Rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang was reunited with his family in Beijing on Monday, almost five years after his detention following the 2015 “Black Friday” or “709” crackdown, and more than two weeks after his apparent “non-release ‘release’” from prison. The continued restrictions on Wang were initially justified as a COVID-19 quarantine; then, when the two-week quarantine period had elapsed, as a manifestation of the continued “deprivation of political rights” that was part of his sentence for subversion in a closed trial in late 2018. During the three and a half years before his trial, in which Wang was held incommunicado, his previously apolitical wife Li Wenzu became part of an outspoken group of partners and other relatives calling for justice and freedom for 709 detainees. Her sudden illness on Sunday appears to have precipitated the reunion. From AFP’s Laurie Chen:

“In the past five years, I imagined many times that we met… I feel like it’s a dream!,” said a tearful Li in one of the videos, after holding Wang and their seven-year-old son in a tight embrace for several minutes.

[…] Wang was accompanied home by “around 10” minders including local police from his hometown of Jinan, Shandong province and management staff from Li’s apartment block, said Wang Qiaoling, the wife of another released human rights lawyer Li Heping who was present at the family’s reunion.

Another video shows that three minders attempted to follow Wang into the apartment, but were refused entry by Li and Wang Qiaoling.

Jinan police escorted Wang to Beijing one day after Li was suddenly rushed to hospital with severe abdominal pain, Wang Qiaoling said.

Li told AFP that she was diagnosed and treated for acute appendicitis and was sent back home on Sunday evening, after spending most of the day in Beijing’s Xiyuan Hospital. [Source]

一个等待5年的拥抱！ pic.twitter.com/B6rZXWcWsH

— Suyutong (@Suyutong) April 27, 2020

An embrace awaited for five years!

At South China Morning Post, Guo Rui reported on the reunited family and the events leading to Wang’s return:

Wang told the South China Morning Post that he was enjoying being back with his family and was taking things one step at a time.

[…] Li said she felt the pain of the appendicitis was “worth it” for her husband’s return.

“Although it hurts very, very much, almost killed me, I feel … thankful, because he would not have come back if i had not had it,” she said.

[…] On learning that Li had been hospitalised over the weekend, Wang tried to get a taxi to Beijing but was stopped by police.

Wu Yangwei, a Guangzhou-based independent political analyst, said the authorities apparently gave in to public pressure over Li’s plight and allowed Wang to return to Beijing. [Source]

NYU law professor Jerome Cohen, another longtime supporter of Wang’s, commented on Twitter:

(1/X) It is indeed great news that #WangQuanzhang has finally been allowed to return to Beijing and his family. Many who supported him and his human rights cause for five years will be moved by the video of the family reunion. https://t.co/EYIcczmekU

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) April 27, 2020

(2/X) The significance of Wang’s release from “non-release release” (NRR) in Jinan after a week of the Party’s uncertain waffling in the unusual glare of foreign media has yet to be determined, of course. What are the conditions, if any, of his return to Beijing?

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) April 27, 2020

(3/X) Did his dynamic, gallant wife @709liwenzu manage to resist the usual pressures to keep the ex-prisoner at home cut off from the world? Was her illness and hospital trip the straw that broke the Party’s back?

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) April 27, 2020

(4/X) Will Wang, having already had unusual access to people & media in Jinan, continue to have such access? The Party may decide it’s too late to lock the barn door. Will he now be freer to tell the full story of the cruelty inflicted upon him by the Party’s criminal justice?

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) April 27, 2020

(5/X) Might this case indicate recognition by the Party that the police should not have unlimited discretion in determining the scope of post-conviction “deprivation of political rights” (DPR)? After all, as the Soviet origins of this largely unrecognized punishment demonstrate..

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) April 27, 2020

(6/6) … “deprivation of political rights” was thought by many merely to deprive an ex-convict of the rights to vote and stand for election, not an enormous deprivation given the realities of Communist politics.

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) April 27, 2020

Cohen addressed the “far-fetched” use of deprivation of political rights to justify continued restrictions on Wang in another thread last week, and examined possible signs of official uncertainty over how to handle “this extraordinary couple” in an essay at The Diplomat.

Despite the restrictions on his movements and communications before his arrival in Beijing, Wang was able to give several interviews by phone. South China Morning Post’s Mimi Lau described Wang’s views on the case against him, and his reticence on questions about mistreatment like that reported by fellow rights lawyer Xie Yang and others. Supporters have previously reported that Wang was subjected to torture including electric shocks.

“I committed no crimes but it was very clear that they were determined to put me in jail,” Wang said. “I refused to accept that and I would not compromise on any ground.”

[…] Wang acknowledged that accepting interview requests now could be risky for him, given that he still faced a host of restrictions imposed by the authorities that he would have to “break through one by one”.

In the interview with the Post, he was hesitant to talk about the 709 crackdown, citing fear that any discussion of it would bring him trouble. In particular, he declined to say whether he had been tortured during his incarceration, saying that “certain people in some departments would be angry” if he made such comments.

“I was held in four detention centres and two other secret locations before I was put on trial,” he said. “I was treated differently in those locations and I could not recall the details accurately now of what happened exactly in each location. [Source]

Jerome Cohen suggested in his Diplomat essay that Wang’s evasion “was a clever way of actually providing an answer, since, if Wang said that he had not been tortured, this would not have angered ‘certain people.'”

Wang commented further on the case against him in another interview with Deutsche Welle’s William Yang (who posted a fuller transcript separately on Medium):

The judges randomly charged and sentenced me. They first tried to charge me for “creating disturbance,” but later indicted me for “state subversion.” Before charging me, the prosecutor said that “we spent a year and a half to determine that your crime is subversion of state.” They did not tell me which law I actually violated.

I merely participated in some events between 2009 and 2011, so I didn’t know what the logic was behind their charges against me. I asked prosecutors whether I was targeted for my speeches or my behavior. They said the charges were related to my behavior. As they charged me with state subversion for posting material on Weibo, I asked them what was illegal about it. They replied that the mere “act of typing” on Weibo constituted state subversion. I was just speechless at their response.

