Shi Minglei, March 8, 2021 On July 22, 2019, three staff members of a Chinese NGO known as “Changcha Funeng” (长沙富能）were arrested; as of today, they have been held by state security agents in Changsha for 596 days without any meaningful information concerning their case. The prosecutors and judges in Changsha have avoided seeing either [...] Keep reading »

Chen Zijuan, February 15, 2021 Dr. Chen Zijuan (陈紫娟) is a biologist working in Shenzhen. This piece was originally published in Chinese on Feb. 6, 2020. — The Editors My husband Chang Weiping (常玮平) is a Chinese human rights lawyer, who has represented clients in cases related to religious freedom, forced demolition and discrimination [...] Keep reading »

China Change, February 8, 2021 The high-speed rail station in Linyi (临沂), a third-tier provincial city, is gorgeous, and it speaks to the rapid economic development of China in recent decades. At normal times, it would be bustling with travelers going home for the lunar Chinese New Year. But this year, it’s deserted because of the Covid-19 pa [...] Keep reading »

China Change, February 5, 2021 On February 3, 2021, Beijing lawyer Peng Jian (彭剑) met for the second time with human rights activist and citizen movement advocate Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) at the Linshu County Detention Center in Shandong Province (山东临沭县看守所). The meeting was conducted by video, and unlike during the first meeting, [...] 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 »

January 30, 2021 Chinese dissident Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), while trying to travel to the United States to take care of his wife Zhang Qing following her cancer surgery, was intercepted by Chinese authorities at Shanghai Pudong Airport on January 28, and denied exit on the pretext of “endangering national security.” Guo Feixiong is a free [...] Keep reading »

January 15, 2021 Zhang Zhan (张展), a resident of Shanghai and a former lawyer, went to Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in February, video recorded what she saw, spoke to locals, wrote down her observations and thoughts, and posted them on social media platforms inside and outside China. She was detained in May and sentenced to f [...] Keep reading »

Li Qiaochu, January 11, 2021 A little past midnight on February 16, 2020, two men wearing PPE gowns to protect them from COVID-19 entered prominent civil rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) apartment in Beijing, forced Li Qiaochu’s (李翘楚), Xu’s 27-year-old girlfriend, into a chair, and put a mask on her. A third man who followed them in [...] Keep reading »

Yaxue Cao, December 22, 2020 I saw this cartoon and can’t get out of my head. It’s the work of Polish illustrator Pawel Kuczynski but it struck me as a succinct portrait of China. In the coming days and weeks, I will write a series of stories illustrating the mowing down in action, and I will start with the story of Chang Weiping, a young [...] Keep reading »