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 Su [...] Keep reading »

Li Qiaochu, January 11, 2021 A little past midnight on February 16, 2020, two men wearing PPE gowns to protect them from COVID-19 entered prominent civil rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) apartment in Beijing, forced Li Qiaochu’s (李翘楚), Xu’s 27-year-old girlfriend, into a chair, and put a mask on her. A third man who followed them in [...] Keep reading »

Attorney Zhang Keke, January 1, 2021 A website run by China’s Supreme Court (中国庭审公开网) live streams thousands of court hearings on any given work day, but almost never broadcasts trials of political prisoners — with the exception of occasional “show trials.” Zhang Zhan’s lawyers made a request for live streami [...] Keep reading »

The China Human Rights Lawyers Group, January 1, 2021 The year of 2020 has seen a coronavirus pandemic rage across the globe, infecting 78 million and causing 1.75 million deaths by year’s end. The pandemic, spawned in Wuhan, is in fact an inevitable consequence of the long-running deterioration of human rights in China. The harsher suppression o [...] Keep reading »

December 28, 2020 Per request of the filmmaker, who wishes to remain anonymous, China Change posts this short film about Zhang Zhan. Zhang Zhan (张展), a lawyer who practiced in Shanghai, went to Wuhan in early February, determined to document the coronavirus outbreak in the city that was the epicenter of what would soon become a pandemic around [...] Keep reading »

Ai Xiaoming, December 27, 2020 Zhang Zhan (张展), a lawyer who practiced in Shanghai, went to Wuhan in early February, determined to document the coronavirus outbreak in the city that was the epicenter of what would soon become a pandemic around the world. In the three months she stayed in the city, she made 122 posts on YouTube. It was not a coi [...] Keep reading »

Wang Jiangsong, November 24, 2020 Sun Dawu (孙大午) is a name many of our readers might be familiar or have heard of. A famed agricultural enterpreneur in Hebei province, China, his story and success is perhaps one of the most inspiring examples of China’s era of Reform and Opening Up. Over more than three decades, his business has grown from [...] Keep reading »

Yuan Fengchu, November 18, 2020 Yuan Fengchu (袁奉初) is a dissident and activist from Chibi, Hubei (湖北赤壁). Because of his activities mostly in Guangdong during 2010-2013 as part of the “Southern Street Movement,” he was jailed twice, spending seven years of the last seven and a half years in prison, free for only four months between [...] Keep reading »

Yaxue Cao, October 31, 2020 1. The Arrest The ancient city of Dali (大理), a small town in China’s southwest, boasts a history of more than 600 years. For visitors from China proper, the most eye-catching features of the Yunnan plateau may be the sapphire-blue sky and the grey tiles and elaborately carved beams of the white-walled houses. Becau [...] Keep reading »