If Chinese authorities want rule of law in the country, they need to stop abusing power. They can’t expand their power while limiting people’s rights. It is a ridiculous situation.

[…] I was imprisoned in four different detention centers, and two unknown locations. Most of the defendants in my case were released as local officials said we didn’t commit any crime. However, the judges still kept bringing up cases to use them as evidence of my crime. It is alarming that the court of law tries to find a way to prosecute someone that the government wants jailed. [Source]

In a second report from SCMP’s Mimi Lau on Sunday, Wang described how he had endured the emotional pressure of his imprisonment, and the physical and psychological toll it had taken:

“I was suddenly isolated from the whole world and I was totally consumed by the pain that I was separated from my wife and son. As it went on, I had no choice but to force myself to give up my emotional reliance on them and become indifferent,” he said.

“Honestly, I would not be able to stand my ground for so long if I had not become indifferent. So this was why I was very aloof to my family when they visited me at the prison.”

[…] “I kept my distance from them at the time … but I’m beginning to warm up through regular video calls and I am trying to gradually find my way back to the psychological and emotional state of a normal person,” Wang said.

[…] “I’ve lost my teeth,” he said. “When I was in jail, I had to appear optimistic but I was deeply depressed emotionally. This resulted in so much anxieties that has given me high blood pressure, and problems with my teeth.

“But what feared me the most was the safety of my wife and son. When I was first locked up, I even had nightmares that my son was abducted and sold [by human traffickers].” [Source]

In an interview with Gao Feng at Radio Free Asia, Wang commented on his “non-release ‘release'”:

I have been demanding all along to be allowed to be reunited with my wife and child in Beijing, but they are still restricting my freedom. They have removed the quarantine arrangements and there aren’t security guards at the bottom of the building any more. I can leave the residential compound, and I can meet with my family, lawyer and friends. But they are still following me around, in a vague sort of way. For example, the security guards from the residential compound tend to follow me from a distance, and they will probably be reporting back [to police]. They told me I can go anywhere else [in China] except for Beijing. I told them that I need to go to Beijing first and foremost, to be with my wife and child. The excuse they used to start off with was quarantine, but now that’s ended, they’re saying it’s because of the annual parliamentary sessions. […]

[…] There is nothing on paper preventing me from going to Beijing; they conveyed this to me verbally. The authorities interpret the law to serve their own interests, to turn it to their own profit. I think they are breaking it. I hope that more professionals will come forward to promote [the law]. [Source]

The Two Sessions annual parliamentary meetings were originally planned for March but were postponed and have now been rescheduled for late May due to the pandemic.

Wang’s case is not the only one showing signs of abuses by authorities under the guise of disease control measures. Forced quarantines have also been reported in the cases of citizen journalists reporting on the outbreak from Wuhan, including the recently released Li Zehua. Recent actions by mainland and local authorities in Hong Kong have raised suspicion that they are using the ban on public gatherings as cover to take potentially inflammatory steps without rekindling last year’s massive street protests, while other reports point to opportunistic assertiveness on other fronts from territorial and maritime disputes to diplomacy and foreign investment.

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Post tags: arbitrary detention, Black Friday 2015, Black Friday trials, coronavirus, house arrest, Jerome cohen, rights lawyers, rule of law, Wang Quanzhang

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Legal scholar Zhang Xuezhong, 43, was briefly detained in Shanghai after writing an open letter on WeChat addressed to delegates of the National People’s Congress, which is set to meet at the end of this month after delaying their usual February gathering due to the pandemic. In the letter, Zhang criticized the government’s response to COVID-19 and called for broader constitutional changes to protect citizens’ rights. In his WeChat post accompanying the letter, he wrote: “The best way to fight for freedom of expression is for everyone to speak as if we already have freedom of speech.” He was taken away from his home in Shanghai late Sunday night, but was then reported to have been released and returned home on Monday. William Zheng reports for the South China Morning Post:

The letter said the Chinese political system had resulted in a lack of transparency and scrutiny. China has dismissed claims that it mishandled the outbreak, against accusations led by the United States that it had withheld information and allowed the outbreak to escalate into a global pandemic. Beijing has strongly denied a claim – referenced repeatedly by US President Donald Trump – that the outbreak’s origin was linked to virus research lab in Wuhan.

“Since January 3, 2020, the [Chinese] foreign ministry had been regularly notifying the US government about the epidemic, but the disease control department was not notifying the people of [China] at the same time. Such an irresponsible attitude towards their people’s safety is rare,” Zhang wrote.

[…] “There were few independent professional media to investigate and report on the outbreak, nor did medical professionals provide independent advice to the public … It only shows that the government’s long-term tight control of society and people has almost completely destroyed the organisation and self-help capabilities of Chinese society.”

Zhang called on NPC deputies to turn the legislature into a “transitional authority” to create a broadly representative committee empowered to draft a constitution conforming to “modern political principles”. [Source]

On Monday at midnight, he posted to a group on WeChat that he had returned home.

“I saw so many friends showing concern for my current situation. Thank you so so much. I am now home and all is well. Good night everyone.”

Zhang was a lawyer and professor at the East China University of Politics and Law until he was removed from his teaching duties for promoting constitutional rights and given an administrative position in 2013. An official notice from the university said he was removed from the faculty for “forcibly disseminating his political views among the faculty and using his status as a teacher to spread his political views among students.” He still practiced law, defending several well-known activists until he was stripped of his law license last year. He continued to write and publish, including an article in January 2019 titled, “Bid Farewell to Reform and Opening Up –– On China’s Perilous Situation and Its Future Options” which was translated by ChinaChange. Last month, he spoke up online in defense of writer Fang Fang, whose personal journal about life under lockdown in Wuhan has become a lightning rod for nationalist netizens who claim she is damaging China’s international image. Zhang wrote about Fang:

I support her based on the principle of freedom of speech, the belief that as a writer, she should have the freedom to write and publish (which is a manifestation of freedom of speech for all citizens). To admire her for holding up her record of the epidemic, and for pressuring certain powers. But supporting and admiring someone doesn’t mean agreeing with everything she thinks. In fact, our support and admiration for others can only be solid and stable if we have our own independent view. [Source]

