Zhang Xuezhong, translated by Andréa Worden, May 18, 2020 Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠), born in 1976, was a law professor at China East University of Political Science and Law. In May 2013, he was the first academic to disclose the “seven speak-nots” (later known as Document No. 9), an order of the Communist Party circulated in Chinese academia that banned discussion of universal values, freedom of speech, civil society, civil rights, the historical errors of the Chinese Communist Party, crony capitalism, and judicial independence. Zhang was fired by his university later that year. Zhang is also a human rights lawyer who has represented dissidents, but his practice was short-lived because of obstruction from the university as well as the Justice Bureau in Shanghai. In 2019, he was permanently disbarred. On May 10, 2020, […]

Zhang Xuezhong, translated by Andrea Worden, January 7, 2019 Last week, Dr. Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠), a law professor at East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai, posted an article on WeChat titled “Bid Farewell to Reform and Opening Up –– On China’s Perilous Situation and Its Future Options” (《告别改革开放 –– 论当今中国的危局和前路》). The following is an excerpt from the article in which he dismisses the notion that Deng Xiaoping’s time was a better time, a time, many believe, the current leader Xi Jinping has digressed from and should return to. We should point out that, in 2013, Dr. Zhang was stripped of his teaching position at the university by the university’s communist party committee for his writings on constitutionalism, and he now works in […]

By ChinaChange.org   Publishied: August 25, 2013 Last week, associate professor Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠) of East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai was notified that he was stripped of his qualifications to teach at the university. According to Dr. Zhang, the university’s Human Resources office told him that the decision was made “collectively by the university’s communist party committee.” Dr. Zhang promptly challenged the legality of such a decision since he is not a party member. In a latest statement issued via his WeChat account (@张雪忠) on Sunday, Dr. Zhang Xuezhong related the sequence of his recent interactions with school authorities that shed light on the event: “On June 4, 2013, I published an article entitled The Origin and the Perils of the Anti-constitutionalism […]

This past week was, by any measure, an interesting week in China. Last Saturday, May 4th, Chengdu residents planned, after days of online mobilization, to have a “stroll” in a downtown area protesting an oil refinery and petrochemical plant known as the PX project to be built in Pengzhou, about 30 kilometers away from the city. People worried about pollution and also the possibility of an earthquake disaster since the project is located on the same earthquake-active strip as Beichuan, the epicenter of the devastating 2008 earthquake. The protest didn’t materialize because China’s stability maintenance machine went to work in full gear. It was a rare, all-out display, and NPR’s Louisa Lim has a good report on how: “At the appointed hour and location for […]

Following earlier detentions in Guangdong and Beijing, on April 27, another ten activists in Xinyu, Jiangxi (江西新余) were taken into police custody for demanding that government officials disclose their assets. Since then, seven of them have been released but Liu Ping (刘萍), Wei Zhongping (魏忠平) and Li Sihua (李思华) are still been held. According to Beijing-based rights lawyer Li Pingfang, those who were released gave accounts of being slapped in the face, wearing shackles, and being locked in iron cages. They said that the police interrogation focused on their participation in advocating asset disclosure by officials. For days, Liu Ping’s daughter, a college student, has been visiting the Public Security authorities for the detention notice that, by law, the family is supposed to receive but […]