Zeng Yuan, a female lawyer in Shenzhen, was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital three times after reporting a lawyer at the law firm she was previously affiliated with for alleged prostitution-related offenses and bribery. Another law firm she was later affiliated with even took part in having her forcibly hospitalized. Zeng Yuan says this is the first case in mainland China in which a law firm has participated in such conduct — an unprecedented act.
Zeng Yuan, female, 33, a citizen of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and a practicing lawyer. In 2020, Zeng Yuan discovered that a male lawyer at Zhongben Law Firm, where she was then affiliated, Ming Zhenxing, was involved in prostitution-related misconduct with a female trainee lawyer, and reported it to the judicial bureau. She also reported that the same lawyer had engaged in bribery to obtain case referrals and other illegal conduct in the course of his practice. Because the case touched on the interests of a state-owned enterprise that was his client, police began conducting technical surveillance on Zeng Yuan and others involved, ostensibly to understand the facts of the case.
Recently, Zeng Yuan told Epoch Times reporters: "Ming Zhenxing spread a rumor to his client, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, claiming that my background was unclear and that no one knew who had planted me as a spy [Ming believed that, because my household registration record didn't clearly state my father's identity, my origins must be suspect]. To show off how powerful he was, Ming emailed me and disclosed the content of the technical surveillance against me. That was a high-level measure, and he thought showing it off would prove how capable he was — that he could investigate anyone at will and use it to pressure them. So I started reporting the police's unlawful technical surveillance."
Reporting Police Misconduct in Surveillance Leads to First Forced Psychiatric Commitment
In May 2020, Zhongben Law Firm suspended Zeng Yuan's social insurance payments; after terminating her employment relationship with the firm, she transferred to Beijing Jingshi Law Firm.
During this period, she was detained for 20 days by the Gaoxin police station over her reports of the police's unlawful technical surveillance against her, and was released after interrogation produced no results.
Even after being detained, Zeng Yuan continued to press her complaints about the unlawful technical surveillance by police, and as a result, in September 2022, the local Gaoxin police station, together with two street-level Women's Federation officials, forcibly bound her and took her to Shenzhen Kangning Hospital (a psychiatric hospital).
Zeng Yuan said the unlawful surveillance involved the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau, its Nanshan branch, and police from other regions. "So the police [from the police station] bound me and sent me to the psychiatric hospital, and interrogated me under duress, demanding to know how I had discovered the police's unlawful surveillance and who my backer was — they suspected there was an insider leaking information. In fact, the real cause was that Ming Zhenxing had disclosed a piece of location-tracking information that had been authorized under a surveillance order signed by the director of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department — that is a very serious matter."
The Gaoxin police station acted on orders from the Nanshan branch of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau in sending Zeng Yuan to the psychiatric hospital; after the hospital conducted various examinations, it found no evidence of any psychiatric condition meeting the criteria for admission, and she was sent home the same day. The police's plan failed.
Dumping a Bag of Rice in Front of the Police Station Leads to Second Forced Psychiatric Commitment
According to Zeng Yuan, her father, Zeng Zhiming, was a senior official at Shenzhen Customs. He married her mother after she became pregnant, and they divorced right after the child was born — because the baby was a girl. Her father never acknowledged or accepted her as his daughter, and had the police erase her original household registration record shortly after her birth.
As a result, she also never received her mother's affection. At age 16, Zeng Yuan fled her mother's home and met her father for the first time, asking him to provide her with a safe place to live — he refused. She never met any relatives on her father's side, yet she longed for a family, and never gave up trying to find her paternal relatives, hoping for even the slightest chance that her father might accept her. So, between August 2022 and early 2023, after being detained, Zeng Yuan began reaching out to her local community office, hoping it could help her locate her father's relatives.
Then, in November 2022, Gao Beiling, a former doctor at Shenzhen Kangning Hospital and an expert in forensic psychiatric assessment, suddenly showed up at Zeng Yuan's residence on the instructions of the Nanshan branch, asking her about her complaints [regarding police surveillance].
