Ruth Wang, a partner at a law firm representing pastors from Beijing’s Zion Church, among China's largest underground congregations, has fled the country with her husband and two children as Chinese authorities pressured the firm to dissolve. Wang is now in Taiwan, where authorities have provided her family with temporary housing on humanitarian grounds, Visegrad 24 reported. She left China for the island earlier this month, according to the Malaysia Sun.
Taiwan lacks a formal asylum law, though the Mainland Affairs Council, its cross-strait agency, says it has a mechanism for such cases. Taiwanese officials reportedly told Wang the island’s rules bar it from granting asylum to people from mainland China, given tension between Beijing and Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party, according to The Associated Press.
Wang is exploring resettlement in the U.S. or in Canada, including studying there to relocate her family, saying their future remains uncertain. She is a partner at the law firm VDoor. Since October 2025, Wang has been part of the legal team representing Pastor Ezra Jin, the Zion Church founder, and other detained members.
Chinese authorities arrested 18 Zion Church members, including Jin, that October, in one of the biggest crackdowns on a single congregation in decades. President Donald Trump brought up his case with China’s President Xi Jinping in a May meeting, and Jin was released in July, about nine months after his arrest. Chinese authorities ordered Wang and her colleagues to dissolve VDoor Law Firm or risk having it shut down.
She said refusing would “seriously affect my career development and other aspects of my life.” VDoor’s founder, Zhang Kai, whom Wang has called her mentor, lost his law license and was blocked from leaving China. Other lawyers at the firm were suspended from practicing law for half a year, she said.