China Change, September 24, 2023 It took three whole years of secret detention for journalist Huang Xueqin (黄雪琴) and labor activist Wang Jianbing (王建兵) to be tried on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” as announced on Friday, September 22, in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou. Still, little has been made public about [...] Keep reading »

Li Jinxing, September 8, 2023 Li Jinxing (李金星), arguably one of the most prominent defense lawyers in today’s China, has dedicated much of his career to overturning wrongful convictions, a Sisyphean task in the People’s Republic. Over the past decade or so, he proved instrumental in reversing a series of wrongful convictions, including ju [...] Keep reading »

The 29 Principles and China Change, September 6, 2023    Preface: With the escalating crackdown on China’s human rights lawyers in recent years, the authorities have developed increasingly sophisticated means for repressing attorneys who take on politically sensitive cases. Instances of prolonged detention without trial, trial with [...] Keep reading »

China Change, June 17, 2023 Correction: The original post misstated that lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife were intercepted on their way to German Embassy to meet the visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, whereas the couple was on their way to a meeting at the EU Delegation. On April 13, lawyer Yu Wensheng (余文生) and his wife Xu Ya [...] 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 »

Ding Jiaxi, April 9, 2023 After a decade-long successful career as a successful commercial lawyer in Beijing, Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) joined the New Citizens Movement in 2011 led by legal scholar Xu Zhiyong (许志永). The citizen movement chiefly concerned itself with calling upon Chinese to become true citizens, exercising their rights and should [...] Keep reading »

Chow Hang-tung, December 22, 2022 In September 2021, the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force accused the Hong Kong Alliance of being a “foreign proxy,” demanded organizational documents from the seven members of the Alliance’s Standing Committee, and arrested five of them after the demand was rejected. Two of the five p [...] Keep reading »

July 25, 2022 China Disbars Lawyers to Remove a Perceived Threat / 中國人權律师被剝奪執業權 In a very real sense, the 709 Crackdown is still ongoing. Over the years following the initial campaign to arrest and torture human rights lawyers, China has disbarred over 40 lawyers for representing clients in human rights cases. As recently as [...] Keep reading »

Li Fangping, July 9, 2022 Li Fangping started practicing law in China in the mid-1990s, first in Jiangxi and then in Beijing. Over the years since the onset of the rights defense movement in the early 2000s, he has been one of the leading human rights lawyers and has defensed clients in nearly all types of human rights and public interest cases, in [...] Keep reading »