2/2 As this 2013 story shows, Prof. Zhang lost his teaching position as one of the first targets of Xi Jinping’s increase in repression & Xi’s determination to stamp out any public reference to the “SEVEN UNMENTIONABLES” including constitutionalism.https://t.co/4Ll72fuFSM

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) May 11, 2020

Chinese authorities have detained, censored, and reprimanded others who have spoken up against their handling of the spread of the coronavirus. Outspoken businessman Ren Zhiqiang is being investigated after writing an essay that was sharply critical of Xi Jinping’s response to the virus. Activist Xu Zhiyong has also been detained after writing an essay in which he called on Xi to resign for his handling of both the virus and last year’s protests in Hong Kong. Several citizen journalists have been forcibly quarantined or detained for sharing information about COVID-19 and its impact in China, including three volunteers who maintained a GitHub page which posted censored content about the virus. Internet users in China who have been angered by the government’s opacity and censorship of virus-related news, especially during the initial outbreak, have still managed to find ways online to call for free speech and combat censorship.

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Post tags: academic censorship, CCP constitution, rights lawyers, Zhang Xuezhong

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PEN America reported on Monday that rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong has been formally arrested for inciting subversion, four months after he was found and detained after going into hiding amid a round-up of activists on December 26. During that time he published an essay, later translated by Geremie Barmé for ChinaFile, calling for Xi Jinping’s resignation. Others who have made similar appeals include Tsinghua professor Xu Zhangrun, who was subsequently suspended; retired Central Party School professor Cai Xia, whose recent speech on the subject was translated by CDT; and rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who later had his law license revoked, was arrested in early 2018, and was sentenced last week to four years in prison for inciting subversion (see below). From PEN America, on Xu Zhiyong’s case:

PEN America condemns the Chinese government’s decision to formally arrest writer and civil rights advocate Xu Zhiyong under charges of “inciting subversion,” a naked attempt to harshly punish Xu for his forthright criticism of Chinese political leaders. Xu Zhiyong was recently announced as the recipient of PEN America’s 2020 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.

[…] “Xu Zhiyong is under arrest for criticizing the government, plain and simple,” said Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America. “By proceeding with these meritless charges of ‘subversion,’ the government is using the law as a tool to legitimize its suppression of dissidents. But criticisms are not crimes, no matter how much Beijing insists otherwise.”

Noting that the criminal conviction rate in China commonly exceeds 99 percent, Nossel continued, “we have zero confidence that Xu will receive a fair trial. We insist that the government drop these absurd and abusive criminal charges against him, and acknowledge his right to express his ideas and opinions without fear of a jail cell.” [Source]

Xu founded the New Citizens’ Movement, whose demolition in 2013 and 2014 was an early episode in the aggressive broader crackdown on civil society under Xi Jinping. He was sentenced to four years in prison for gathering crowds to provoke a disturbance, and formally but ambiguously released in 2017.

A more recent victim of what NYU law scholar Jerome Cohen calls “non-release ‘release'” is Wang Quanzhang, who disappeared after the 2015 “Black Friday” or “709” crackdown. Continued restrictions on Wang after he left prison in April were initially justified as quarantine measures. He has since been reunited with his family. In initial interviews, Wang was reticent on whether he suffered mistreatment like that reported by fellow rights lawyer Xie Yang and others: he dismissed questions on the topic by saying he could not be sure what had happened in which location, and that “certain people in some departments would be angry” if he said he had been tortured. He confirmed, though, that he was suffering from high blood pressure and dental problems, and trying to “gradually find my way back to the psychological and emotional state of a normal person” after being forced to emotionally distance himself from his own family to endure his fears for their safety. Supporters had previously reported that he was subjected to torture including electric shocks.

In a new interview with Japan’s Kyodo news agency, Wang confirms that he was beaten and kicked, made to hold stress positions, and threatened as investigators sought to extract a confession from him. From Yuichiro Okuma:

From September [2015] until he was formally arrested in January 2016, he was in state custody in Tianjin, near Beijing. He was monitored by the authorities at a designated place, which he called a hotbed of torture.

Wang was kept under surveillance by two armed police officers 24 hours a day at a 20-square-meter cell in the prison and he was prohibited from rolling over while sleeping.

After being slapped in the face for hours, he was compelled to accept an affidavit stating that he tried to subvert the government by receiving funds from abroad.

Wang was also commanded to stand for 15 hours with his hands up in the air, and when he dropped them, he was yelled at as a “traitor.” He said he became so weak that he was unable to stand even for a few minutes.

[…] “My cases prove that (China’s judicial procedure) is sloppy. It is public safety police, prosecutors and court authorities that disrupt law,” he said. [Source]

Okuma closes by noting plans for new national security legislation in Hong Kong, which many fear could extend such abuses to the territory or place its citizens within their reach. The New York Times’ Austin Ramzy commented:

A worrying thing to read in Hong Kong as Beijing prepares to impose its national security apparatus on the city https://t.co/fMEg5QMw6T

— Austin Ramzy (@austinramzy) June 22, 2020

Lawyer Yu Wensheng, who had previously attempted to defend Wang, might offer another cautionary case. Yu was sentenced last week to four years in prison for inciting subversion, following a secret trial in May 2019 from which both his wife and former defense lawyers were excluded. Authorities claimed that he had dismissed those lawyers, and produced a handwritten note as evidence, though Yu had preemptively disavowed any such document prior to his arrest.

Yu’s law license was revoked in January 2018 in apparent retaliation for an open letter he had written the previous October, calling on delegates to the 19th Party Congress to remove Xi Jinping from leadership and implement political reforms. The letter, which CDT translated, argued that Xi “has broken with historical trends, reversing history and strengthening totalitarian rule; he is not suitable to continue holding power.” Yu repeated his call for reform after being disbarred, and was almost immediately taken into detention while walking his son to school. His subsequent isolation, and his wife’s advocacy for his release, closely mirrored Wang Quanzhang’s case. Edited video of him appearing to resist police was later released in a suspected campaign to discredit him.

