Sun Dawu, chairman of the Dawu Agricultural Group, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on a series of crimes including “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

A well-known Chinese billionaire pig farmer was sentenced to 18 years in prison and fined 3.1 million yuan (US$480,000) on charges including organizing assaults on officials and “picking quarrels.”

Sun Dawu, chairman of the Dawu Agricultural Group, was arrested after praising a lawyer during the Xi Jinping government’s suppression of rights protection activities.

He is one of the 20 defendants tried at the Gaobeidian People’s Court in the southwest of Beijing, Hebei Province. They were arrested after Dawu employees tried to prevent a state-owned company from demolishing the company building in August 2020.

The court stated that Sun was convicted of “gathering crowds to attack state organs”, “interfering with government management”, and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and other crimes.

According to a statement from the Dawu Group, the sentences of other defendants ranged from 1 to 12 years. It said the company was ordered to refund 1 billion yuan (US$155 million) of improperly raised investment.

Sun was accused of illegal fund-raising in 2003 for soliciting investment from friends and neighbors for his business, and he became famous throughout the country. This case aroused strong public support for Sun.

Since then, when famous legal figures were imprisoned by the Xi Jinping government, Sun Zhengyi praised the lawyers who helped the public. Xu Zhiyong, Sun’s lawyer in the 2003 case, disappeared in February 2020. Other activists said he was charged with treason.

The defense lawyer said earlier that the trial was officially open to the public, but due to coronavirus restrictions, each defendant’s family allowed only one bystander and 10 bystanders from the company.

‘Complete socialism’

According to court witness statements shared by its legal team, the prosecutor accused Dawu Group of defrauding its employees, “seriously disrupting local and orderly administrative management” and “endangering the country’s grassroots political stability.”

In this regard, Sun said that Dawu Group is “completely socialist, everyone is on the road of common prosperity, and Dawu employees live very well”.

Dawu Group employed more than 9,000 people before Sun’s assets were confiscated by the state. After Sun was arrested in November, the employees were forced to resign.

For decades, the businessman has been outspokenly criticizing China’s rural policies and demanding greater freedom of organization for farmers to protect their economic interests.

His farm was severely affected by the 2019 African Swine Fever epidemic, which killed a large number of pigs across the country.

Dawu criticized the Hebei local government for trying to cover up the scale of the epidemic, and posted photos of thousands of dead pigs on the Internet and quickly forced it to respond.

In recent years, China has cracked down on prominent business figures who criticize the Communist Party’s rule. Former real estate developer Ren Zhiqiang was sentenced to 18 years in prison last year after criticizing Xi Jinping’s handling of COVID-19 in an article.