Xu Zhiyong, translated by Joshua Rosenzweig and Leo Timm, June 6, 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.” Befor [...] Keep reading »

Xu Zhiyong, translated by Elizabeth Lindley, February 15, 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, [...] Keep reading »

November 30, 2023 In August, while waiting for appeal, Dr. Xu Zhiyong wrote the following statement (Chinese original), not so much to the court as to his compatriots. In June, he and Ding Jiaxi were sentenced to 14 years and 12 years in prison respectively on subversion charges, ostensibly for an informal two-day gathering in Xiamen in December 20 [...] Keep reading »

Xu Zhiyong, April 9, 2023 Dr. Xu Zhiyong (许志永) is no stranger to those who have followed the emergence of civil society in China in the early 2000s to its being silenced by the continuous suppression, more severe under Xi Jinping. Xu Zhiyong’s career began from providing legal assistance along with a team of rights lawyers to disadvantaged [...] Keep reading »

January 1, 2022 In 1925, the 26-year-old poet and political dissident Wen Yiduo (闻一多) wrote in his poem titled “Dead Water”: Here is a ditch of doomed, dead waterNo spring breeze can stir up even half a ripple In 1946, Wen was assassinated on the streets of Kunming by military security officers of the Kuomintang that ruled China at the ti [...] 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 »

Xu Zhiyong, January 1, 2020 This is the New Year’s message from a civil society leader who is, at this very moment, on the run to elude arrest by the Chinese authorities. A report on this new and ongoing wave of crackdown is forthcoming. — The Editors Enter 2020 in the march of history: another wave of crackdown against civil society is sweepin [...] Keep reading »

Chang Ping, November 15, 2019 Everyone knows that if the Hong Kong government and Beijing cannot offer an affirmative response to the protesters’ demands, and if the abuse of power by the police does not end, the conflicts will only escalate and result in more violence. However, the authorities are with full knowledge allowing Hong Kong to turn i [...] Keep reading »

Wang Dan, November 4, 2019 In 1989, during the Chinese pro-democracy movement, 20-year-old Peking University student Wang Dan (王丹) became one of the most influential student leaders. Following the outbreak of the Tiananmen Massacre, he found himself at the top of the lists of 21 wanted criminals. He was arrested and sentenced to four years in p [...] Keep reading »