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 »

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 »

China Change, August 28, 2020 On August 11, 2020, Hunan provincial Justice Department issued a “Notice of Administrative Penal Action” [translation included below] permanently disbarring lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳). Those who have followed the 709 crackdown on human rights lawyers will recall that the then-detained Xie Yang, one of the only two 70 [...] Keep reading »