"Picking quarrels and provoking trouble" () is a criminal offence in mainland China, codified in the Criminal Law and mirrored in administrative penalties. While initially introduced as a measure to address public order offences, the charge has evolved into a versatile legal tool to deter petitioning and public participation, as well as to control speech and put out dissent. Its breadth, vagueness, and rising penalties have raised concerns in recent years, including calls from scholars and legislators for clearer thresholds, practical restraint, or even repeal.
"Picking quarrels and provoking trouble" is codified in Articleà293 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, located in Section 1, "Disrupting Public Order" (Articlesà277âÂÂ304), of Chapter VI, "Obstructing Administration of Public Order". Its original maximum penalty was five years imprisonment; a 2011 amendment permits up to ten years where multiple offences or "seriously disrupting public order" are found. The whole Article reads as follows:
"Picking quarrels and provoking trouble" is also regulated under the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security. In its latest 2025 revision, which came into force on 1 January 2026, the offence is codified in Article 30 as follows:
The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate of mainland China have issued several judicial interpretations or opinions regarding to "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".
On 15 July 2013, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the "Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of Criminal Cases of Picking Quarrels and Provoking Trouble", defining "public places" as concrete physical venuesâÂÂstations, docks, airports, hospitals, shopping malls, parks, theatres, exhibitions, sports fields, or similar (Article 5 of the Interpretation)âÂÂthereby excluding the internet; it also advised that insults or minor property damage arising from private disputes should generally be excluded from Articleà293 (Article 1 of the Interpretation).
On 5 September 2013, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued another interpretation, titled "Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of Criminal Cases of Defamation and Other Such Crimes Involving the Use of Information Networks", extending ArticleÃÂ 293 to certain online acts, such as "berating or intimidating others", or spreading "defaming information", and introduced a quantitative threshold whereby online defamation becomes criminal if a post is reposted 500 times or viewed 5,000 times.
On 6 February 2020, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, and Ministry of Justice issued a joint opinion, titled "Opinions on Punishing Criminal and Illegal Activities that Hinder the Prevention and Control of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia", proposing to "severely punish" acts that "hinder epidemic control", expressly naming both "making up or intentionally spreading false information" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble on the internet" as charge paths, and directing that non-criminal conduct be handled with administrative penalties.
"Picking quarrels and provoking trouble" originated from the vague and capacious offence "hooliganism" (). Emerged in the Mao era, it was used against both perceived social ills and dissent. A 1950 Party directive defined "hooligans" as those who lived on morally questionable means without fixed residence or work and were prescribed to three years of imprisonment. It then quickly deteriorated into a flexible political charge during the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries from 1950 to 1953, when a substantial number of individuals labelled as "counterrevolutionaries" were classified as "hooligans", including former Republican officials, religious leaders, and local notables. Of the 710,000 people executed during the "counterrevolutionaries campaign", over 240,000 were put to death under the pretext of "hooliganism". After the 1957 "Anti-Rightist Campaign", "hooligans" were officially classified as "bad elements" (), one of the "Five Black Categories" that were considered state enemies.
The 1979 Criminal Code codified "hooliganism" in Articleà160 with an openâÂÂended "other hooligan activities" clause; crime by analogy remained permissible, thus preserving wide discretion. In the 1983âÂÂ1986 "Strike Hard" campaigns, a 1984 joint interpretation expanded "other hooligan acts" to include "womanising" and "seducing foreigners", and practice reached into private morality such as dance parties and premarital sex, with mens rea diluted to "wrongful thoughts". After 4àJuneà1989, the label was used to jail lesserâÂÂknown protesters, illustrating its continued political pliability.
The 1997 Criminal Law abolished the offence "hooliganism" entirely, explicitly banned crime by analogy, and split the former catchâÂÂall into five specific offences, including "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" (Articleà293).
Rationalisation and discipline were sought by regulators after the 1997 Criminal Law recoding. In 2008, standards were made for the clarification of the subâÂÂcategories of this charge as well as what could be counted as "serious circumstances". During the HuâÂÂWen years, the charge typically targeted offline actions around 'mass incidents' rather than online speech. A noted example was the 2008 milkâÂÂscandal campaigner ZhaoàLianhai, who received twoâÂÂandâÂÂaâÂÂhalf years in 2010 after convicted for this charge. Courts might also show some restraints during this period as one case ruled by a Handan intermediate court in 2012 dismissed a âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ charge against a persistent petitioner for lack of criminal intent.
