China Steps up Political Arrests, Prosecutions
A total of 2,318 people were arrested or indicted on charges of “endangering state security”, the US-based Dui Hua Foundation said, citing statistics from China’s central prosecution office.
Reporting & Opinion
12.23.14
China in 2014 Through the Eyes of a Human Rights Advocate
from China ChangeThis time last year, volunteers and I were busy writing and translating articles to prepare for the New Citizens Movement trials. Many Chinese voices were speaking out forcefully against these trials: law professors, rights lawyers, liberal...
China Detains Scholar, Bans Books in Crackdown on Moderate Voices
China has detained prominent scholar Guo Yushan, who helped blind dissident Chen Guangcheng flee to the United States two years ago and has banned books by eight writers in a crackdown on dissent.
The NYRB China Archive
09.22.14
‘They Don’t Want Moderate Uighurs’
from New York Review of BooksIn my series of interviews with Chinese intellectuals, there is an empty chair for Ilham Tohti, the economist and Uighur activist....
Beijing’s Rising Smear Power
Chinese dissidents are constantly subject to all sorts of harassment, including a vicious online smear campaign.
Viewpoint
09.19.14
“Daddy’s ‘Friends’ Are Actually Plainclothes Cops”
[Updated March 18, 2015] The essay that follows was written by Zeng Jinyan, whose former partner, Hu Jia, has been prominently involved in activism around environmental issues, AIDS, and human rights in China over the past decade and a half...
China Detains Writer Tie Liu for ‘Provoking Trouble’
Chinese writer Huang Zerong, also known as Tie Liu, has been detained by police allegedly for writing articles critical of a senior official.
China Activists Fight Gay ‘Conversion Therapy’
Gay rights activists in China are preparing for what they say could be a legal milestone in their fight to stop homosexuality being treated as an illness.
Inside a Beijing Interrogation Room
In the course of my seven-hour interrogation the officers were never ferocious. In fact, they were polite. In this respect, the Chinese government has evolved to appear friendly, but it is still a dictatorial regime that will never accommodate...
Media
07.08.14
Changing the Chinese Embassy’s Address to Liu Xiaobo Plaza Is a Silly Idea
I rarely agree with the Chinese Embassy in Washington, but an amendment making its way through Congress has made me unlikely bedfellows with Beijing’s Washington diplomats.
Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has sponsored an amendment to...
‘There Are No Rules in China’
When dissident author Murong Xuecun returns home, he says he will tell Beijing authorities they can come and get him.
Congress Votes to Rename Road by Chinese Embassy After Jailed Dissident
Beijing is not amused by the “provocative action,” as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo “has been convicted in accordance with the law.”
Books
06.25.14
Tiananmen Exiles
In the spring of 1989, millions of citizens across China took to the streets in a nationwide uprising against government corruption and authoritarian rule. What began with widespread hope for political reform ended with the People's Liberation Army firing on unarmed citizens in the capital city of Beijing, and those leaders who survived the crackdown became wanted criminals overnight.
Books
06.18.14
The People’s Republic of Amnesia
On June 4, 1989, People's Liberation Army soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians in Beijing, killing untold hundreds of people. A quarter-century later, this defining event remains buried in China's modern history, successfully expunged from collective memory. In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4th changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4th by rewriting its own history.
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Viewpoint
06.13.14
Arrested Chinese Lawyer Pu Zhiqiang Speaks from Prison
“They bring me in for questioning practically every day. Sometimes the sessions last as long as ten hours. My legs are getting swollen, probably from sitting on a bench without moving for so long.” He said of these grueling interrogation sessions, “...
Media
06.05.14
A Time-Lapse Map of Protests Sweeping China in 1989
Twenty-five years ago in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, a group of small-town high school students listening to shortwave radio heard news of a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators nearly 1,000 miles away in the capital of...
Exiled Tiananmen Leader Slips into China
Zhou Fengsuo, 47, a student leader in 1989, spent two days in the capital—visiting Tiananmen Square and a detention center where his friends are being held—before the authorities caught him on June 3.
