Wang Quanzhang, Citizen of the People’s Republic of China On January 24, 2019, after more than 1,300 days of incommunicado detention, the Tianjin Second Intermediate People’s Court finally convicted me of the crime of subversion of state power; on April 24, 2019, the Tianjin Higher People’s Court quickly issued a ruling upholding the [...] Keep reading »

Terence C. Halliday and Eva Pils, July 8, 2020 In the early hours of the morning on 9 July 2015, China’s security apparatus launched the first strike of its worst ever campaign against practicing lawyers in China.  The forced disappearance of woman lawyer Wang Yu by unidentified black-garbed, masked men signaled the beginnings of a nationwid [...] Keep reading »

China Human Rights Lawyers Group, July 9, 2020 Neither remorseful nor boastful in the past, human rights lawyers will not be so today, nor in the future.   Five years ago, beginning with the seizure of Lawyer Wang Yu and her husband, the Chinese government launched a campaign to wipe out human rights defenders. Human rights lawyers bore the br [...] Keep reading »

China Change, July 4, 2020 The fifth anniversary of the 709 crackdown on the Chinese human rights lawyers is approaching. China’s methodical persecution of human rights lawyers continues to this day and will likely go on for the conceivable future. China Change has written and translated extensively over the past five years on the subject. Fo [...] Keep reading »

Sui Muqing, Yaxue Cao, June 2, 2020 This is the second interview in our How I Become a Human Rights Lawyer series. Today we present our conversation with Guangzhou lawyer Sui Muqing (隋牧青), conducted on May 19, 2020.  — The Editors 1. Tiananmen, 1989 Yaxue Cao: Let’s start from Tiananmen. There are quite a few Chinese human right [...] Keep reading »

Zhang Xuezhong, translated by Andréa Worden, May 18, 2020 Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠), born in 1976, was a law professor at China East University of Political Science and Law. In May 2013, he was the first academic to disclose the “seven speak-nots” (later known as Document No. 9), an order of the Communist Party circulated in Ch [...] Keep reading »

Liang Xiaojun, Yaxue Cao, May 15, 2020 The sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus has culminated in a pandemic spreading across China and the rest of the world. A semi-living organism, invisible to the naked eye, has halted the activities of billions of people, forced them to take shelter in their homes and avoid contact with others. And more, th [...] Keep reading »

Luo Shengchun, Emrys Westacott, May 8, 2020 In the small town of Alfred, upstate New York, the secret detention of Chinese lawyer and civil rights activist Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) has concerned the locals and spurred their desire to help rescue him. Alfred University professor of philosophy Emrys Westacott recently spoke to Ding Jiaxi’s wife, Alfr [...] Keep reading »

Tang Jitian, April 30, 2020 Tang Jitian (唐吉田) grew up in the mountains of the northeastern province of Jilin, a Korean autonomous prefecture, not too far from Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, and North Korea. He enrolled in the Politics Department at Northeast Normal University in Changchun in 1988, just in time for the 1989 student de [...] Keep reading »