(Minghui.org) An 81-year-old woman’s latest efforts to get her long-suspended pension reinstated were unsuccessful yet again, Minghui.org learned recently.
Ms. Wu Xiulan, a retired environmental engineer in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, served two prison terms (May 2015 to May 2017 and July 2019 to July 2022), for practicing Falun Gong. The Jinzhou City Human Resources and Social Security Bureau (HRSSB) suspended her pension when she was in prison in April 2016. She sought the reinstatement of her pension after each prison term but to no avail.
Ms. Wu filed a lawsuit against the HRSSB in March 2025, but the Jinzhou Railway Court declined to hear her case because “she had no grounds.” The court also refused to issue a formal decision to dismiss her case or to docket her case for further consideration, which meant she was unable to pursue further legal action to refile her lawsuit or seek other legal avenues.
On June 24, 2026, Ms. Wu submitted a request to the HRSSB, urging the agency to fulfill its legal obligation to reinstate her pension. The agency did not issue a response within the legally required 60 days. She then filed an administrative reconsideration request to the Jinzhou City Administrative Reconsideration Acceptance Center on August 25, urging the Center to instruct the HRSSB to start issuing her pension payments and pay back the suspended benefits.
Ms. Wu finally received a response from the HRSSB on September 29. Dated September 14, the response stated that the HRSSB never failed to fulfill its legal obligation to her for three reasons, which Ms. Wu refuted in a letter on October 5.
The HRSSB indicated that Ms. Wu did not put her name on the envelope of the request she mailed to them on June 24, 2026. Additionally, she did not list her own home address as the sender’s address, but used that of the Jinzhou City Environmental Protection Center, where she worked for 34 years before she retired.
The HRSSB stated that it never opened the envelope since the sender’s name was not on it, thus not “knowing” what Ms. Wu’s request was and “responding within 60 days as required by law.”
Ms. Wu explained that, because her request included all her detailed personal information, such as her legal name and home address, she did not think it was necessary to specify her name on the envelope. Additionally, the HRSSB is required by law to address concerns from the general public, regardless of who they are.
As for why she used her former employer’s address on the envelope, she said that the mailboxes in her apartment complex had been out of service for years. To make sure she would receive the HRSSB’s response, she secured her former employer’s permission to use their address to receive any mail addressed to her.
The HRSSB cited Article 6 of the No. 69 Notice as the legal basis for suspending Ms. Wu’s pension.
The “Notice on Issues Related to the Compulsory Measures Taken by Institutional Workers and the Handling of Administrative Criminal Penalties” was issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in 2012. Article 6 states that pensioners serving prison sentences are denied benefits and that, following their release, their benefits shall be handled at the discretion of the unit that originally paid the retirement benefits.
Ms. Wu reiterated that the No. 69 Notice is not an enacted law and was labeled as an internal publication. Because China’s labor law and social security law protect retirees from forfeiture of their hard-earned pension benefits, the notice cannot be used to strip her of her retirement benefits.
The HRSSB, the Jingzhou City Finance Bureau, and the Jinzhou City Environmental Protection Center held a joint meeting in 2018 and decided to issue Ms. Wu a 300-yuan monthly stipend. She refused to sign the paperwork because she should have been issued her full pension benefits (over 3,000 yuan per month).
In its September 2026 response to Ms. Wu, the HRSSB faulted her for not accepting the 2018 stipend offer. In her letter to the agency, she recounted more details surrounding the stipend issue.
Back in 2018, the HRSSB cited Article 6 of the No. 69 Notice (mentioned above) as the legal basis to use their discretion to only offer her a 300-yuan monthly stipend.
Ms. Wu believed that, if the No. 69 Notice could be used as a legal basis, Article 9 in that notice was a more fitting application to her case. Article 9 states that those who have already been receiving pension benefits before their prison sentence shall be entitled to the same benefits after their release from prison.
Her former employer concurred with her and requested that the Jinzhou City Finance Bureau appropriate funds to pay back her suspended benefits. Her employer was fully funded by the Finance Bureau.
The Finance Bureau rejected the employer’s request on the grounds that the No. 60 Notice was issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, not the Liaoning Province Finance Department (which oversees the Finance Bureau).
Ms. Wu’s employer turned to the HRSSB, which responded that “the HRSSB has no authority to order the Finance Bureau to enforce the No. 69 Notice but the HRSSB must enforce Article 6 of the Notice.”
As contradictory this was, both the HRSSB and the Finance Bureau used the No. 69 Notice as an excuse to not issue Ms. Wu her full pension benefits. That is why she declined the 300-yuan monthly stipend offer.
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