There are 107 writers incarcerated in China, PEN America said, adding that 50 among them are “‘online commentators’ writing about political and economic issues and expressing pro-democracy viewpoints.”

The number of writers jailed in China surpassed 100 for the first time, with nearly half imprisoned for online expression as the country continued to be the biggest jailer of writers.

PEN America, a free expression group, revealed the grim milestone in its annual Freedom to Write index – a report it released on Wednesday.

The group reported that 339 writers were imprisoned in 2023, the most in the five years it has been producing the index. China accounts for nearly one-third of the world’s jailed writers. There are 107 people behind bars because of their published statements in China, more than any other country on the index.

It is the first time that PEN America’s count of writers jailed in China has surpassed 100. Other databases, such as the Reporters Without Borders’ tally of journalists and media workers detained in China, passed that milestone in 2020.

The number of jailed writers – a list that excludes reporters, but includes literary writers, poets, online commentators, and opinion writers – has generally gone up over the past five years, said Karin Karlekar, the director of writers at risk at PEN America.

“We are seeing worsening threats against writers,” she said.

The index defined “online commentators” as bloggers and people who use social media as their main platform for expression.

“Not all people arrested for their online expression will find themselves represented here,” said James Tager, the director of research at Pen America.

“It is certain that the true toll of all those who are punished for their expression in China is far higher than the numbers represented here, and that is not even to count those who are censored or who censor themselves for fear of formal punishment.”

There are 107 writers incarcerated in China, PEN America said, adding that 50 among them are “‘online commentators’ writing about political and economic issues and expressing pro-democracy viewpoints.” Others faced trial last year under the 2020 national security law that squashed dissent in Hong Kong.

People detained by the authorities for their online expression are typically arrested under suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a charge that even a senior political delegate has said is too vague and could be used arbitrarily by the police.

Among those jailed for picking quarrels is the journalist Zhang Zhan, a Chinese citizen who has been imprisoned since 2020 after she was arrested for reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan.

Several other writers in the Freedom to Write index were targeted for commenting on the government’s Covid policies. Sun Qing was arrested in May 2020 for “inciting subversion of state power” after posting critical statements on WeChat and X, then known as Twitter.

Writers in Xinjiang are treated particularly harshly. China’s northwestern region is home to the Uyghur minority, a Muslim group that has been subjected to harsh cultural and political suppression in the past decade.

Gulnisa Imin, an Uyghur poet, is serving a 17-and-a-half-year sentence because her poetry – the most famous of which was inspired by One Thousand and One Nights – promotes “separatism”.