“The Bravest Lawyer in China” Turns 60

April 20 will mark the 60th birthday of Gao Zhisheng, the man many have called “the bravest lawyer in China” who has been missing since 2017 – presumably imprisoned and possibly dead at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP has denied any knowledge of Gao’s whereabouts for the past seven years, with party officials insisting that they had nothing to do with his disappearance. But given Gao’s status as one of the most outspoken and effective critics of the CCP and the fact that he has already suffered multiple imprisonments and extensive torture, these claims seem dubious at best.

As the CCP continues to spread its influence around the world and Chinese President Xi Jinping administers his brutal crackdown on dissent at home, it is worth commemorating Gao’s courage and bravery in facing down communist oppression.

Gao was born into a poor family in Shaanxi Province in central China. His father died when Gao was just 11, forcing him to drop out of school. He later enlisted in the People’s Liberation Army, after which he worked as a food vendor and became a member of the CCP.

In 1991, inspired by a newspaper ad, Gao enrolled in legal courses despite having little formal education. Four years later, he passed the Chinese bar exam, starting his path to becoming a thorn in the side of the CCP.

Gao quickly earned a reputation as an altruistic and compassionate lawyer. Never forgetting his humble beginnings, he committed to working at least one-third of his cases pro bono for families in need.

Gao soon discovered that nearly all of his legal clients were victims of corrupt CCP officials. Many everyday Chinese people had been evicted from their homes after party officials illegally sold their land to developers. Anyone who resisted faced imprisonment, torture, and the persecution of their loved ones.

Gao also became one of the early voices calling attention to the persecution of Christians and the Falun Gong religious minority. Gao helped expose the horrific practice of CCP authorities imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners and harvesting their organs.

In 2005, Gao resigned from the CCP. Around this same time, he also converted to Christianity. These acts of defiance, coupled with an open letter he wrote to Jiang Zemin, who was then President of China, quickly made him one of the top targets of the regime.

In 2006, after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, Gao was arrested and imprisoned for the first time. Following a sham trial, he was convicted of “subversion” and sentenced to three years in jail, where he was subjected to horrific torture and abuse. After his release, he published his first memoir, A China More Just.

Over the next decade, Gao remained defiant against the CCP and was subject to more imprisonments and torture. He disappeared for more than a year from 2009-2010 and was imprisoned again in 2011. Each time he resurfaced he appeared physically weaker, before disappearing for the final time in 2017, shortly after publishing Unwavering Convictions, written in the interim between imprisonments.

Unwavering Convictions is a harrowing tale that exposes the CCP’s fear of the truth. As Gao reveals, candor and honesty are high crimes in the eyes of the CCP. One young CCP police officer told Gao about how, during the first day of training, recruits were beaten when they correctly answered what color the wall was. Afterwards, they were told: “It is whatever color the squad leader says it is.”

Gao became a top target of the CCP because he rejected this ideology. He refused to lie and stood firm on the truth, which resulted in his persecution.

A former top CCP official, who defected to the West in 2001, told me that the regime “fears confrontation with the truth more than any foreign attack.” Gao, he said, “was courageous and unwavering in his beliefs, which caused nightmares for the leadership in Beijing.”

Despite months of sadistic torture, including electric shocks and beatings, Gao remained an authentically free man in his soul. He refused to write a letter praising his treatment and the CCP – all that would have been required to end his torture and imprisonment. When his torturers told him to write an ideological report on his remorsefulness for his supposed crimes, Gao replied that his only remorse was for not being able to expose and criticize the CCP more effectively.

Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, a Hungarian political prisoner during the Cold War, once reflected on the value a prisoner of conscience can offer a free world. He believed that a prisoner’s testimony is a testament to the benevolence and courage of one soul and provides a unique insight into the evil at the heart of the regime.

Cardinal Mindszenty also stated that “communists are prisoners of their vision of the world,” and that prisoners of conscience have a sharper view of evil than those living in freedom. Gao independently repeated these truths, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

Gao, a courageous Chinese prisoner, shares with America and the West a unique perspective on the conflicted, vile mentality of the Chinese Communist Party’s officials.

In his memoir, Gao boldly states that the Chinese Communist Party is “facing a crisis and will soon be defeated.” This view is shared by many Chinese dissidents in America, some of whom recently held a Congress on liberating China. According to Wang Dan, a leader of the 1990 Tiananmen Student Movement, the CCP is “facing internal and external turmoil, and it is time to overthrow the tyranny of the party.”

“With Xi’s dictatorial grip slipping, the possibility of dramatic changes has increased, and the goal of overthrowing the CCP is closer than ever,” he said.

If that does indeed come to pass, the world will have heroes like Gao Zhisheng to thank.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.