On 19 August 2013, during a national propaganda work conference, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping reportedly warned that âÂÂa small group of reactionary intellectualsâ were using the internet to âÂÂspread rumoursâÂÂ, âÂÂattack Party leadershipâÂÂ, and âÂÂsmear the socialist systemâÂÂ, and thus must be âÂÂstrictly punishedâÂÂ. On the same day, the Beijing police detained online microblogger Qin Huohuo and , labelling them as rumour-makers who âÂÂfabricated newsâÂÂ, âÂÂdistorted factsâÂÂ, and âÂÂcreated incidents onlineâÂÂ. Soon after, in September 2013, Yang Zhong (also identified as Yang Hui), a 16-year-old from Zhangjiachuan, Gansu, was detained for seven days on suspicion of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ after questioning the policeâÂÂs account of a karaoke club managerâÂÂs death. This became two notable prelude cases prior to the September 2013 interpretation that issued by the Supreme PeopleâÂÂs Court and the Supreme PeopleâÂÂs Procuratorate that expanded the scope of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ to online speech (see above) and thus laid the legal basis for prosecutions in the subsequent broader rumour crackdown. Qin was eventually sentenced to three years in prison on 17 April 2014 for slander and âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ, consolidating that social media posts alone could constitute the offence.
Concurrently, since the abolition of the extrajudicial âÂÂre-education through labourâ system in 2013, there has been an observed increase in the use of criminal detention under charges including âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ to silence activists, petitioners, and civil society figures. Rights activist Cao Shunli, detained in September 2013 and later charged with this offence, died in custody in March 2014 after being denied timely medical care, underscoring the chargeâÂÂs use to hold dissidents in prolonged detention with harsh conditions.
In May 2014, as the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown drew nearer, dozens of noted individuals were detained on public-order charges such as âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ amid a wide-ranging security clampdown. Notably, human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was arrested after attending a private Tiananmen memorial seminar and was eventually charged solely based on seven of his postings on Weibo from 2011âÂÂ2014. Pu was put on trial in late 2015 as prosecutors built the case entirely on his social media posts, and he was convicted of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ (and âÂÂinciting ethnic hatredâÂÂ) with a three-year suspended sentence.
The scope of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ continued to expand as part of a broader, hardline turn under the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping. It was gradually becoming an excessively flexible tool to suppress activism across fields.
Notable crackdowns in 2015 included the âÂÂFeminist Fiveâ who were first pre-emptively detained in March under the charge of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ, before being released on bail a month later. Then on 9 July 2015, an unprecedented nationwide sweep of human-rights lawyers and legal activistsâÂÂlater known as the âÂÂ709 crackdownâÂÂâÂÂsaw over 200 individuals detained or questioned within days, many were initially held under âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ or related public-order charges, with some were later escalated to âÂÂsubversionâ charges.
In Xinjiang, a Human Rights Watch report revealed that from 2016 to 2018, âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ was one of the vague and broad charges commonly used to convict Uyghurs and Kazakhs for behaviour that did not constitute a genuine criminal offence, with 87 per cent of 2017 sentences exceeding five years. Testimonies from Xinjiang also described rapid trials and coerced confessions. The later leaked Xinjiang police files saw the charge being used as a tool for long-term incarceration, with highlit cases including Memetali Abdureshid, who was sentenced to 15 years and 11 months for âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ and âÂÂpreparing to carry out terrorist activitiesâÂÂ, and farmer Nurmemet Dawut, received 11 years for âÂÂgathering the public to disturb social orderâ and âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ.
Petitioners continued to be prominent targets of this charge. Courts and police in multiple provinces used the charge to respond to petition-related collective actions, including petitioning in Beijing or simply to higher-level authorities, or, as seen in one case in 2019, where petitioning in a âÂÂnon-designated locationâ was framed as âÂÂcreating disorder in a public placeâ and therefore constituted âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ.
