Yaxue Cao, March 5, 2023 The first time I heard The Internationale sung in China as a protest song was when Shanghai went into lockdown for about a week last spring. At that time, I watched dozens of videos from Shanghai on social media every day. One clip left an impression on me. It was taken in a residential area populated by apparently middle-class families. Households had their lights on, illuminating balconies as their occupants stood facing the outside. A brass-band performance of “The Internationale” resounded throughout the night; upon close attention, the sounds of people singing along were faintly audible. In the apartment of the person shooting the video (you can see an elegantly furnished room), a little girl asks an adult, possibly her […]

China Change, October 19, 2022 ‘One man’s anger shakes the earth and moves mountains’   It’s too early to evaluate the full impact of the extraordinary one-man protest staged by Peng Zaizhou (彭载舟), real name Peng Lifa (彭立发), on Sitong Overpass (四通桥) on October 13, 2022 in Beijing. But this much we already know: his action caused a ripple effect across Chinese social media and beyond, eliciting shock, disbelief, admiration, excitement, whispers, and above all, hope, though just how this flicker of hope will manifest itself remains to be seen.  Over the years, this website has reported on many activists — brave men and women in China — who put up a fight for freedom and democracy under harsh circumstances and made untold sacrifices for that […]

China Change, October 13, 2022 Based on information online that we have gathered so far, the man is Peng Lifa (彭立发), known online as Peng Zaizhou (彭载舟), who displayed two large banners demanding the removal of Xi Jinping on Sitong Overpass (四通桥) on the Third Ring Road, north section, in Beijing Haidian District around 2 pm Beijing Time on October 13, the day after the Chinese Communist Party concluded the 7th Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee.  One banner reads: No PCR test, want livelihoods; not lockdowns, want freedom; not lies, want dignity; not Cultural Revolution, want reform; not a supreme leader, want ballots; not to be slaves but citizens. The other reads: Students strike, workers strike, remove the dictator and state thief Xi […]

Chang Ping, March 6, 2020 A friend asked me: “I wouldn’t dare to believe the official figures. Are things really under control outside of Hubei?” I said, “From now on, they’ll have nothing but good news for you. Whether you believe it or not is up to you.” Needless to say, the subject was China’s novel coronavirus epidemic, or more accurately, the Chinese government’s control of the epidemic. Even more precisely, the topic of discussion is the Chinese government’s control of the epidemic information. Like hundreds of millions of people in China, what this friend of mine wished to know was the truth of the epidemic situation. However, with the exception of patients and their families, most people get their knowledge of the outbreak from […]

Chang Ping, November 15, 2019 Everyone knows that if the Hong Kong government and Beijing cannot offer an affirmative response to the protesters’ demands, and if the abuse of power by the police does not end, the conflicts will only escalate and result in more violence. However, the authorities are with full knowledge allowing Hong Kong to turn into a battlefield. To help stop the violence, the international community should not stay idle or fall into the trap of victim-blaming. A mantra that some people use without second thought is “violence is unacceptable under any circumstances.” When these people repeat this mantra, are they including the police in their statement against violence? No. Quite the opposite, when they say it, they want the police to […]

Liao Yiwu, September 30, 2019 On August 11, 2019, a nurse during a demonstration against the extradition bill in Tsim Sha Tsui district in Hong Kong, had her right eye blown out by a beanbag fired by a police officer, causing lifelong disability and instantly provoking explosive public outrage. Many people regarded this incident as the start of a “Hong Kong June 4 Massacre.” Bloody images of the girl were copied and spread all over the world, leading to millions of people participating in the act of “right hand covering right eye” performance art. At the time I wrote in a poem: Today a gunshot blew out a girl’s eye Tomorrow another blows away a boy’s head The next day Hong Kong blinded, the former […]

Wang Dan, September 8, 2019 In Hong Kong, social resistance against the “China extradition” law has entered the stage of protracted conflict, with various forms of protests taking place every weekend. Hongkongers’ courageous efforts to defend their freedom have won them respect worldwide. Meanwhile, with regard to the goals they are striving for, the views of Hongkongers have steadily shifted in the course of their resistance. Of particular note is the fact that, on July 7, 230,000 Hongkongers staged protests and parades in the areas where mainland Chinese are most common. Speaking Mandarin, the demonstrators spoke out about the issues facing Hong Kong, exposed the dark reality of Chinese politics, and shouted slogans of “exporting revolution” to mainland China. The focus of my discussion today […]

Wang Dan, February 5, 2019 On February 2, tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets again, demanding change. This article by 1989 Tiananmen student leader Wang Dan (王丹) was published in Chinese by Radio Free Asia on January 25. After teaching in Taiwan for years, Wang Dan now lives in the Washington, DC area and heads the new Dialogue China think tank. – The Editors On January 23, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the Venezuelan capital to protest the ruling party and President (Nicolás) Maduro. In front of a dense cheering crowd, waving their arms in support, the 35-year-old opposition leader (Juan Guaidó) proclaimed himself “interim President” and immediately received recognition from Western countries led by the U.S. […]

