figure in rural areas near Beijing for her years of advocacy on farming land and rural housing rights, trying to hold the government accountable for its violations. She spoke out against official corruption and expressed support online to Hong Kong prodemocracy protests in 2019. For years, she has faced government reprisals for her human rights activities, including frequent harassment and arrest by officials. She was imprisoned from 2019-2021. After her most recent arrest in 2023, likely for giving an interview to Voice of America, a court convicted her of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” and sentenced her to two years and nine months in jail. She is currently imprisoned at the Beijing Tianhe Prison.
Human rights defender Shi Tingfu (史庭福), 66, worked at an electronics factory in Nanjing, and participated in the 1989 Tiananmen prodemocracy protests. He has been an outspoken advocate for freedom and democracy online, and carried out street protests to mark anniversaries of the Tiananmen Massacre, draw attention to official corruption, and show support for democracy in Taiwan. He took part in campaigns to free persecuted human rights lawyers and to support families of political prisoners. Authorities have repeatedly arrested him, subjecting him to police brutality, arbitrary detention, and torture. Shi, a resident in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, was most recently arrested by police from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Authorities accused him of passing information to overseas media about farmers trying to lodge their grievances against the paramilitary Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) in the Aral Shehri area in early 2024. Authorities had denied him access to legal counsel by accusing Shi of “spreading and promoting terrorism and extremism,” though he was convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” He is currently serving a three-year sentence at the XPCC First Division Shahe Prison.
Previous Cao Shunli Memorial Award for Human Rights Defenders Recipients
The Cao Shunli Memorial Award acknowledges the efforts of all human rights defenders in China who have demonstrated a deep commitment to promoting human rights, typically in the face of great personal risk. The award has been announced annually on March 14, the anniversary of Cao’s death in 2014. In 2015, disability and labor rights activist Zhou Weilin (周维林) was the first recipient of the award. Housing rights activist Jia Lingmin (贾灵敏) received the award in 2016. Women’s and housing rights activist Su Changlan (苏昌兰) won the award in 2017. In 2018, human rights activists Chen Jianfang (陈建芳) and Li Xiaoling (李小玲) were the co-recipients of the award. Barefoot lawyer Ji Sizun (纪斯尊) received the 2019 award months before he died due to torture in a hospital bed guarded by police. The award went to two human rights defenders, Zhang Jianping (张建平) and Wang Heying (王和英) in 2020, and Li Yufeng (李玉凤) and Li Qiaochu (李翘楚) in 2021. The award was given to health rights campaigner He Fangmei (何方美), and detained human rights lawyer Chang Weiping (常玮平) in 2022. Xu Qin (徐秦) and Peng Lifa (彭立发) won the award in 2023, and the “Support ‘The Chained Woman’ Focus Group” received the award in 2024.