Amnesty International’s Nicholas Bequelin commented on Yu’s sentencing:

“Yu Wensheng’s sentencing is nothing but political persecution dressed up as legal process. Not only was Yu prosecuted under baseless charges for the lawful and legitimate work he was conducting as a lawyer, his own lawyer was not even permitted to attend the sentencing hearing.

“While the Chinese government’s zero-tolerance policy towards critics is well-known, the secret sentencing of yet another human rights lawyer marks a new low for what is left of the rule of law in China.

“Yu Wensheng is a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression. He is also at risk of torture and ill-treatment. China must immediately and unconditionally release him and end its scandalous crackdown on lawyers, activists and others who try to peacefully advocate for human rights in the country.”

[…] Yu Wensheng was also previously detained for 99 days in 2014 after voicing his support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. He told Amnesty International he was tortured in detention. [Source]

An E.U. spokesperson called for Yu’s “immediate release” last week, saying that “the European Union expects China to ensure full respect of the rule of law, to establish fair trial guarantees and to investigate thoroughly all reported cases of arbitrary detentions, ill-treatment and torture of human rights defenders and their families,” and also condemning the new Hong Kong national security law as a “a comprehensive assault on the city’s autonomy, rule of law, and fundamental freedoms.” The AFP noted that these issues were two among many potential irritants during a high-level Sino-E.U. video summit on Monday, together with European investment barriers against highly subsidized Chinese companies, and accusations of Chinese disinformation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Post tags: arrests, Black Friday 2015, EU, european union, rights lawyers, sentencing, torture, Wang Quanzhang, Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping image, Xu Zhiyong, Yu Wensheng

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These poems, attributed to 伯罗奔尼撒, or “Peloponnese,” were posted to WeChat by user 1号档案馆, or “Number 1 Archive.” CDT Chinese editors have archived them, and they are translated below with added links for context.

Don’t Speak

Don’t speak,
Don’t disturb their sweet dreams,
Which they dream in the name of the country.
Don’t speak,
Don’t move their cheese
Which they hoard in the name of the country.
Don’t speak,
Don’t puncture their lies,
Which they spin in the name of the country.
Don’t speak,
Don’t question their pledges
Which they swear in the name of the country.
Don’t speak,
Don’t resist their atrocities
Carried out in the name of the country.
Don’t speak,
This is their country, not yours. [Source]

Please Remember Them

Please remember them,
The children poisoned by vaccines or milk powder
The youths violated and robbed of sunlight
The reporters exposing darkness, who fade into it
The singers who, banned online, hung up their mics
The directors impoverished by refusal to censor
The lawyers who squat in prison for seeking justice
The soldiers killed nameless along the frontier
The lecturers fired after students denounced them
The doctors admonished for daring to speak
The farmers facing forced demolition with nowhere to appeal
The …

[Source]

Read more translated poetry from CDT.

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Post tags: academic freedom, child abuse, coronavirus, film industry, forced demolitions, India border, journalists, li wenliang, media conditions, music, PLA, poetry, rights lawyers, soldiers, vaccines

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Beijing-based publisher and film producer Geng Xiaonan was detained along with her husband and business partner Qin Chen on September 9 for suspected "illegal business operations." Geng had been an outspoken advocate of Xu Zhangrun, the law professor fired by Tsinghua University after a brief detention in July following his earlier suspension over scathing written critiques of Xi Jinping. She denounced the accusation that Xu had solicited prostitutes (on a trip she had arranged) as "just the kind of vile slander that they use against someone they want to silence," and gave an extended interview to RFA’s Bei Ming—translated by Geremie Barmé at China Heritage—to praise Xu’s work and defend his innocence. Geng was known as an energetic supporter of more prominent activists: rather than seeing herself on the front lines, she told Bei Ming, she had embraced a secondary role as "a stable hand taking care of the horses of the heroic figures who fight for justice, someone who provides practical succor to prisoners of conscience and a person who cares for the corpses of the valiant souls who die in the wilderness [….] If I could not be a hero at least I could offer garlands to the heroic few and cheer on their endeavours. I could help them on their way or perhaps even take a bullet for them."

Geng’s case is less prominent than those of Xu himself or of other high-profile critics of Xi such as retired Central Party School professor Cai Xia, who was expelled from the CCP and stripped of her pension in August, or property tycoon and Party insider Ren Zhiqiang, who was sentenced last month to 18 years in prison for alleged corruption. Nevertheless, Geng’s detention and the events that followed it demonstrate many of the different approaches being used to target not only critics, but also their supporters; and not only to punish and deter, but discredit and isolate them, cutting them off from effective legal appeal, financial resources, international attention, and escape.

Radio Free Asia’s Qiao Long and Luisetta Mudie reported late last month on the obstruction of the lawyers Geng had retained in anticipation of official reprisals:

Geng’s lawyer Shang Baojun met with her at the Haidian District Detention Center in Beijing on Thursday, reporting that she looked tired and under considerable strain following repeated interrogations.

“She has been through more than a dozen interrogations,” Shang said. “She has been interrogated nearly every day since she went in.”

[…] He said police are using the couple’s publication of around 8,000 nutrition and cookery books to claim their Ruiya Books publishing house had been operating illegally from the start.

[… H]e said the authorities were using coronavirus restrictions to make life far harder for attorneys seeking meetings with their detained clients.

“Now, because of the pandemic, lawyers have to get there first thing in the morning to get a meeting,” Shang told RFA, adding that there is a limited online ticketing system in place, operating a first come, first served policy. [Source]

In both mainland China and Hong Kong, disease control measures appear to have provided convenient cover for restrictions on political targets. In Hong Kong, planned demonstrations have been denied authorization on grounds of social distancing rules. On the mainland, some figures like citizen journalist Chen Qiushi—another recipient of Geng Xiaonan’s support—have disappeared into "quarantine," while in other cases like rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang’s, quarantine has provided a pretext for the enforcement of "non-release ‘release’" following the end of formal imprisonment. (Xu Zhangrun was also kept isolated on these grounds for two weeks after his release from detention on July 12.) In her conversation with RFA’s Bei Ming before her detention, Geng voiced her own concerns that the pandemic has been used to tighten the net of surveillance on politically sensitive individuals. From Geremie Barmé’s translation of the exchange at China Heritage:

Geng Xiaonan: Sister, lately whenever I go out I know that I’m being followed, either by car or on foot. I’m in no doubt whatsoever that they definitely have me in their sights. And they know just what they are doing. For example, no one follows me if I’m only going to do some shopping at the supermarket; or, if my husband and I go out for a meal they’ll leave us alone. But if I’m going to meet with members of the international media — just look out: there’ll definitely be a vehicle tailing me. Or, say I have arranged to meet with Professor Xu Zhangrun, the second I step out the door they’re right my tail. That’s why I say their technique is impressive.

