China Change : News and commentaries for a free and just China

Reports

Announcing the 6th China Human Rights Lawyers Day
June 16, 2022 The sixth annual China Human Rights Lawyers Day will be held virtually on July 9, 2022, at 9 a.m. EST (U.S.). In 2017, human rights organizations in the U.S., Taiwan, and Hong Kong established July 9th as the China Human Rights Lawyers day to commemorate the mass arrests, detention, and torture of human rights lawyers in mainland …
Call on China to immediately release lawyer Tang Jitian, who has been extralegally detained since December 2021
June 12, 2022 Chinese human rights lawyer Tang Jitian (唐吉田) has been detained extralegally since December 10, 2021 by Beijing and Jilin state security under the pretext of “maintaining stability,” while his only daughter, Tang Zhengqi, is in a coma in Japan. We understand that Mr. Tang has recently made repeated requests to the head of the State Security Bureau …
Shanghai Spring
Shanghai Spring is a sequel to "LOCKDOWN Shanghai 2022" that was posted on China Change YouTube channel on April 9. The sequel is a compilation of 200 select video clips and stills from Shanghai, taken between April 10 and May 10. In ten segments, it offers a comprehensive view of the Shanghai lockdown, an event that is bound to have …
Where is Peng Shuai, and Where Will the Hologic WTA Tour Go in October in Place of China?
Andréa Worden, March 29, 2022 In sharp contrast with the beginning of the 2022 tennis season, we haven’t heard much from players or fans with respect to Peng Shuai’s plight. The “Where is Peng Shuai?” t-shirt campaign at the Australian Open in January, which drew global attention to Peng Shuai’s silencing and disappearance by Chinese authorities, has not been repeated …

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Analysis and Opinions

The 6th China Human Rights Lawyers Day: Recording and Full Text
July 25, 2022 China Disbars Lawyers to Remove a Perceived Threat / 中國人權律师被剝奪執業權 In a very real sense, the 709 Crackdown is still ongoing. Over the years following the initial campaign to arrest and torture human rights lawyers, China has disbarred over 40 lawyers for representing clients in human rights cases. As recently as in 2021, for example, China disbarred …
Chinese Lawyers’ ‘Original Sin’ — Speech by Lawyer Li Fangping on the 6th China Human Rights Lawyers Day
Li Fangping, July 9, 2022 Li Fangping started practicing law in China in the mid-1990s, first in Jiangxi and then in Beijing. Over the years since the onset of the rights defense movement in the early 2000s, he has been one of the leading human rights lawyers and has defensed clients in nearly all types of human rights and public …
The Citizens Movement
By Xu Zhiyong, translated by Andréa Worden, June 21, 2022 After being released from prison in July 2017, Xu Zhiyong devoted a year to writing “A Beautiful China” that was posted on his blog. This is Chapter 13 of the book. Xu’s career as a civil rights leader has spanned two decades since the early 2000s. He was imprisoned from …
One Life for One Dream
Xu Zhiyong, June 18, 2022 This autobiographical essay was written shortly before his arrest in 2013. It was translated into English and first published in Xu Zhiyong’s collection of essays “To Build a Free China – A Citizen’s Journey” in 2017. We make this important essay available to online readers before Xu Zhiyong’s trial on June 22, 2022. — The …

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Interviews and profiles

The Life and Death of the ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ – Part Four
By Olivia Cheng, Siaw Hew Wah, translated by China Change, August 8, 2022 (Continued from Part One, Part Two, and Part Three) Keeping the memory alive: the June 4 Memorial Museum Who will maintain the historical record and collective memory if, one day, the people of Hong Kong forget the events of June 4? Before 1997, a Netherlands-based international organization supporting …
The Life and Death of the ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ – Part Three
By Olivia Cheng, Siaw Hew Wah, translated by China Change, August 6, 2022 (Continued from Part One, Part Two) Candle lights have carried on the memory For the first time, candle lights lit up the faces of 150,000 Hong Kongers. “Looking down the field from the stage, it was a sea of candle lights, like all the stars had fallen on …
The Life and Death of the ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ – Part Two
By Olivia Cheng, Siaw Hew Wah, translated by China Change, July 31, 2022 (Continued from Part One) Supporting the Chinese democracy movement, from Hong Kong to overseas Among all political organizations in Hong Kong, the Alliance is the only one that continuously worked to support the Chinese democracy movement. In 1989, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Alliance made resistance a …
The Life and Death of the ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ – Part One
By Olivia Cheng, Siaw Hew Wah, translated by China Change, July 29, 2022 Those without a keen familiarity with Hong Kong’s democracy movements, especially our English-speaking readers, might not have heard about the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, but you’ve likely seen photos of the annual June 4th Vigil in the city’s Victoria Park, …

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