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

Reports

In Zealous Effort to Increase Grain Production, China Deploys Force and Coercion to ‘Manage’ the Countryside
China Change, April 30, 2023 It’s the season for spring planting in China, starting from the south and moving up to the north. However, agricultural policies implemented by the Communist Party authorities in recent years are wreaking havoc in rural communities nationwide this spring, drawing the attention and unease of many Chinese commentators and netizens. One is the sudden emergence …
‘A democratic China must be realized in our time, we cannot saddle the next generation with this duty’ – Xu Zhiyong’s Court Statement
Xu Zhiyong, April 9, 2023 Dr. Xu Zhiyong (许志永) is no stranger to those who have followed the emergence of civil society in China in the early 2000s to its being silenced by the continuous suppression, more severe under Xi Jinping. Xu Zhiyong’s career began from providing legal assistance along with a team of rights lawyers to disadvantaged Chinese seeking …
Authoritarianism Shall Perish – Ding Jiaxi’s Court Statement
Ding Jiaxi, April 9, 2023 After a decade-long successful career as a successful commercial lawyer in Beijing, Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) joined the New Citizens Movement in 2011 led by legal scholar Xu Zhiyong (许志永). The citizen movement chiefly concerned itself with calling upon Chinese to become true citizens, exercising their rights and shouldering their responsibilities as citizens to change China …
China Has a Youth Unemployment Problem; Guangdong Province Spearheads a Plan to Send 300,000 Youth to the Countryside by the End of 2025
China Change, April 7, 2023 Since the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) started to publish the country’s monthly unemployment rate in January 2018, the unemployment rate for young urban workers aged 16-24 (including migrant workers living in urban areas) over the past five years has increased from 11% in January 2018 to 19.9% in July 2022, then decreased …

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Analysis and Opinions

A Protest Song Has Emerged in China — It’s the Communist Anthem
Yaxue Cao, March 5, 2023 The first time I heard The Internationale sung in China as a protest song was when Shanghai went into lockdown for about a week last spring. At that time, I watched dozens of videos from Shanghai on social media every day. One clip left an impression on me. It was taken in a residential area …
The Choice Facing the Taiwanese People: Moving Towards Greater Enlightenment, or Falling Back to the Dark Age of Dictatorship?
Tsao Hsing-cheng, January 18, 2023 Is that even a choice? — you may ask. China is this mammoth totalitarian giant, and Taiwan, small as it is, is a vibrant democracy with formidable technological prowess. In one survey after another, over 80% of Taiwanese are against “reunification” with China under “One Country, Two Systems,” and over half are in favor of …
A Conversation With Ilham Tohti
Yaxue Cao, January 13, 2023 The article was first published by the Uyghur Human Rights Project. A Chinese version is also available. I wrote down the title the way I pop in two pills to ease the rising blood pressure in my skull. There is no conversation, as Ilham Tohti, the former economics professor at Minzu University in Beijing, …
2022: Remember the Light the Young Have Shown Us
Jiang Xue, January 3, 2023 In Beijing, at least 11 young people have been detained in connection with the “Blank Paper” (白纸抗议) protests, of whom two are confirmed to be journalists, another two musicians, an editor, a curator, and a white-collar employee at a foreign company. The identities of the rest are still unclear. — The Editors “Mom definitely knows …

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Interviews and profiles

Taiwan Interview Series (2): Lin Ping-yu, Member of New Taipei City Council
Lin studied Taiwan-PRC relations, focusing on the CCP's United Front Work in Taiwan. He worked as an aide to Democratic Progressive Party council members in Taipei and New Taipei City prior to running office. He served in the Special Forces of Taiwan's army before as part of the country’s compulsory active duty military service for men. We spoke about China, …
Taiwan Interview Series (1): Ho Cheng-hui, CEO of Kuma Academy
"The Taiwan Interview Series" is a result of a China Change team going around Taiwan for 30 days in Nov. and Dec, 2022. The time frame for the trip was deliberately chosen to observe the local elections against the backdrop of China’s military threat, and to take measure of Taiwanese attitudes towards totalitarian China as they enjoy their robust democracy.
The Life and Death of the ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ – Part Seven
By Olivia Cheng, Siaw Hew Wah, translated by China Change, August 26, 2022 (Continued from Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five and Part Six) On June 1, 2, and 3, 2021, Stand News published a three-part feature of the ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ (which China Change recently translated and posted in six installments). On …
The Life and Death of the ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ – Part Six
By Olivia Cheng, Siaw Hew Wah, translated by China Change, August 18, 2022 (Continued from Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five) Continuing crackdown pre- and post-’97 In the years after 1989, the situation for the Hong Kong Alliance was relatively uneventful. But with the approach of 1997, the storm picked up again. Lo Wai-ming (盧偉明), who was the president …

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