Chinese rights lawyer who defended Beijing underground church flees to Taiwan seeking resettlement

Ruth Wang left China after authorities told her law firm that she and her colleagues must dissolve it themselves or face an official shutdown. Now in Taiwan, the lawyer is seeking help to find a place where she and her family can rebuild their lives.

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As a partner in the firm, if I refused to sign the dissolution, what would happen next?

Wang, also known as Ruth Wang, is a partner at VDoor Law Firm and joined the legal team representing the pastor and members of Beijing’s Zion Church in October 2025. Eighteen church members, including founder Pastor Ezra Jin, were arrested last October in what was described as one of the largest crackdowns on a single church in China in decades. Jin was released two months ago after US President Donald Trump raised the case with Chinese President Xi Jinping in May.

Wang said authorities continued targeting the people connected to the church even after Jin’s release. She said the firm’s founder and her mentor, Zhang Kai, lost his license to practice law and was barred from leaving China. Other lawyers at the firm were suspended for six months. Judicial authorities, she said, ordered lawyers to stop handling Zion Church cases and leave the firm, while some faced restrictions when trying to join other practices.

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I believe this will seriously affect my professional development and other aspects of my life.

The pressure became more personal last month, when Chinese officials called Wang during a family holiday in Japan and asked her to meet them in person. She declined, saying she was not in Beijing, and decided not to return to China. “As a partner in the firm, if I refused to sign the dissolution, what would happen next?” she said. “I believe this will seriously affect my professional development and other aspects of my life.”

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Wang tried to fulfill the most basic duties of a lawyer, but because her clients included detained leaders of Beijing’s Zion Church, she began to worry that she would become the next target.

Wang and her family asked Taiwanese authorities for help after arriving. Officials allowed her to remain temporarily in a controlled airport area, but told her Taiwan could not accept political asylum applications from Chinese citizens because of tensions between Beijing and Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party. She is considering studying in the United States or Canada as a route for moving her family, or seeking asylum overseas. “Our family is facing an unknown tomorrow. We do not know what will happen next, or whether there is anywhere that can take us in,” she said. China’s public security authorities, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council and the American Institute in Taiwan did not immediately comment.

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Our family is facing an unknown tomorrow. We do not know what will happen next, or whether there is anywhere that can take us in.