The NYRB China Archive
06.05.14
The Ghosts of Tiananmen Square
from New York Review of BooksEvery spring, an old friend of mine named Xu Jue makes a trip to the Babaoshan cemetery in the western suburbs of Beijing to lay flowers on the tombs of her dead son and husband. She always plans her visit for April 5, which is the holiday of...
Remarks by President Obama at at 25th Anniversary of Freedom Day
Barack Obama reminds Poles that while they voted for democracy twenty-five years ago this day, China crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Marking 25th Anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square Takes Creativity
Every year, political activists try to commemorate those who died in the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square, and the Chinese government tries to prevent them, a cat-and-mouse game as classic as "Tom and Jerry."
Tiananmen, Forgotten
To my generation, the widespread patriotic liberalism that bonded the students in the early 1980s feels as distant as the political fanaticism that defined the preceding decades.
The NYRB China Archive
06.03.14
The Tanks and the People
from New York Review of BooksTwenty-five years ago, before the Tiananmen massacre, my father told me: “Son, be good and stay at home, never provoke the Communist Party.”
My father knew what he was talking about. His courage had been broken, by countless political...
Tales of Army Discord Show Tiananmen Square in a New Light
In a stunning rebuke to his superiors, Major General Xu Qinxian said the Tiananmen protests were a political problem and should be settled through negotiations, not force.
The NYRB China Archive
06.02.14
‘You Won’t Get Near Tiananmen!’: Hu Jia on the Continuing Crackdown
from New York Review of BooksHu Jia is one of China’s best-known political activists. He participated in the 1989 Tiananmen protests as a fifteen-year-old, studied economics, and then worked for environmental and public health non-governmental organizations. A practicing...
25 Years On, No Fading of Tiananmen Wounds, Ideals
While China's economy, society and cities have transformed in the last 25 years, Tiananmen demonstrators and their supporters are keen to remind the world that other things haven't changed.
Excerpts
05.28.14
‘Staying’—An Excerpt from ‘People’s Republic of Amnesia’
Zhang Ming has become used to his appearance startling small children. Skeletally thin, with cheeks sunk deep into his face, he walked gingerly across the cream-colored hotel lobby as if his limbs were made of glass. On his...
The NYRB China Archive
05.20.14
Tiananmen: How Wrong We Were
from New York Review of BooksTwenty-five years ago to the day I write this, I watched and listened as thousands of Chinese citizens in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square dared to condemn their leaders. Some shouted “Premier Li Peng resign.” Even braver ones cried “Down with Deng...
The NYRB China Archive
05.15.14
China: Detained to Death
from New York Review of BooksOn May 3, fifteen Beijing citizens—scholars, journalists, and rights lawyers—gathered informally at the home of Professor Hao Jian of the Beijing Film Academy to reflect on the 25th anniversary of the 1989 June Fourth massacre in Beijing. Two...
China Charges Prominent Uighur Professor with Separatism
The government’s case against Ilham Tohti is the latest sign of its hardening stance on dissent in Xinjiang, where unrest in the past year has killed more than 100, including several police, according to state media.
Chinese Dissident Lands at Cato Institute With a Caution to Colleauges
Xia Yeliang, dismissed from his job as an economics professor at Peking University after clashes with his government over liberalization, warned that American universities should be careful about partnerships with Chinese universities. “They use...
Why is the Chinese Communist Party so Afraid of Legal Activist Xu Zhiyong?
Some fear that Xu and his fellow activists in the New Citizens Movement had formed an “anti-CCP clique”.
Who is Xu Zhiyong?
Four people whose lives were change by Xu Zhiyong describe how he helped them.
Jailed Dissident’s Wife: ‘I Don’t Want You to Give Up’
A public letter from the wife of Xu Zhiyong shows the emotional burden imposed on the family members of jailed dissidents.
Chinese Court Places Heavy Sentence on Prominent Activist
The most closely watched trial of a Chinese dissident in years calls attention to CCP clamp down on dissent.
Paying a Price to Cross China’s Border
For Chinese critics of the government, the border long ago acquired a political toll booth: Whichever way you cross, you pay a price.