Online speech was suppressed even beyond the open feed, as remarks posted in chat groups and semi-private digital spaces were also targeted by this charge. Cases in September 2017 saw brief detentions under âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ for âÂÂinsultingâ police checks by a WeChat post or sharing a joke about a senior government official in a WeChat group of less than 500 members; by 2018, reports saw Twitter users in mainland China were given warnings, pressured to post/account deletions, or even landed with detentions under this charge. A crowdsourced spreadsheet compiled by an anonymous activist has documented cases in mainland China from 2013 onwards where people were punished for their online and offline remarks, based on publicly available court records and police notices; by May 2022, the spreadsheet had grown to roughly 2,300 entries, including over 100 tied to Twitter activity, many involving criminal charges like âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ.
On the ground, unapproved religious gatherings and symbolic acts were deemed disorderly or offensive and therefore can be prosecuted with or administratively penalised under this charge, as one case in 2018 saw the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, while its pastor, Wang Yi, was later escalated to âÂÂinciting subversionâ and âÂÂillegal business operationsâ charges, the churchâÂÂs congregants and organisers were detained and questioned under âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ; symbolic moves like slapping a police dummy, expressing affection for Japan, wearing âÂÂinappropriateâ cosplay attire (be it Nazi Germany uniforms, Japanese military uniforms, or kimono), placing memorial tablets in a temple for Japanese war criminals, or publicly staging a bondage roleplay scene, can be branded as creating a âÂÂviciousâ social impact, and therefore ended with this charge criminally or administratively.
During the âÂÂSweeping away the Black and Eliminating the Evilâ special campaign, it is recorded that in 2019 alone, 21,546 âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ cases were logged, approximately taking up 20 per cent of the yearâÂÂs total. Defence attorneys estimated that around 70âÂÂ80% of their clients charged during the campaign would likely not have been charged outside of it.
During the 2020 Inner Mongolia protests against a new policy reducing Mongolian language instruction, local public security bureaus opened cases and published suspect lists for offences including âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ; in Horqin district, one such list contained 129 people.
The COVID years saw an aggressive expansion of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ being used to police information and speech.
Just ten days into the issuance of the joint opinion calling for âÂÂsevere punishmentâ for behaviours âÂÂhindering epidemic controlâ (see above), the authorities had already officially meted out 224 administrative penalties for pandemic-related âÂÂrumoursâÂÂ. In practice, numerous people were swiftly detained and in many cases criminally charged with and convicted of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ for their online remarks about the virus, hospital conditions, the governmentâÂÂs response, or simply the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders, as one case in Sanhe, Hebei saw a Weibo user, Zhang Wenfang, receiving a six-month sentence under this charge for only one post of hers on Weibo recounting the sufferings endured by the people of Wuhan following the outbreak. Even discussing the whistleblower, Dr Li Wenliang (whom was later posthumously honoured as a âÂÂmartyrâ by the government), proved risky, as in Xinjiang, Shanxi, a man surnamed âÂÂSongâ was given ten months in prison for circulating âÂÂinaccurate information and picturesâ about the death of Dr Li in a private WeChat group.
Similar cases included Zhou Shaoqing, a Tianjin resident, first detained in February 2020, received nine months in November the same year under the very charge after tweeting or reposting about 120 tweets of criticism of the governmentâÂÂs Covid-19 response; the court ruled that he had âÂÂegregiously damaged social orderâÂÂ, despite having roughly 300 followers; and Sun Jiadong of Zhengzhou, who had only 27 followers when he was detained, was later sentenced to 13 months for his Twitter posts about the CCP, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang. Another example was Huang Genbao who, although detained before the COVID pandemic in May 2019, was affected by the new policies and sentenced to 16 months for âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ for criticising the CCP and its leaders on Twitter.
While this wave of expansion of the use of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ under the pretext of COVID-19 âÂÂepidemic controlâ mainly targeted at grassroots individuals, high-profile prosecutions existed as shown in the case of Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist and former lawyer, who had independently reported on the outbreak in Wuhan, was sentenced to four yearsâ imprisonment for âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ on 28 December 2020. On 13 August 2021, two volunteers, Cai Wei and Chen Mei, were convicted of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ and sentenced to 15 months in prison for archiving censored articles online. Their project, Terminus2049, had archived about 600 censored articles since 2018 (in which roughly 100 were on COVID-19), before they were captured in April 2020. And in November 2023, documentary filmmaker Chen Pinlin (âÂÂPlatoâÂÂ) was detained under this charge after he uploaded his 77-minute documentary, âÂÂÃÂrümqi RoadâÂÂ, which recorded the 2022 âÂÂwhite paperâ protests nationwide against COVID-19 restrictions, to YouTube and X (formally âÂÂTwitterâÂÂ). Chen was later convicted of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ and sentenced to three and a half years in January 2025.