[…] In Beijing at the moment under the cover of responding to the coronavirus epidemic the authorities have been successful, and I would say holistically instituted what Mr Xu has described as ‘Big Data Totalitarianism’ [see Xu Zhangrun, ‘Viral Alarm — When Fury Overcomes Fear’, ChinaFile, 10 February 2020]. So, that means we are faced with a situation in which whenever we leave the house, whether it be to a café, a restaurant, a teahouse, any retail outlet at all, or an office, in fact anywhere in public at all, we need to register our movements using a ‘digital health tracer’. [Source]

Barmé paired this translation with another from Tsinghua sociology professor Guo Yuhua, a vocal supporter of both Xu and Geng. While defending Geng’s innocence, Guo accused the authorities of breaking the law themselves:

To the government agencies concerned:

• By detaining Geng Xiaonan and her husband, you have broken the law!
• By willfully neglecting to notify family members, by condemning elderly parents to seek out news about what has happened to their loved ones, you have broken the law!
• By refusing to the recognise the power of attorney those detained signed with their lawyer, you have broken the law!
• By resorting to spurious excuses to prevent those detained from meeting with their legal counsel, you have broken the law!
• By denying legal counsel the right to meet those detained at a time that yourself had appointed on the sudden excuse that the detained were ‘being interrogated’, you have broken the law!
• By blocking legal counsel the right to wait until the questioning had been concluded so they could meet with the detained, you have broken the law!

Are you only there to violate the law?! [Source]

New York University’s Jerome Cohen had his own questions about the decisions behind the targeting, timing, and type of detention in this and similar cases. He included 22 of these questions in a September 15 article at The Diplomat, citing also the case of the 12 Hong Kong activists captured at sea in late August and similarly denied meetings with their own lawyers as they face likely trial in mainland courts. "There is so much that we and even most Chinese still don’t know," Cohen wrote, "because the Party will not allow us to know."

[…] Geng is reportedly destined for “very heavy” punishment, not the 15 day maximum in an unpleasant detention cell usually imposed for minor offenses not deemed sufficiently grave to constitute a “crime.” The initial “illegal activity” charge against her is vague enough to cover either her publishing business alone or her open support for Xu or, very likely, both. How long her husband, detained with her, will be held will depend on how important his interrogation seems to her case.

The ongoing repression of mainland Chinese protesters against injustice continues to raise many questions about the Communist Party’s punishment systems. Who gets detained? When? After what kinds of warnings and preliminary “education”? What type of detention is chosen and why? When, for example, does the Party select, for up to six months, the widely-feared incommunicado detention by a government “supervisory commission,” initially preempting not only the formal criminal process but the entire justice system?

[…] For all types of detention, there are, of course, the usual concerns about the conditions of either solitary or group confinement, oppressive interrogation, mental and physical torture, and coerced confessions. And what about the consequences of all this for one’s spouse, children, other family and close associates?

[… A]s China’s criminal justice again takes center stage, universal condemnation of China’s unfair punishment systems may be the only credible defense available to Geng, Xu, the hapless “Hong Kong 12,” and millions of others, including those detained in China’s Xinjiang, Tibetan, and Mongolian regions. [Source]

Xu Zhangrun has repeatedly spoken up in Geng’s defense, first in an open letter to the national leadership immediately after her detention, which, he wrote, "sends a numbing winter chill through the hearts of all Chinese people of conscience and decency." In a later posting translated at China Heritage, Xu addressed his fellow legal professionals on the abuse of "portmanteau" or "pocket crimes" in politically motivated prosecutions. In the case of publishers, he argues, the government’s control of industry regulation and operation makes "illegal business practices" easy to find when desired:

As a result of these controls, among the smaller players in the industry the system generates a feeling of incessant trepidation. Not only are they at the mercy of a publishing regime that closely moderates the trade in book numbers, the question of book distribution is even more fraught. Added to that is an unreasonable regime of taxation that forces non-state actors in the industry to skirt dizzyingly on the border of legality merely to survive. It isn’t that publishers want to break the law, but the legal framework in which they are obliged to operate is purposefully unclear, so much so that they constantly feel imperiled. Furthermore, the minute anyone involved in publishing causes offense to the power holders by saying something ‘out of line’, they can be hauled in and penalised without warning.

[… T]his daring, independent woman [Geng Xiaonan] has been cast into jail. This has been done as a warning to others. It is a classic example of someone being accused of a concocted crime in punishment for her having had the temerity to speak out. No one is in any doubt as to the motivation behind this. They are employing economic penalties to silence political opposition, to use criminal procedures to silence an outspoken person, and by so doing to warn the multitude to submit and obey. [Source]

A previous example of "illegal business operations" in the publishing industry is the 2017 imprisonment of Guangxi Normal University Press social media editor Dai Xuelin and his business partner Zhang Xiaoxiong for unauthorized distribution of critical history books published in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Another, anonymous essay, once again translated at China Heritage, linked Geng Xiaonan, Xu Zhangrun, and Ren Zhiqiang as exemplars of both a noble tradition of dissent and the ongoing abuse of the legal system to combat it. "What really counts," the author observes, "is not whether people ‘abide by the law’, but if they have a compliant political attitude and ideological position vis-à-vis the Party."

