By Martin Oei, published: January 17, 2016   On January 15 a video was published online showing Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), a 16-year-old member of the K-pop girl group Twice, apologizing for holding a Republic of China flag in a photo shoot several months ago. The video was produced and published by the group’s South Korean management company [...] Keep reading »

By Eva Pils, published: January 10, 2016   Meeting people who could be disappeared anytime is a bit unnerving. You keep wondering if this is the last time you’ll see them. You want to ask what you should do in case something bad happens, but you don’t want to distress them by asking too directly. As part of my research on human rights in C [...] Keep reading »

By Song Zhibiao, Qiao Mu, and Mo Zhixu, published: January 6, 2016   As the year 2015 was drawing to its end, a new expression was born on China’s social media: “the Zhaos” (“赵家人”).  New phrases pop up regularly online in China, but “the Zhaos” has been hailed as revolutionary. Never has an expression captured the essence [...] Keep reading »

By Mo Zhixu, published: December 21, 2015 “Pu Zhiqiang has many facets to his character. He is a rights lawyer, an Internet opinion leader, and a dissident, in the broader sense of the word. His commitments and pursuits over the past 26 years help to explain how Pu has come to be so influential.”     On December 14, 2015, renowned hum [...] Keep reading »

By Yang Jianli, published: December 7, 2015   In Washington, D.C. recently, my friend Alan Curtis invited me to watch Chimerica, which was written by the British playwright Lucy Kirkwood. The play focuses on finding clues to the identity of Tank Man, the iconic and still unknown protester from Tiananmen Square, and explores the contemporary re [...] Keep reading »

By Bruce Lui, published December 4, 2015   The Chinese Communist Party marked the anniversary of its inaugural “National Constitution Day” on December 4 with more action than words: workers’ rights NGOs were raided and activists detained; the author of “A History of Brainwashing” was sentenced to nearly two years in prison; and a boo [...] Keep reading »

By Guo Baosheng, published: November 17, 2015   China claims that it doesn’t have any political prisoners, but in a broad sense all of those who have been jailed or imprisoned for challenging the Chinese Communist Party on behalf of human rights or political justice ought to be considered China’s political prisoners. Before the policy of � [...] Keep reading »

Translated From a Report Posted by RFA on October 16, 2015   Noted French Sinologist Prof. Marie Holzman, someone who knows Ilham Tohti, is calling on the European Parliament to award the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Ilham, a well-known Uyghur intellectual who has been sentenced to life in prison, and to speak out more forcefully [...] Keep reading »

By Chang Ping, published: October 18, 2015 “Everyone’s already used to it, and that’s precisely the problem.”   Now the United Nations has its own, China-style “big tiger.” The former head of the UN General Assembly, John Ashe, is being charged with taking bribes from numerous Chinese business interests, and was arrested ne [...] Keep reading »