Xu Zhiyong, translated by Leo Timm, April 2, 2024 Note From the Editor Born in 1973, Dr. Xu Zhiyong (许志永) is a legal scholar, pioneer of China’s rights defense movement, and a founder of the New Citizens Movement. On April 10, 2023, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of “subverting state power.” Before this, he had served [...] Keep reading »

China Change, July 6, 2023 (Continued from Part One: The Year 2008 and Part Two: Ruins. Rebars. Water Lilies.) China, the World, and Freedom of Expression YC: Throughout your work, what really astonishes me, and what seems to me incomprehensible, is the scale: one hundred million sunflower seeds, 1001 Chinese people going to Germany, 90 t [...] 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 »

Yaxue Cao, October 31, 2021 In China, Hao Jinsong (郝劲松) is very well-known as a public interest litigator who, for the better part of seven years between 2004 and 2010, sued various authorities such as the Beijing Subway Company, the Ministry of Railways, Shaanxi provincial Forestry Department, and the Shanghai traffic police, and confronted [...] Keep reading »

China Change, February 3, 2021 The arrests started a year and half ago during the summer break. From July to August, all the way into October, 2019, China rounded up scores of young people from multiple provinces and cities. Some are in their twenties, and others are teenagers still in school. The 24 defendants were first detained in Maoming Munici [...] 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, April 12, 2020 Summary: Whereas Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reported a total 50,008 Covid-19 cases and 2,575 deaths as of April 9, 2020, by my estimates, the total cases are between 400,000 and 600,000, and the death toll is between 22,000 and 30,000.  According to Bloomberg, the U.S. intelligence community recently briefed [...] Keep reading »

Tan Zuoren, January 13, 2019 Huang Qi’s trial opens today (January 14, Beijing time) in Mianyang Intermediary Court, Sichuan Province. – The Editors Huang Qi (黄琦), 55, is from Neijiang City in Sichuan Province (四川内江市), southwestern China. He holds a bachelor’s degree and is the founder of 64 Tianwang (六四天网) as well as th [...] Keep reading »

Jeff Rambin, December 11, 2018     “There is no word for the pain, sadness, humiliation and anger I feel in my heart.” After six years and four months of tweeting, Wang Jiangsong was forced to delete his account. Wang calls himself a “labor scholar,” but he is too modest. William Nee of Amnesty International calls Wang “arguably [...] Keep reading »