China Change, September 24, 2023 It took three whole years of secret detention for journalist Huang Xueqin (黄雪琴) and labor activist Wang Jianbing (王建兵) to be tried on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” as announced on Friday, September 22, in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou. Still, little has been made public about [...] Keep reading »

Wuyuesanren, August 5, 2023 Wuyuesanren (五岳散人), or Yao Bo (姚博), was a well-known Chinese journalist, a Weibo “Big V” with a large number of followers until he was banned, and one of the 303 signers of Charter 08. In recent years he has been residing in Kyoto, Japan. He runs the popular @wuyuesanren YouTube channel commenting on curr [...] Keep reading »

China Change, June 30, 2023 (Continued from Part One: The Year 2008) Ruins. Rebars. Water Lilies. YC: Many details have left a deep impression on me from reading your autobiography. I want to bring up two ruins in front of which you stood. One is the ruins of schools that collapsed in the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, where you and your assistan [...] Keep reading »

China Change, June 29, 2023 I interviewed Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei in May in Portugal. It was my first meeting with him, and as many Chinese activists do, I called him by his nickname “Aunt Ai” (“艾婶儿”). Out of the hundreds of interviews with Ai Weiwei, I hope readers find this one worthwhile. The interview will be posted [...] Keep reading »

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 [...] Keep reading »

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 should [...] Keep reading »

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 populated by apparently middle-c [...] Keep reading »

"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 [...] Keep reading »

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 [...] Keep reading »