China Change, July 4, 2020 The fifth anniversary of the 709 crackdown on the Chinese human rights lawyers is approaching. China’s methodical persecution of human rights lawyers continues to this day and will likely go on for the conceivable future. China Change has written and translated extensively over the past five years on the subject. Fo [...] Keep reading »

Yaxue Cao, June 30, 2020 Foreword The Other China By accident I was pulled out of my working mother cocoon in the fall of 2011 to co-blog at the now-defunct seeingredinchina.com. The only problem was that I didn’t know much about China, having left twenty years before. I began to read about it, unaware at the time that I was taking the first step [...] Keep reading »

Sui Muqing, Yaxue Cao, June 2, 2020 This is the second interview in our How I Become a Human Rights Lawyer series. Today we present our conversation with Guangzhou lawyer Sui Muqing (隋牧青), conducted on May 19, 2020.  — The Editors 1. Tiananmen, 1989 Yaxue Cao: Let’s start from Tiananmen. There are quite a few Chinese human right [...] Keep reading »

Liang Xiaojun, Yaxue Cao, May 15, 2020 The sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus has culminated in a pandemic spreading across China and the rest of the world. A semi-living organism, invisible to the naked eye, has halted the activities of billions of people, forced them to take shelter in their homes and avoid contact with others. And more, th [...] Keep reading »

Luo Shengchun, Emrys Westacott, May 8, 2020 In the small town of Alfred, upstate New York, the secret detention of Chinese lawyer and civil rights activist Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) has concerned the locals and spurred their desire to help rescue him. Alfred University professor of philosophy Emrys Westacott recently spoke to Ding Jiaxi’s wife, Alfr [...] Keep reading »

Geoffrey Roberts, May 1, 2020 Since Xi Jinping took control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, China has been steadily ramping up its propaganda efforts in a bid to reshape global norms and institutions. A key instrument of China’s propaganda apparatus is the China Society for Human Rights Studies (CSHRS), a “Government-orga [...] Keep reading »

Tang Jitian, April 30, 2020 Tang Jitian (唐吉田) grew up in the mountains of the northeastern province of Jilin, a Korean autonomous prefecture, not too far from Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, and North Korea. He enrolled in the Politics Department at Northeast Normal University in Changchun in 1988, just in time for the 1989 student de [...] Keep reading »

March 19, 2020 Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) was reluctant when I asked for an interview. It was in the fall of 2017, a year after he was released from prison as a leader of the New Citizens Movement. He was visiting his wife and two daughters in Alfred, a village of 5,000 souls in Upstate New York, and would go back to China in a few days. He didn’t wa [...] Keep reading »

Andrea Worden, February 19, 2020 “Thank you, China” –– these words were often said by participants of the South-South Human Rights Forum –– Xinhua, 12/11/19 The Chinese Party-state held the second South-South Human Rights Forum (SSHRF) in Beijing on December 10-11, 2019.  Underlying the 2019 SSHRF was the Beijing Declaration, a man [...] Keep reading »