The AIDS Granny in Exile
In her one-bedroom apartment, Dr. Gao Yaojie — known to many as “the AIDS Granny” — moves with great difficulty through her tidy clutter and stacks of belongings. In the small kitchen, she stirs a pot of rice and bean porridge, one of the few...
Activists Challenge Beijing by Going to Dinner
On the last weekend of every month, government critics gather for unassuming meals in as many as 20 cities across the country to discuss issues from failures in the legal system to unequal access to education.
The NYRB China Archive
11.07.13
How to Deal with the Chinese Police
from New York Review of BooksA casual visitor to China today does not get the impression of a police state. Life bustles along as people pursue work, fashion, sports, romance, amusement, and so on, without any sign of being under coercion. But the government spends tens of...
In China, Can Plutocrats Have Political Opinions?
China’s men and women who have made it to the top of society by being unrelentingly determined are advised by the government to relent when it comes to calling for the rule of law, adherence to the constitution, or an end to abuses of power...
The NYRB China Archive
10.24.13
China: “Capitulate or Things Will Get Worse”
from New York Review of BooksThe massacre of protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and the harsh repression during the months immediately following put China into a foul mood. Among ordinary Chinese, the prestige of the Communist Party, whose leaders had ordered the brutal...
Top Chinese University Expels Outspoken Economist
Peking School of Economics’ Xia Yeliang was expelled for his political views and activism, including his vocal support of democracy, his involvement in the drafting of Charter 08, and his refusal to comply with government directives to de-...
China Holds Two Bloggers As It Expands Crackdown on Rumors
Police in China have arrested an influential blogger and are holding a cartoonist in a widening crackdown on online “rumor-mongering”, friends and a lawyer for one of them said on Thursday October 17.
Activist’s List of Chinese Political Arrests
Wen Yunchao, who has been monitoring arrests and convictions in this year in China from New York City, insists his records show a growing trend of repression under Xi Jinping.
The Confessions of a Reactionary
When Xu Zhiyong and I received the “Ten People in Rule of Law in 2003” award at CCTV, neither of us, nor the two sponsors of the event would have thought that, in a few years, the two of us would become “the enemies of the state.”...
Citizens Movement Leader Xu Zhiyong Arrested
Xu is one of the founders of a loose network of campaigners known as the New Citizens Movement, who, among other things, have called for people to get together on the last Saturday of each month for dinner to discuss China’s constitution...
Books
07.10.13
For a Song and a Hundred Songs
In June 1989, news of the Tiananmen Square protests and its bloody resolution reverberated throughout the world. A young poet named Liao Yiwu, who had until then led an apolitical bohemian existence, found his voice in that moment. Like the solitary man who stood firmly in front of a line of tanks, Liao proclaimed his outrage—and his words would be his weapon.
A Hundred Songs: Exiled Chinese Writer Liao Yiwu’s Rare U.S. Visit
Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, recently performed at the New York Public Library for his book's U.S. release. His years in prison are the subject of his book “For a Song and a Hundred Songs,” and is a dizzying, and often gruesomely graphic, testimony...
Media
06.04.13
On Eve of Tiananmen Anniversary, China’s Prominent Weiborati Speak Out
“Don’t worry about forgetfulness—at least the Sina censors remember,” tweeted Jia Zhangke, a film director.
Like 2013, 1989 was the year of the Snake on the Chinese calendar. It was also a year that Chinese authorities prefer not to...
Chen Guangcheng Issues Plea For Relatives In China
“I think the U.S. government should publicly and officially ask the Chinese government to fulfill their commitments. It’s been a year now and neither side is living up to their promises following the negotiations last year.”...
Daughter of a Detained Chinese Rights Activist Speaks
Liao Minyue last saw her mother, the rights activist Liu Ping, in mid-April 2013. “I’m afraid she’ll be beaten. It has happened before,” Ms. Liao, 20, said by telephone. “Now I’m waiting for any news of her trial. I’ll fight for her freedom...
China Detains Activist for Subversion After Pressuring Leaders On Wealth
President Xi Jinping’s administration has detained at least 10 activists who have led a campaign for officials to publicly disclose their wealth - the first coordinated crackdown by the new government on activists.