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

Reports

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 …
The Spring Breeze Is Bound to Cause Ripples: A New Year Statement by The China Human Rights Lawyers Group
January 1, 2022 In 1925, the 26-year-old poet and political dissident Wen Yiduo (闻一多) wrote in his poem titled “Dead Water”: Here is a ditch of doomed, dead waterNo spring breeze can stir up even half a ripple In 1946, Wen was assassinated on the streets of Kunming by military security officers of the Kuomintang that ruled China at the …
An Appeal to the Chinese Government Regarding Guo Feixiong’s Departure From China
To Whom It May Concern in the Government of China: We are a group of scholars in China studies with longstanding interests in the progress of human rights and the rule of law in China. We write to express our deep concern with the current plight of Chinese citizens Yang Maodong (whose pseudonym is Guo Feixiong) and his wife Zhang …
Lin’s Uprising — A Human Rights Lawyer Recounts How His Law Firm Was Shut Down and His License Revoked
China Change, November 21, 2021 Lin Qilei (蔺其磊) is one of the most productive human rights lawyers in China for over a decade. Like many human rights lawyers, especially since the 709 Crackdown, he has been targeted and now driven out of the profession for his work. In this 12-minute video, he recounts how the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau denied …

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Analysis and Opinions

Lawyers’ Struggles for Freedoms in China and the World – A Conversation With Professor Terence Halliday of The American Bar Foundation
February 11, 2022 This wide-ranging, fascinating conversation was initially conducted on The American Bar Foundation’s Rule of Law: World Tour podcast on December 21, 2021. Professor Halliday has since expanded it to include more details of his study of China’s lawyers since 2005, how the work of Chinese lawyers is part of a bigger struggle for basic legal freedoms and …
Testimony on Peng Shuai Before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Chair Merkley, Co-Chair McGovern, Members of the Commission, thank you for holding this hearing and for asking me to share my thoughts on the case of the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai. Indeed, Peng Shuai has become a special kind of political prisoner. Meanwhile, the Women’s Tennis Association’s decision to suspend all tournaments in China has raised a moral question …
The Gaslit Games: Xi Jinping, Thomas Bach, and António Guterres are Driving the Olympic Movement Toward a Shared Authoritarian Future
Andréa Worden, February 2, 2022 “The Olympics and Paralympics send a fantastic message of ‘peace and of mutual respect between people of all cultures, all civilizations and all ethnicities,’ said Guterres, days before his trip to China to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. …… It is necessary to shine a light on the Olympic spirit, which …
Remembering Zhang Qing: From Her Daughter, Her Son, and Her Friend
January 30, 2022 Zhang Qing (张青), mother of two children, wife of prominent Chinese rights movement activist Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), died of cancer on January 10, 2022, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She fled China in 2009 with her two children to the United States, settling in Midland, Texas, with the help of ChinaAid, while her husband was serving a 5-year prison …

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Interviews and profiles

The Defenders — 20 Years of Human Rights Lawyers in China / 辩护人: 中国人权律师二十年
"Rights defense lawyers" emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. From their appearance, to the notorious 709 mass arrests in 2015, to today, the Chinese Communist government has subjected them to intimidation, disappearance, torture, imprisonment, and disbarment, ignoring the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers. This 68-minute documentary film reviews the twenty-year journey of human rights lawyers …
IN MEMORY OF ZHANG QING
This mini-documentary, filmed and edited by Ai Xiaoming and re-edited and subtitled by China Change, depicts Zhang Qing's first visit to her husband Guo Feixiong in Meizhou Prison. It is also a snapshot of the life of Zhang Qing and her two children in 2007 and 2008 in Guangzhou. Zhang Qing died on January 10, 2022, in Germantown, Maryland.
An End-of-Year Reflection on My Disbarment
Liang Xiaojun, January 6, 2022 Liang Xiaojun has practiced law in Beijing for twenty years, devoting the last twelve years of his career to human rights cases. He is the director of Beijing Daoheng Law Firm. On December 16, 2021, the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau issued an administrative penalty decision to permanently revoke his license, citing his expressions on Twitter …
Sun Dawu: A Chinese Agricultural Entrepreneur’s 36-year Dream in the Era of Reform and Opening Up (Part Two)
Yaxue Cao, April 2, 2021 (Continued from Part One) Arrest; from ‘Grain Banks’ to community financing In April 2003, about a month after Sun Dawu’s speeches at Peking University and China Agricultural University, he was called to Zhongnanhai once more. This time it was to South Zhongnanhai, housing the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), where several officials …

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