Viewpoint
05.22.23

‘They Are Men Who Acted out of Conscience’

from Bu Mingbai Podcast

Last month, a Chinese court sentenced the civil rights activists and lawyers Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi to fourteen and twelve years in prison for “subverting state power,” a charge arising from an informal gathering of fellow activists the two...

The NYRB China Archive
01.13.21

Seeing the CCP Clearly

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

The split between the two friends is a small example of a wider disagreement between “Trump boosters” and “Trump critics” in the Chinese dissident community. The rift is plainly visible both inside and outside China and is likely to persist in...

China’s Empty Promise of Rule by Law

I’m afraid that those of you who excitedly applauded the Communist Party’s rehashing of the term “governing the country according to the law” have forgotten the famous words of Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Jiang Yu, who once warned sternly, “Don...

Reporting & Opinion
12.23.14

China in 2014 Through the Eyes of a Human Rights Advocate

Yaxue Cao
from China Change

This 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...

The NYRB China Archive
10.19.14

China’s Unstoppable Lawyers: An Interview with Teng Biao

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Teng Biao is one of China’s best-known civil-rights lawyers, and a prominent member of the weiquan, or “rights defenders,” movement, a loosely knit coalition of Chinese lawyers and activists who tackle cases related to the environment,...

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.”...