Human Rights & Civil Rights

A Beautiful China: China’s Twentieth Century Xu Zhiyong, February 12, 2024 Note From the Editor Born in 1973, Dr. Xu Zhiyong (许志永) is a legal scholar, pioneer of China’s rights defense movement, and a founder of the New Citizens…

Ilham, My Brother Yaxue Cao, January 15, 2024 Ilham Tohti in the fall of 2013, not too long before his arrest. Photo: Wang Lixiong 1. People often automatically assume that I personally know Ilham Tohti. I don’t. When Ilham was arrested…

Eight Years as a Mother (2) Wang Qiaoling, October 6, 2023 At the Lotus Flower Pond Market in Beijing on October 1, 2016. Friends invited Wenzu (the wife of 709 lawyer Wang Quanzhang) and I to take our children for a boating excursion.…

Eight Years as a Mother Wang Qiaoling, October 3, 2023 Wang Qiaoling and son in 2018. (Audio on browser) Since the 709 crackdown on human rights lawyers in 2015, I often introduced myself to others as Wang Qiaoling (王峭岭), wife of 709…

An Interview With Ai Weiwei, Part One: The Year 2008 I interviewed Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei in May in Portugal. It was my first meeting with him, and as many Chinese activists do, I called him by his nickname “Aunt Ai”…

Human Rights Lawyers Under Renewed Crackdown and Nasty Harassment China Change, June 17, 2023 On April 13, lawyer Yu Wensheng (余文生) and his wife Xu Yan (许艳) were on their way to the German Embassy in Beijing when they were…

‘A democratic China must be realized in our time, we cannot saddle the next generation with this duty’ – Xu Zhiyong’s Court Statement Xu Zhiyong, April 9, 2023 Dr. Xu Zhiyong (许志永) is no stranger to those who have followed the emergence…

Authoritarianism Shall Perish – Ding Jiaxi’s Court Statement 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…

A Protest Song Has Emerged in China — It’s the Communist Anthem Yaxue Cao, March 5, 2023 Shanghai, 1973. Photo: Bruno Barbey The first time I heard The Internationale sung in China as a protest song was when Shanghai went into lockdown…

Hutong, DJ Bars, Youth, and Unexpected Politics: The Detained Blank Paper Protesters of Beijing Su Nian, February 18, 2023 Based the information we have able to gather so far about the protest that occurred in Liangmaqiao (亮马桥), Beijing,…