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

Reports

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 …
China’s Best Known Public Interest Litigator Awaits Trial
Yaxue Cao, October 31, 2021 In China, Hao Jinsong (郝劲松) is very well-known as a public interest litigator who, for the better part of seven years between 2004 and 2010, sued various authorities such as the Beijing Subway Company, the Ministry of Railways, Shaanxi provincial Forestry Department, and the Shanghai traffic police, and confronted the National Development and Reform Commission, …

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Analysis and Opinions

Free Zhang Zhan – Speech at the Lin Zhao Freedom Award Ceremony
Yaxue Cao, December 7, 2021 I want to thank ChinaAid for recognizing Zhang Zhan and for allowing me to say a few words in her absence. It’s an honor, and it is also deeply sad that Zhang Zhan is dying in prison as we speak. On February 1, 2020, Zhang Zhan boarded a high-speed train from Shanghai to Chongqing. She …
What Awaits Peng Shuai
Yaxue Cao, December 1, 2021 I At 10:07 pm on November 2nd, Peng Shuai, the 35-year-old Chinese tennis star, posted an unbroken paragraph of 1,900 words on her Weibo account revealing her relationship with Zhang Gaoli, former member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Vice Premier. It was a tumultuous eruption of anger, shame, fear, and …
Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Circulate Open Letter to Shanghai Authorities Appealing for Citizen Journalist Zhang Zhan to Receive a Full Physical Examination and Emergency Medical Treatment
November 15, 2021 To the directors of the Shanghai Municipal Justice Bureau and Shanghai Women’s Prison: We, as citizens, as friends of Zhang Zhan (张展), and as people who admire her sense of conscience, have been concerned about the deteriorating state of her health. We are deeply concerned to have learned that Zhang Zhan’s older brother recently filed an application …
Response to a Journalist’s Query Regarding the Sun Dawu Verdict
Yaxue Cao, July 28, 2021 There is no sun, moon and stars but dazzling lights that blind me day and night, With two armed soldiers guarding me, six shifts a day, through long and tormentous hours. Fate is fickle, I am but a living corpse, eyes wide open, forbidden to speak. In unbearable suffering I hold on to faith, as …

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Interviews and profiles

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 …
Sun Dawu: A Chinese Agricultural Entrepreneur’s 36-year Dream in the Era of Reform and Opening Up (Part One)
Yaxue Cao, March 30, 2021 About the sources The main sources for this profile are Mr. Sun Dawu (孙大午)’s speeches, articles and interviews over the years, especially during 2003-2012. They are embedded throughout the text and a fuller list will be appended at the end of Part Two. — Yaxue Cao Part One One day in March 2003, as Sun …

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