After the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts, China is now one of the few remaining countries ruled by dictatorship or, in this case, by a single party that has monopolized power for more than 60 years. Many Chinese people draw inspiration and encouragement from the Arab Spring.
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In China, the most extensive crackdown against pro-democracy and human rights activists in more than a decade continues with no end in sight.
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Since late December, Chinese pro-democracy and human-rights activists have watched, cheered and agonized over the events unfolding in the Arab world. There has been a surge of online traffic, with Chinese activists sharing links to blog posts, photos and YouTube videos in order to show solidarity with protesters in the (read more…)
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On International Women’s Day, Wang Songlian calls for an end to the abuses of reproductive health rights under China’s one-child policy
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Following a call for peaceful protests in China, Beijing is arresting and disappearing activists in perhaps the most exhaustive crackdown in recent memory. Here are their stories.
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Countries that have embassies in Oslo were invited to send representatives to the ceremony, but the Chinese government had aggressively called for a boycott. In the end, forty-five countries attended, but another nineteen—including Russia, Pakistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Vietnam—chose to stay away.
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Neither China’s Liu Xiaobo nor his wife or family or friends will be in Oslo to receive his Peace Prize. Who will speak up for him?
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It has been a busy two weeks in China. Last week, my friend, the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” Then nearly two dozen Chinese Communist Party elders—some of them highly ranked officials or retired (read more…)
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On July 17, agents of Beijing’s Civil Affairs Bureau raided and closed the office of the Open Constitution Initiative, a local nongovernmental organization. This center had been the primary meeting place for China’s nascent movement of “rights lawyers,” in which I have been an active participant. There are not too (read more…)
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A hundred years after the writing of China’s first constitution, “Charter 08” called for an end to essential features of the country’s political system, including one-party rule, and their replacement with a system based on human rights and democracy.
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