The purge of Ren Zhiqiang and Geng Xiaonan in the wake of the repression of Xu Zhangrun shows that the authorities are determined to rid themselves of the small number of stand-out figures. It is part of a strategy to intimidate the masses into further submission. All three have connections inside the Communist Party establishment and, to-date, they had enjoyed a measure of personal influence. They dared confront the New Authoritarian openly and, by so doing, they have had a not-inconsiderable impact on society and public opinion. These are exactly the kinds of people the Party authorities were talking about when they said: ‘We will not allow people who have been nurtured on the milk of the Party’s kindness, and who have benefited from the system, to turn around and criticise the Party itself.’

[…] This time, however, the authorities haven’t dragged out their old playbook and accused these people of conscience of the usual miscellaneous crimes such as ‘inciting the subversion of state power’, ‘spreading rumours and engaging in libelous speech’, or even ‘gathering a crowd to incite a pubic incident’. They are worried that the outside world might accuse them of human rights abuses and that they are merely punishing people for what they have said and written. Now they are covering themselves by arresting people for having engaged in ‘illegal business activities’ where in fact what they really want to do is crush free speech.

[…] The situation in China is rapidly deteriorating. Everyone, whether they be in- or outside the party-state system, and regardless of their social status or wealth, is living in a highly repressive political environment. Many choose to swallow their anger in response, but a small number of men and women feel compelled by a sense of decency to speak their minds regardless. They reject the status quo. Although some of them have been imprisoned on the pretext of this or that ‘crime’ and, despite the detention of Geng Xiaonan, a Cultural Woman Warrior, and the sentencing of Ren Zhiqiang, their advocacy for freedom and the rule of law will continue to inspire more and more people to brave the foul weather that besets us as we press on. [Source]

Despite this confidence, and the "storm of public outrage" over Geng’s treatment mentioned by Xu above, others have expressed disgust at widespread failure to speak out on Geng’s behalf. Barmé has translated two poetic expressions of this dismay, one from filmmaker and activist Ai Xiaoming, and another by Wuhan calligrapher Li Xueyuan, who laments: "You enjoyed her generous support, but now she is battered by the tempest/Yet you, Fine Gentlemen — you hold back in obnoxious cowardice." In his introduction to the latter, Barmé notes:

Over the years, and in particular since the irresistible rise of Xi Jinping and the quelling of intellectual, media and social activism, support for those who would speak out, like Xu Zhiyong and Xu Zhangrun, to name but two prominent figures, has dwindled.

The reasons for such reticence are understandable, but here our poet takes issue with the cowardice of what in China are known as ‘wine-and-meat buddies’ 酒肉朋友, that is those who repeatedly enjoyed her largesse in the past, in other words fair-weather friends. One of their number, when pressed to show some support for the detained publishers, offered gnomically: 吉人自有天相, ‘I’ll leave it up to Fate’. It’s a statement somewhat akin to saying: ‘Let them jail whomsoever they want; God will work it out.’ This is a recasting of the famous declaration made during the Albigensian Crusade in 1209: ‘Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius’ (Kill them all. The Lord knows those who are his own). [Source]

This erosion of solidarity is the product of a concerted campaign of deterrence designed to isolate political dissenters. One key source of support has been detainees’ immediate families, particularly spouses, often working together. These relatives have suffered often harsh reprisals for speaking out, including harassment, house arrest, evictions, and exclusion of children from schools. The detention of Geng Xiaonan’s husband exemplifies an apparent escalation of this trend, Human Rights Watch’s Yaqiu Wang noted last month, with family members increasingly detained or prosecuted along with the targets themselves. Wang highlighted the partners of artist and activist Wang Zang, rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, anti-discrimination activist Cheng Yuan, and pastor Wang Yi:

There is a joke among human rights activists in China: the primary qualification is “single, parents dead.” Given how often Chinese authorities treat family members of people opposing government rights abuses as “guilty by association,” it’s better not to have any family.

[…] Many activists in China have told me that they can themselves endure official retribution, but can’t bear their loved ones suffering for their activities. The Chinese government knows that well and exploits it to silence them. Nothing undermines Beijing’s claims to respect the rule of law more than this undisguised cruelty. [Source]

Other supporters are also coming under mounting pressure. Xu Zhangrun’s initial public attack on Geng’s detention, Barmé noted, "resulted in him being detained yet again and questioned at length. He was warned not to write or say anything else about the Geng Xiaonan case." When he violated this demand with his open letter to China’s lawyers, he was again interrogated. Mo Shaoping and Shang Baojun, the two lawyers Xu had chosen to pursue an appeal against his treatment, were also visited by state security agents and warned "to limit their interactions with international media outlets so as to prevent the ‘highly sensitive’ case of Xu Zhangrun falling victim to a ‘media beat-up’."

When pressure like this fails, targets’ communications can be interfered with more directly. Wang Quanzhang, for example, was initially allowed only limited phone access after his "non-release ‘release’," undermining the official claim that continued restrictions on him were a routine matter of COVID prevention. Xu and several others who spoke out for him have had their WeChat accounts suspended, including former classmate Lu Nan and Tsinghua’s Guo Yuhua, who had posted a picture of the cover of Xu’s new book.

As the threat of a U.S. ban on the app has highlighted, WeChat’s ubiquity makes its removal a serious barrier to communication. This is only the start of the impact of an account suspension on those living inside the country, however, given the breadth of the app’s presence in Chinese life. The service has now become a vital payment channel, for example. Phone-based payments, dominated by WeChat and Alibaba’s Alipay, are now so essential that Geng Xiaonan noted in her comments on location tracking: "Of course, you’re free to leave your mobile phone at home, but then all you can do is wander the streets, because you won’t be able to perform any everyday commercial or consumer activity." While China’s unparalleled integration between digital services and everyday life brings great convenience to many, various commentators have noted the ecosystem’s downsides for those left outside it. Weaponizing this digital divide has become part of the authorities’ array of siege tactics for use against political targets.

