China Change » Interviews

A Home in God: The Story of Detained Pastor Jin Mingri and China’s City Churches, Part Two

Yaxue Cao, November 4, 2025 (Continued from Part One) The Birth of Zion Church: In the Open, Not Underground In early 2007, Pastor Jin Mingri, together with his wife and three children, returned to Beijing. By then, China had already undergone over a decade of rapid economic development. From the street level to its skyline, Beijing — rebuilt by [...] Keep reading »

A Home in God: The Story of Detained Pastor Jin Mingri and China’s City Churches, Part One

Yaxue Cao, October 30, 2025 Zion Church Under Attack On the evening of Saturday, October 10, in Beihai, Guangxi (广西北海), more than twenty police officers stormed into the home of Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日, Ezra Jin), the head pastor of Zion Church (锡安教会), just after he and his elderly mother-in-law had finished dinner. One officer [...] Keep reading »

The Collapse of Yesterday’s World – A Chinese Millennial Journalist’s Chronicle of the ‘Reform and Opening Up’ That Never Was, Part Three

Jia Jia, October 15, 2025 One of the interrogators asked me: Why do you write for Apple Daily? … Are you only doing it for money? I replied: Yes, for money. Suddenly, he was enraged, interrupted me, and sternly said: “No! You’re writing for your ideals!” I was stunned, and could not think of a response. Continued from Part One, and Part [...] Keep reading »

The Collapse of Yesterday’s World – A Chinese Millennial Journalist’s Chronicle of the ‘Reform and Opening Up’ That Never Was, Part Two

Jia Jia, October 15, 2025 It was a night of jubilation, but I felt melancholic. It was a vague hunch that our optimism was groundless — after all, on every issue, our hopes had always been dashed on a cold and unyielding wall. Continued from Part One 2. Days that Shone Like Gold It was a night of jubilation, but I felt a sense of melan [...] Keep reading »

The Collapse of Yesterday’s World – A Chinese Millennial Journalist’s Chronicle of the ‘Reform and Opening Up’ That Never Was, Part One

Jia Jia, October 7, 2025 Truman Capote once said, “… one person’s story can be the story of his time.” This is one such account. Now based in Tokyo, Jia Jia (贾葭) is a Chinese journalist, columnist, and editor who worked at several prominent publications in China and Hong Kong, including Oriental Outlook (瞭望东方周� [...] Keep reading »

709 － A New Documentary

China Change, July 25, 2025 (Email subscribers may have to view in browser to see the embedded YouTube link.) This documentary offers, for the first time, an authoritative overall account and analysis of the 709 Crackdown on human rights lawyers in China that began ten years ago in 2015, covering all aspects of the incident: arrests, smear campaign [...] Keep reading »

An Interview With Ai Weiwei, Part Three: China, the World, and Freedom of Expression

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 »

An Interview With Ai Weiwei, Part Two: Ruins. Rebars. Water Lilies.

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 »

An Interview With Ai Weiwei, Part One: The Year 2008

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 »