China has once again emerged as the world’s biggest jailer of writers amid an intensifying crackdown on free speech and dissent, according to a report from PEN America.
At least 401 writers across 44 countries were jailed in 2025, an increase from 375 writers in 40 countries the year before, the organisation's Freedom to Write Index found.
There has been a 69 per cent rise in jailing of writers globally in the past seven years, which underscores the alarming escalation in suppression of dissent, the report stated.
China has been the biggest jailer of writers consistently for the past seven years, with 119 authors arrested for writing on democracy, criticising the Chinese Communist Party, and promoting ethnic minority language and culture.
The report was released as US president Donald Trump was about to set out on a two-day visit to China, where he is stated to discuss Taiwan and the case of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai with president Xi Jinping.
Mr Trump said he would bring up the case of Mr Lai, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail in February on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious materials.
PEN America found that due to increasingly harsh restrictions and a punitive system, publishers rely on self-censoring in order to avoid being put in prison. It found that China has also increased its global reach and engaged in transnational repression, often crossing borders to silence critics or suppressing minority voices in its autonomous regions.
Rights groups and foreign governments have criticised China for throttling dissent through the arbitrary arrest of Uyghurs, critics and pro-democracy activists and lawyers in Hong Kong under the national security laws. Beijing routinely denies such allegations, calling them the “lie of the century”.
Prominent Uyghur scholar and author Rahile Dawut was sentenced to life in prison in 2023 on charges of "endangering state security”.
Lhamjab Borjgin, an ethnic Mongolian writer, was kidnapped from his residence-in-exile in Mongolia in 2023, while Swedish citizen and Hong Kong-based publisher Gui Minhai was kidnapped in 2015 in Thailand, and has been held in China ever since.
The report found that sharpest increase in arrest of writers came from Iran, which arrested 17 new authors in renewed crackdown on dissent during the anti-government protest.
“In a year of surging arrests of writers worldwide, Iranian authorities stand out for their especially fierce campaign against independent voices,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, PEN America’s director of Writers At Risk campaign.
“Poets, translators, scholars, singer-songwriters, online commentators, human rights advocates, and columnists are all being ensnared in Iran’s jails as the government moves to stifle debate and dissent.”
Saudi Arabia ranked third this year, with 27 writers jailed in 2025. Vietnam was in fourth place with 24 writers in jail and Turkey saw the number of writers jailed increase from 18 in 2024 to 22 writers this year.
In 2025, Israel continued its suppression of Palestinian and non-Palestinian dissenting voices, the report found. It ranked fifth with 21 writers in prison amid its retaliatory war against Hamas in Gaza, which was halted by a US-brokered ceasefire in October.
Russia, now in its fourth year of war on Ukraine, jailed 18 writers. The report found that the majority of the writers were jailed for anti-war sentiments or their suspected involvement in it.
“Like terrorism charges, authorities continue to weaponise foreign agent and extremist designations to suppress and heighten the cost of dissent, punishing even exiled writers,” the report found.