Xu is reportedly subject to a "Four Ban Order," barring him from leaving Beijing, leaving China, accepting media interviews, and receiving financial support. "Deprived of an income and of his pension," Geremie Barmé has noted, "Xu’s living situation is stretched and, without access to online shopping or WeChat transactions (his WeChat account was suspended in July), he cannot make purchases nor, since his name is interdicted on the Internet, can friends make any on his behalf." (Although Cai Xia is now in the United States, her pension was also cut off in order, she tweeted in August, "to plunge me into poverty [… and sentence] me to a ‘slow death.’") RFA reported that Geng had discovered the block on Xu’s name for herself while trying to send him groceries via Alibaba’s Taobao, TMall, and Hema services in late August. Others have also faced repercussions for attempting to provide material support to Xu. In early September, Barmé highlighted crowdfunding efforts by Tsinghua alumni Sun Nutao and Yan Huai to help Xu earn money from his writing. From an appeal by Sun:

If, upon reading the attached essay (see below) [Xu’s letter to Harvard University] you are so moved, please feel free to show your appreciation. I would hasten to add that this is a simple commercial transaction abiding by market laws that in no way contravenes relevant regulations. I am undertaking this appeal and openly and in a manner that is entirely above board.

During these chill days of wintry darkness people of conscience should not stand by idly as a man like this endures such deprivation. [Source]

"The troublesome septuagenarians," Barmé wrote, "were called in for questioning by the Beijing security authorities, reprimanded and issued a formal warning. Yan was placed under a regime of ’24/7 residential surveillance’."

The Chinese government has moved to strip two human rights lawyers of their licenses to practice, following their involvement in legal cases against citizen journalist Zhang Zhan and the 12 Hong Kong activists caught fleeing the city in 2020. The lawyers, Lu Siwei and Ren Quanniu, received letters on January 4 informing them of plans to revoke their licenses. Hong Kong Free Press’ Rhoda Kwan reported on the notices delivered to the two lawyers:

In a letter informing Lu of administrative punishment proceedings against him released Monday, the Sichuan province’s Department of Justice accused him of “publishing inappropriate speech online.”

[…] “Upon investigation, this department found that you have published inappropriate speech online on multiple occasions – the considerable length of time with a vast number of posts have seriously harmed the image of the lawyer profession and caused a negative impact upon society,” the notice read.

[…] Later on Monday, Ren also received a similar notice from authorities informing him of their intention to revoke his licence. Ren had represented citizen journalist Zhang Zhan who was jailed for four years last week for her coverage of the Wuhan Covid-19 outbreak. In a notice from the Henan province’s Department of Justice, authorities cited alleged wrongdoing from 2018.

According to mainland Chinese law, both lawyers are entitled to provide a statement and file a defence. They required to officially request for a hearing within three days, at the end of which they will be deemed to have given up the right to plead their cases. [Source]

The timing of the letters is noteworthy, coming shortly after both of the politically sensitive cases concluded last week. In the case of the Hong Kong 12, Lu and Ren were in fact barred from representing the defendants, who were instead assigned government-appointed lawyers. The New York Times’ Austin Ramzy reported that a family members of the 12 decried the debarring of the lawyers as state-sponsored retaliation:

Mr. Lu and Mr. Ren were each given three days to arrange hearings over their licenses, but Mr. Ren said he had little hope of a successful appeal.

A group representing family members of the activists said they believed the timing of the actions against the two lawyers indicated that they were “obviously revenge for their involvement” in the Hong Kong case.

“For their daring to go against the powers that be, and persistence in upholding the rights of the twelve, the authorities have resorted to ending their professional career and cutting off their livelihoods,” the families said in a statement. [Source]

A second lawyer who helped the families of the #12HKyouths has now been told he will lose his licence. The families are urging the people of #HongKong to support the lawyers, to help protect them from the "oppression by mainland authorities". Full story: https://t.co/ptKAcpcL2k pic.twitter.com/a6BEPcxIje

— RTHK English News (@rthk_enews) January 4, 2021

In addition to the Zhang Zhan and Hong Kong 12 cases, Lu Siwei has also been involved in the case of jailed human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng. Yu was jailed in June 2020 on charges of subversion after he penned a letter calling on delegates of the 19th Party Congress to remove Xi Jinping and implement political reforms. William Yang reported that the prospect of Lu eventually losing his license would likely hurt Yu’s legal representation.

“As Yu’s defense lawyer, Lu has been fighting for Yu’s legal rights within the legally acceptable range The department of justice’s decision to revoke his license has seriously threatened a lawyer’s ability to fulfill their legal duties in China," she told me.

— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) January 4, 2021

However, now that Lu is likely going to lose his license, he will not be able to continue these legal assistance. Xu also thinks that the incident is going to create a chilling effect among human rights lawyers in China.

— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) January 4, 2021

It has become significantly more perilous for human rights lawyers to operate in China since the 709 crackdown of 2015, when more than 200 human rights activists and lawyers were arrested. In December of 2020, an independent expert with the U.N. described a “five-year assault” on lawyers who stand up for human rights. Nonetheless, in a letter titled “Better to Die for One’s Words Than Survive on Silence,” a group of human rights lawyers as part of the China Human Rights Lawyers Group struck a defiant tone while ushering in the new year:

In facing the advancement and even retrenchment of constitutionalism, rule of law, and human rights, what should we do? Continue to sacrifice freedom and dignity for security, or break our silence to speak up and say no to every violation of these rights?

[…] All citizens must ask themselves, does the fact that Dr. Li Wenliang (李文亮) was summoned and chastised by police at the very start of the coronavirus pandemic have nothing to do with you? Do those whose land was illegally taken, homes forcibly demolished, and who were illegally jailed have nothing to do with you? Do the human rights lawyers who were illegally stripped of their credentials have nothing to do with you? All of these things bear on you! When you’re in the midst of a pandemic, unable to move freely, or even have friends and family fall ill, when you or your relatives’ property is forcibly taken, home is demolished, when you are imprisoned by the state and no lawyer dares speak up for you… this means that these violations of human rights are directly and indirectly related to you. Therefore, speaking out against injustices done to others is an obligation for all. Fighting for your rights and those of others is a duty every person has towards the community.