Zhuang Liehong, January 17, 2017 “Soon after, a dozen public security agents came to his house and forced him to sign his name to a document they provided, under the watch of three SWAT officers in his living room, who had their submachine guns pointed at his chest and head.”     On December 26, 2016, the Haifeng Court in Guangdong sentenced nine villagers from Wukan (six men and three women) to between two and ten years imprisonment, punishing them for participating in protests that swept Wukan for the second time, from June to September 2016, in response to the imprisonment of their democratically-elected village head Lin Zulian (林祖恋).  The protests were repressed by armed police and SWAT teams, and scores of villagers were arrested, […]

Zhuang Liehong, January 5, 2017   Ten days ago on December 26, 2016, the Haifeng Court in Guangdong sentenced nine villagers from Wukan to between two and ten years imprisonment, as a means of punishing them for participating in protests. My father Zhuang Songkun (庄松坤) was among them. Through this article I hope readers outside China will gain an understanding of these arrests and the circumstances of the trial, and that the situation in Wukan will receive greater international attention. From 2009 villagers in Wukan engaged in collective petitions and protests against collusion between government officials and businessmen, who were expropriating collectively-owned village land for personal profit. After years of being ignored by the government, mass protests broke out at the end of 2011. I […]

Wu Qiang, December 14, 2016 “They had merely to sit on the edges of Tianfu Square wearing smog masks for police bring them in for interrogation until the early hours of the morning — this is a clear show of how deeply anxious Chengdu authorities are about protests against smog.”     For the last week, inland China has been enveloped in smog. Some cities issued emergency smog warnings; others cancelled outdoor activities at schools. In Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, the government banned gatherings in Tianfu Square (天府广场)— as though they were afraid of something. And just as expected, on the weekend, Chengdu residents came out in numbers on Chunxi road in the central business district and on Tianfu Square. Some sat down […]

Huang Simin, October 13, 2016   “If you want to understand your own country, then you’ve  already stepped on the path to criminality.” — Ai Weiwei “Do you think there is dignity in living a good life in this country?” — Li Tingyu   Born and raised in Guangdong, Li Tingyu (李婷玉) was a student at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou where she majored in English but dropped out in senior year. She had been working with her boyfriend Lu Yuyu (卢昱宇) on the self-published media known as 非新闻 (“Non-News”) until the couple’s detention on June 16 this year. The two were charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and are currently detained in the Dali Detention Center, Yunnan.   Li Tingyu and Lu Yuyu […]

Wu Qiang, July 6, 2016 As we were readying to post this translation, we learned that two lawyers met with Lu Yuyu and two other lawyers met with Li Tingyu on July 6 in the Dali Detention Center, Yunnan Province. — The Editors     “June 13, Monday, 94 incidents,” Lu Yuyu’s last tweet read on June 15. On June 24, the news spread that Lu Yuyu (卢昱宇) and his girlfriend Li Tingyu (李婷玉) were detained for “provoking disturbances.” Open his blogpost that day and you can see the 94 incidents grouped into categories, 5 of them highlighted, each with a link to the original post on Chinese social media (though some have long been censored). We learn that on June 13,  in 21 provinces […]

Yesterday we looked at three soft suppression tactics commonly used in China to end confrontations before they come to a head. These concepts from recent papers by  Kevin O’Brien and Rachel Stern were: using family members to negotiate with protesters, often with threats that these family members would lose their jobs or pensions (relational repression); vague boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable speech; and the traditional harsh punishments without clear explanations that push observers to see warnings for their own work (morality parables). Today I want to use these ideas to explore how these gov’t tactics can work to the protesters’ advantage, and how these soft suppression failures factored into the recent violence in Shifang. Relational Repression (link) As Kevin O’Brien saw in the protests in Zhejiang, while many people […]

This is a developing story, and while I usually don’t comment on “sensitive” events as they happen, the stakes seem to be much higher this time. In a small village in Guangdong, the villagers have staged a revolt. All government officials and police have fled the village after months of demonstrations sparked by land grabs and public funds that seem to have gone missing. Now the village, and its thousands of inhabitants, are encircled by armed police who are demanding they give up their cause and return to normal life. The villagers however are insisting that the local gov’t apologize for the violence they have used against the people (including the death of an organizer while he was in police custody), as well as be […]

For those of you reading this outside of China, it’s important to understand that China has probably close to a dozen different kinds of police. There are traffic police, railway police, bus police and countless others. When there is a problem, like when my friend had her i-Pod stolen as she got on a bus, it took 6 phone calls to figure out which police should handle the case (ultimately it was the bus police, even though they didn’t think it was their jurisdiction because she wasn’t fully on the bus when it happened). Of these police, there is one branch that is the most feared and despised, they are known as the Chengguan (City Management). While most criticisms of gov’t agencies are only ever whispered […]