Since its establishment in 2013, the âÂÂChina Judgements Onlineâ () run by the Supreme PeopleâÂÂs Court required courts to upload rulings onto it; by August 2020, over 100 million documents had been posted. From early 2021, however, a massive retraction wave was observed as media reported that at least 11 million judgements were taken offline in a three-month campaign under the disguise of âÂÂmigrationâÂÂ. Observers noted that politically sensitive cases, including âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ, had disappeared collectively.
The means and scale of this purge wave include: judgements including keywords such as âÂÂTwitterâÂÂ, âÂÂrumourâÂÂ, and âÂÂstate leaderâ were eliminated almost completely; judgements of certain categories were collectively removed, including but not limiting to âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ, as one research conducted by Safeguard Defenders saw that by May 2022, searches that had once yielded tens of thousands of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ cases in 2020 returned 0 results, indicating that the entire category was wiped out; some district courts reportedly delisted all documents of criminal cases; and judgements of sensitive cases were silently retracted even before the purge wave if they attracted media attention, as seen in the case of Luo Daiqing, whom was convicted of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ for his remarks made overseas when he was studying abroad. Access frictions also grew as a sign-in wall was erected with mandatory local phone number registration was required and hard caps were imposed on retrievable results.
In August 2023, a tribunal of the Supreme PeopleâÂÂs Court released an investigation report acknowledging that local officials were âÂÂwidely and excessivelyâ using the charge of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ, especially to criminalise petitioners seeking redress from higher authorities. The tribunalâÂÂs investigation found a âÂÂclear tendencyâ to generalise and overuse the charge in the preceding decade, noting it ranked among the top rural offences and disproportionately entrapped young, migrant workers, unemployed, and petitioners, and urged more prudent handling of cases related to petitions.
In AugustâÂÂSeptember 2023, a proposed amendment to the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security sought to penalise acts that âÂÂhurt national feelingsâ or âÂÂundermine the spirit of the Chinese nationâÂÂ, including wearing certain clothing or publishing certain remarks, with penalties included up to 15 days of administrative detention and fines up to 5,000 yuan. The proposal, which would have codified a phrase once commonly used in diplomatic rhetoric for domestic law enforcement, drew heated public criticism for its vagueness in the undefined notions of âÂÂnational spiritâ and âÂÂfeelingsâÂÂ, arguing that it would allow even more arbitrary and selective enforcement by the police that the âÂÂpicking quarrelsâ charge already enabled in practice. However, these most contentious phrases were reconsidered after public outcry and dropped eventually in the final version.
Despite being officially acknowledged of abuse by the Supreme PeopleâÂÂs Court in 2023, âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ continues to be employed extensively as a versatile tool against a wide spectrum of activities.
A late-emerging pattern links âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ to local governmentâÂÂprivate business conflicts. Examples included the case of Sun Dawu, whom in 2020 was captured and later prosecuted with and convicted of charges including âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ due to a long-running land dispute between his Dawu Group and a state farm; and in 2023, Guizhou businesswoman Ma Yijiayi, while seeking roughly 220 million yuan in unpaid government project fees, was detained for âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ shortly after rejecting a low settlement. Cases alike prompted a social media account affiliated with the state-run âÂÂChina News Serviceâ to openly question whether this was an effort to âÂÂuse criminal punishment to resolve debtâÂÂ.
By November 2024, analysts and legal experts warned of a new, broader, and incentive-driven trend of âÂÂdistant fishingâ () whereby debt-stressed local authorities were increasingly resorting to reach beyond their jurisdictions to pressure creditors to write off government debts or target private firms for financial gain, invoking charges like âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ to seize assets or coerce settlements therewhile hand down long prison terms in the name of public order, as seen in one noted case where a Shandong businessman owed 230 million yuan by a Guizhou government project sentenced there to 19 years.
Meanwhile, this charge has been continually used to put out dissentâÂÂeven more covertly, as the judgements of the cases are not being published in the official database any more. This can be seen in the case of Chen Mingyu, whose attending a private dinner celebrating Lai Ching-teâÂÂs inauguration incurred her a two-and-a-half-year sentence of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ in March 2025; or as in the case of Qin X-liang, whose case was referred as âÂÂone of the top ten politically sensitive cases nationwideâ and claimed to have been âÂÂsupervised by the Ministry of Public Securityâ in the 2023 annual work report of the local prosecution office of the Yuexiu district of Guangzhou, went completely silent with no media coverage at home or abroad.
