Li Fangping, July 9, 2022 Li Fangping started practicing law in China in the mid-1990s, first in Jiangxi and then in Beijing. Over the years since the onset of the rights defense movement in the early 2000s, he has been one of the leading human rights lawyers and has defensed clients in nearly all types of human rights and public interest cases, in [...] Keep reading »

By Xu Zhiyong, translated by Andréa Worden, June 21, 2022 After being released from prison in July 2017, Xu Zhiyong devoted a year to writing “A Beautiful China” that was posted on his blog. This is Chapter 13 of the book. Xu’s career as a civil rights leader has spanned two decades since the early 2000s. He was imprisoned from 2013 to2017. [...] Keep reading »

Xu Zhiyong, June 18, 2022 This autobiographical essay was written shortly before his arrest in 2013. It was translated into English and first published in Xu Zhiyong’s collection of essays “To Build a Free China – A Citizen’s Journey” in 2017. We make this important essay available to online readers before Xu Zhiyong&# [...] Keep reading »

June 16, 2022 The sixth annual China Human Rights Lawyers Day will be held virtually on July 9, 2022, at 9 a.m. EST (U.S.). In 2017, human rights organizations in the U.S., Taiwan, and Hong Kong established July 9th as the China Human Rights Lawyers day to commemorate the mass arrests, detention, and torture of human rights lawyers in mainland Chin [...] Keep reading »

June 12, 2022 Chinese human rights lawyer Tang Jitian (唐吉田) has been detained extralegally since December 10, 2021 by Beijing and Jilin state security under the pretext of “maintaining stability,” while his only daughter, Tang Zhengqi, is in a coma in Japan. We understand that Mr. Tang has recently made repeated requests to the head of th [...] Keep reading »

"Rights defense lawyers" emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. From their appearance, to the notorious 709 mass arrests in 2015, to today, the Chinese Communist government has subjected them to intimidation, disappearance, torture, imprisonment, and disbarment, ignoring the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers. This 68-minute document [...] Keep reading »

February 11, 2022 This wide-ranging, fascinating conversation was initially conducted on The American Bar Foundation’s Rule of Law: World Tour podcast on December 21, 2021. Professor Halliday has since expanded it to include more details of his study of China’s lawyers since 2005, how the work of Chinese lawyers is part of a bigger struggle for [...] Keep reading »

Chair Merkley, Co-Chair McGovern, Members of the Commission, thank you for holding this hearing and for asking me to share my thoughts on the case of the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai. Indeed, Peng Shuai has become a special kind of political prisoner. Meanwhile, the Women’s Tennis Association’s decision to suspend all tournaments in China has [...] Keep reading »

Andréa Worden, February 2, 2022 “The Olympics and Paralympics send a fantastic message of ‘peace and of mutual respect between people of all cultures, all civilizations and all ethnicities,’ said Guterres, days before his trip to China to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. …… It is necessary to shine a light [...] Keep reading »