Chen Zijuan, April 14, 2021 Today is Chang Weiping’s 37th birthday. He practiced law in Shaanxi province from 2013 to late 2018, when his license was suspended, as part of China’s continuous disbarment of human rights lawyers in recent years. His career as a lawyer began from defending the New Citizens Movement activists in 2013, and over the n [...] Keep reading »

Dawu legal team, April 4, 2021 Introduction Sun Dawu (孙大午), a prominent entrepreneur in Xushui District, Baoding City, Hebei Province, is the founder of Dawu Group. Beginning nearly 40 years ago with 1,000 chickens and 50 pigs, Dawu Group has transformed a remote and undesirable tract of saline land into a pearl on the North China Plain, buil [...] Keep reading »

Yaxue Cao, April 2, 2021 (Continued from Part One) Arrest; from ‘Grain Banks’ to community financing In April 2003, about a month after Sun Dawu’s speeches at Peking University and China Agricultural University, he was called to Zhongnanhai once more. This time it was to South Zhongnanhai, housing the Central Committee of the Chin [...] Keep reading »

Yaxue Cao, March 30, 2021 About the sources  The main sources for this profile are Mr. Sun Dawu (孙大午)’s speeches, articles and interviews over the years, especially during 2003-2012. They are embedded throughout the text and a fuller list will be appended at the end of Part Two.  — Yaxue Cao Part One One day in March 2003, as Su [...] Keep reading »

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 »