High-profile convictions also continued as seen in the re-imprisonment of Zhang Zhan, whom was released in May 2024 after serving her 2020 conviction just to be re-detained again three months later in August 2024 and received four more years in September 2025 for another âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ conviction.
Lawyers, legal experts, and rights groups have repeatedly criticised âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ as a vaguely defined, âÂÂcatch-allâ offence, a âÂÂpocket crimeâ that âÂÂanything can be stuffed into itâÂÂ, and a âÂÂgeneric chargeâ convenient for detaining activists; they argue that its breadth weakens mens rea thresholds, makes defence work difficult, and facilitates selective targeting of dissent, online expression, and non-criminal contention.
It has provoked several intense public reactions. One example would be the 2013 week-long detention of a 16-year-old for âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâÂÂ, which had triggered a visible backlash, with over 10,000 supportive remarks posted online (many were swiftly deleted), volunteered defence offered from lawyers, commentary calling the âÂÂrumourâ drive as suppressing normal speech, and public figures, including novelist Yu Hua, openly argued for restraint. And the attempted âÂÂhurt feelingsâ clauses insertion in 2023 also faced with widespread public outcry and criticism which eventually led to the clauses being dropped.
Academic analyses see the expansion of âÂÂpicking quarrels and provoking troubleâ as an instrumentally âÂÂlegalistâÂÂ, âÂÂmore consolidatedâ repression under Xi Jinping, as it is preferred over explicit national-security charges for everyday dissent precisely because of its breadth and low evidentiary bar in practice. Empirical political-legal analysis has observed a shift âÂÂfrom sporadic harassment to criminalisationâÂÂ, alongside a marked fall in âÂÂendangering state securityâ charges () that analysts attributed to the re-labelling under charges like this one.
Prominent voices within the establishment have urged narrowing the use or even a complete repealment. In 2019, National PeopleâÂÂs Congress delegate and senior lawyer Liu Shoumin warned that the offence had become a âÂÂcatch-allâÂÂ, urged standardising application, argued that grievance-driven petitioning should be excluded, and insisted that any âÂÂdisturbanceâ created via online speech must translate into severe disruption in a physical public place before constituting the offence; he grounded his critique in the principle of legality and submitted a formal proposal during the âÂÂTwo Sessionsâ of that year. In 2022âÂÂs âÂÂTwo SessionsâÂÂ, National PeopleâÂÂs Congress delegate Xiao Shengfang and Chinese PeopleâÂÂs Political Consultative Conference member Zhu Zhengfu submitted separate proposals calling for the repealment of the offence, branding it as vague, unpredictable, and prone to selective enforcement.
A 2022 study of over 13,000 Shanghai court judgements from 2020 found the offence pervasive in the âÂÂplea leniency systemâ (), with inconsistent pre-trial outcomes and a strong carceral tilt notwithstanding the systemâÂÂs mitigation goals; the author characterises it as a âÂÂpocket crimeâ with deliberately obfuscated language. Another work on policing strategy in 2023 describes it as a âÂÂforward-leaning policingâ () posture, supported by a broad âÂÂsocial dangerousnessâ arrest threshold and a criminalâÂÂadministrative binary system that channels incivilities to administrative detention and more sensitive matters to criminal prosecution under this label, with routinised use against online speech. Pandemic-era analysis notes a focus on the speakerâÂÂs subjective âÂÂharmâ to political values rather than content truthfulness, aided by special reporting channels for âÂÂharmful political informationâÂÂ.
Several syntheses emphasise on the charge-stacking phenomenon and a âÂÂgateway/fallbackâ role of this offenceâÂÂinitially applying this charge to secure detention, then escalating to, or substituting from, graver counts (as seen in the cases of Ou Biaofeng, Yu Wensheng, Li Qiaochu, and Huang Xueqin, all escalated to âÂÂinciting subversionâ charges in later phases); they also observed its rising penalties and supplementary use alongside other offences; one study argues that, paradoxically, heightened legalism has expanded arbitrariness and re-introduced a hooliganism-like pretext under a legal form.