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Liu Zhenying (known as Brother Yun) is an exiled Chinese Christian evangelist.

Supposedly, he was sentenced to a maximum security prison some time ago and escaped miraculously, and "without any human help" - according, supposedly, to an investigation by the Chinese government.

However, the only references I can find supporting this claim are from his autobiography The Heavenly Man and various Christian sites. The current Wikipedia page cites the stories from the book unskeptically.

Is there any independent source which confirms this?

Oddthinking
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  • Not sure about the attribution to / tag of "miracle". This would make any answer in the affirmative, "he did escape without help", basically a concession to spiritual belief. – DevSolar Nov 29 '18 at 08:34
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    Generally speaking, there are very few "independent sources" that get to examine Chinese prisons... –  Nov 29 '18 at 08:40
  • @MichaelK By independent I meant anybody not invested in Brother Yun. An actual confirmation from the Chinese government itself past or present would be enough right? – 83457 Nov 29 '18 at 13:23
  • @83457 The Chinese authorities are — obviously — invested in the issue of the escape since all kinds of inside help — i.e. "corrupt" (by their standards) officials — would be an immense embarrassment that makes a mockery of their supposed "maximum security" prison. –  Nov 29 '18 at 13:26
  • @MichaelK Right ok. So little chance of light being shed on this? – 83457 Nov 29 '18 at 13:37
  • @83457 Until China has their own Glasnost / Perestroika-style reforms: very little chance indeed.. –  Nov 29 '18 at 14:16
  • It is telling that I can't find any references to the maximum security prison he escaped from outside of references to the book itself. – DenisS Nov 29 '18 at 16:09
  • On zh.wikipedia there is a general doubt about the veracity of the entire book but I couldn't find a detailed debunking – Avery Nov 30 '18 at 11:38
  • In *The Heavenly Man*, the term "Zhengzhou Number One Maximum Security Prison" is used, but I don't think that is intended to indicate the official name of the prison. If you search for 郑州监狱 (Zhengzhou prison) then you can find pages such as [this one](https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/172812749) which confirm the existence of a prison in Zhengzhou. Of course it isn't completely clear that this is precisely the prison that Brother Yun was referring to. – Timothy Chow May 28 '22 at 21:43
  • While I agree that we cannot expect independent confirmation of all aspects of Brother Yun's story, I can at least imagine that the Chinese authorities might confirm that he was locked up in Zhengzhou for a short period of time and then "released." This would corroborate some aspects of Brother Yun's story, though of course not the "miraculous" aspects. – Timothy Chow May 28 '22 at 22:25

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