"When I saw him arrive, I immediately sensed something was wrong — he's hailed as the top figure in forensic assessment, so whatever case brings him out must be a heavyweight one. After he asked his questions, I didn't cooperate with the follow-up procedures, and I didn't give him the outcome he wanted. What they were thinking at the time was: if my answers posed a risk or threat to the relevant departments, they would simply declare me mentally ill. If I posed no threat, the matter would just pass. Questioning me this way was meant to extract more information and a certain result."
"He asked me a few questions on the spot, and I suspect he then wrote up a report — but that report, moving through police and administrative channels, effectively served as an endorsement carrying his name. To this day, the police and other departments dare not publicly admit that this fabricated forensic assessment report was ever produced."
At the time, in line with what the sub-district office had said, the community office claimed Zeng Yuan was mentally ill and had no family willing to take responsibility for her — leaving only the community office to "help." "They told me to go dig through trash cans, to fabricate the appearance that I was mentally ill and had no one to rely on, so they could then justify sending me to a psychiatric hospital — just like the case of Xu Xinrui in Sichuan, who was forcibly committed the same way." After Zeng Yuan realized this was their attitude, she refused to have any further contact with the community office.
"After I stopped seeing them, they got anxious and started coming to my door with gift packages, leaving them whether I wanted them or not. At first I politely declined, then declined over WeChat, then called the 12345 hotline to refuse them, and even called 110 [police emergency] to report it — but the police wouldn't respond either."
The community office's persistent delivery of "care packages" left Zeng Yuan deeply frustrated, and in November 2022, she went to the police station and dumped a bag of rice there — an act that conveniently gave police the pretext to send her to the psychiatric hospital.
"In March 2023, police questioned me in the psychiatric hospital about who my 'leader' was — they were convinced there must be someone behind me directing me to do this [file the surveillance complaints]. But what the medical record actually listed were three things: that I had slapped a table in front of officers and staff at the police station, that I dumped rice in front of the police station, and that I had booked a hotel room for an officer."
"This time I was sent to the psychiatric hospital mainly because Zhongben Law Firm didn't want me to keep reporting them, and the judicial bureau and public security bureau didn't want me continuing to loudly expose them either — so they arranged for Jingshi Law Firm [my affiliated firm at the time], the Gaoxin police station, and the community Women's Federation to jointly have me hospitalized. And since my father has always refused to acknowledge me and wanted to push responsibility for me onto others, he [as family] took part in signing off on it."
"When staff from Jingshi Law Firm rushed over to handle the admission paperwork, the doctor's diagnosis found I had no mental illness — the diagnosis section of the form didn't even include a status assessment — and I was simply discharged on the spot."
Smashing the Police Station Sign Leads to Third Forced Psychiatric Commitment
On the 29th day of the lunar new year in 2024, Zeng Yuan went to the Bao'an Zhennan police station seeking help in locating her relatives, without success. Because the police had failed to fulfill their duty to serve the people, on the 30th day of the lunar new year she went to the Gaoxin police station and smashed the character "人" (person) off the station's sign — resulting in her being sent to Shenzhen Kangning Hospital for the third time.
She said, "I was held in the hospital for four days without being diagnosed with any mental illness. Since the police station wouldn't come pick me up, I convinced the doctor to let me sign myself out."
After this third forced psychiatric commitment, Zeng Yuan was dismissed by the Shenzhen branch of Jingshi Law Firm at the end of 2025.
Zeng Yuan said that, despite having no mental illness, she was sent to psychiatric hospitals three times — an affair involving multiple high-level parties acting in concert to have her hospitalized. And the fact that a Chinese law firm participated in forcibly committing her, alongside senior police and judicial bureau officials, is the first case of its kind in China. She also noted that her father was involved all three times, though always through others acting on his behalf — only the second time did he actually sign his own name.
She also said that during the six months she was in contact with the community office, staff tried to persuade her to apply for a disability certification, telling her she could receive over 100,000 yuan in disability benefits, and then use the disability certificate to qualify for minimum-subsistence welfare — so that she could simply live out the rest of her life in a psychiatric hospital until she died.