Chang Ping, Yaxue Cao, February 26, 2021 (continued from Part One, Part Two, and Part Three) An incubator for public intellectuals Yaxue Cao: I left China in the early 1990s, and for years, I knew little about what was going on in China and its societal changes. Working on China Change over the last few years has been a steep learning curve. I’ve [...] Keep reading »

Chang Ping, Yaxue Cao, February 24, 2021 (continued from Part One and Part Two) The 20th anniversary of Reform and Opening up I encountered a big event soon after I arrived at Southern Weekend, that is, the 20th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up, December 18, 1998. Twenty years ago, on December 18, 1978, the Communist Party opened [...] Keep reading »

Chang Ping, Yaxue Cao, February 23, 2021 Continued from Part One Joining Southern Weekend That was July 1998. When I arrived in Guangzhou, the weather was very hot. My friend helped me rent a house in the so-called urban village in Guangzhou. It was very dilapidated and could not compare with the housing conditions in Chengdu. But I was young and d [...] Keep reading »

Chang Ping, Yaxue Cao, February 23, 2021 Interviewer’s Note I first interviewed Chang Ping in Toronto when he received the CJFE 2016 International Press Freedom Award. We spoke for about two hours before I had to catch a flight back to Washington, DC. In the next few years, as I continued to interview and profile more people for China Change and [...] Keep reading »

December 28, 2020 Per request of the filmmaker, who wishes to remain anonymous, China Change posts this short film about Zhang Zhan. Zhang Zhan (张展), a lawyer who practiced in Shanghai, went to Wuhan in early February, determined to document the coronavirus outbreak in the city that was the epicenter of what would soon become a pandemic around [...] Keep reading »

Yaxue Cao, October 31, 2020 1. The Arrest The ancient city of Dali (大理), a small town in China’s southwest, boasts a history of more than 600 years. For visitors from China proper, the most eye-catching features of the Yunnan plateau may be the sapphire-blue sky and the grey tiles and elaborately carved beams of the white-walled houses. Becau [...] Keep reading »

Luo Shengchun, August 31, 2020 I I was in Hawaii with my daughters on Christmas break when I heard that Jiaxi (丁家喜) had been detained. I was climbing a hiking trail by the sea, my girls splashing in the water at the beach below. The sky and the sea were a brilliant blue; the white sand beach stretched endless in the afternoon sun. A friend, i [...] Keep reading »

Xie Yang, a lawyer based in Changsha, was one of the 709 lawyers detained and charged with “subversion.” From autumn 2016 to the beginning of 2017, his wife and attorneys exposed the torture he suffered, the first of such revelations that would be echoed later by other 709 detainees. To deny the torture of Xie Yang and fend off international ba [...] 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 »