[…] Zhang Zhan had this to say: “Looking upward, I am pregnant with hope, I only have to look up, the sky may still be able to drop raindrops; looking downward, full of despair, such despair that comes from people’s submissive existence.” At this moment, Zhang Zhan is still in Shanghai’s Pudong Detention Center continuing her hunger strike, protesting the injustice and miscarriage of justice. Surely she must be more deeply disoriented by this present intertwining of hope and despair. But surely she must be in touch with our hearts.

Then, let’s raise our eyes upward, look up to the stars while planting our feet on the ground. On the first day of 2021, let’s shout out from the heart: we will never be walking corpses. We will continue to concern ourselves with all the sufferings and injustices, until the day that constitutionalism, rule of law, human rights and democracy come to China. [Source]

National security police arrested 11 people in Hong Kong on Thursday, including a prominent pro-democracy lawyer and district councillor, for allegedly aiding the attempt by 12 Hong Kongers to escape the city by sea for Taiwan last year.

The arrests came a week after a massive sweep by national security police that saw 53 people arrested for “subversion”, including every pro-democracy primary candidate for the postponed 2020 Legislative Council election.

Hong Kong Free Press reported on the details of those arrested:

Among those rounded up was District Councillor Daniel Wong Kwok-tung. Officers arrived at his house at 6:10 am in the morning, according to his Facebook page. Wong is a lawyer and also the founder of Aegis, a pro-democracy restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, known to employ Hongkongers.

The mother of documentary filmmaker Willis Ho was also arrested Monday morning at 6:15 am and taken to Tsuen Wan police station, according to her Facebook page. The arrest was made in relation to the case of the 12 Hong Kong fugitives, Ho’s statement read.

TVB reported that a secondary school student was also detained. [Source]

While their arrests were made by national security police, it is unclear whether any of the 11 were arrested for crimes under the National Security Law.

桐叔 Uncle Tung is a hero in every sense of the word. The 71-year-old lawyer has been to almost every police station in HK helping protesters and activists. His arrest comes just two days after Margaret Ng appeals for more lawyers to step forward to help 612 Humanitarian Fund. https://t.co/J4zCkfsCcG

— Karen Tse (@ktse852) January 14, 2021

After being detained for months without trial in Shenzhen, 10 of the 12 Hong Kongers who were intercepted by boat fleeing the city were tried and sentenced in December 2020 to three years in jail for illegally crossing the border. The other two, who are underaged, were repatriated to Hong Kong, where they face trial.

Authorities in Hong Kong and on the mainland have clamped down hard against figures who assisted the 12 in their escape attempt and subsequent trial. Last week, two mainland human rights lawyers who tried to represent the 12 detainees in Shenzhen, Lu Siwei and Ren Quanniu, were told that they faced debarment for “inappropriate speech online” that “seriously harmed the image of the lawyer profession.”

On Thursday, it was reported that Lu had his license suspended. South China Morning Post’s Natalie Wong reported that Lu was subsequently accused of “endangering national security” for tweeting about the 12 detainees:

Officials from the Sichuan provincial Department of Justice made the allegation against human rights lawyer Lu Siwei on Wednesday following the conclusion of appeal proceedings, in which he defended his handling of the controversial case. Lu had earlier been told by the authorities that his licence could be revoked as “administrative punishment”.

Diplomats were barred from attending the judicial hearing in the provincial capital Chengdu and human rights activists accompanying the outspoken lawyer were taken away by police for unspecified reasons.

[…] According to a source, after the proceedings the judicial authorities accused Lu of “endangering national security” and asked him to sign a 49-page document, which listed articles he had tweeted or shared over the plight of the Hong Kong detainees, as evidence for revoking his licence.

Lu and his lawyer argued the content on Twitter should not be deemed valid evidence as the platform’s servers were located in the United States, and insisted that freedom of speech on social media should be protected in China. [Source]

… taken to the police station.

— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) January 13, 2021

In Hong Kong, 87 arrests have been made in connection with National Security offenses since the law was enacted in July 2020, including one American citizen. Amid the growing number of arrests, the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong has begun listing the names and charges against arrestees on its website.

A steady stream of politically charged cases in Hong Kong has captured the city’s attention this week. Following news reports that several Hong Kong internet service providers (ISPs) were blocking access to website hkchronicles.com, on Thursday, one ISP admitted to blocking the website at the request of national security police. 

In an article reporting on the escalating digital crackdown in Hong Kong, The Washington Post’s Shibani Mahtani broke news that Hong Kong police have begun sending mobile devices seized from arrestees to mainland China, where authorities with sophisticated data-extraction technology have been assisting the city’s police in breaking into their devices:

Hong Kong police have begun sending devices seized from arrested people to mainland China, where authorities with sophisticated data-extraction technology are using the information from those devices to assist in investigations, according to two people familiar with the arrangement who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their safety.

[…] In emailed comments to The Washington Post, a Hong Kong police spokesman said the force would not comment on specific cases but pointed out that the national security law allows police to unilaterally disable access to online content. Police would not disclose details of investigations, he added.

A day after The Post published this report, police spokesman Kwok Ka-chuen denied that seized devices were sent to mainland China. [Source]

Again, would like to clarify that this is a misrepresentation of what we reported. We did *not* specify that those 53 persons' devices were sent by the @hkpoliceforce to mainland China. Once again urging readers to verify the text in our story. https://t.co/zelHpHXfG0

— Shibani Mahtani (@ShibaniMahtani) January 13, 2021

In a separate case on Thursday, freelance investigative reporter Bao Choy, who was arrested for “making false statements” while searching the city’s vehicle license plate database as part of an investigation into the July 21, 2019 triad attack on subway commuters, pleaded not guilty at a court hearing. CDT wrote about her arrest for her work on the international award-winning documentary episode about the 7.21 incident, which was aired by public broadcaster RTHK. The 2020 Congressional-Executive Commission report on China, released today, highlighted the 7.21 incident as an example of “a pattern of selective enforcement” by the government when it came to addressing misconduct by the police and people hostile to protestors. Choy has since been suspended by RTHK, which has been under close scrutiny from the government for its news and entertainment coverage.

Journalists in the city have decried the charges against Choy as an attack on press freedom. South China Morning Post’s Chris Lau reported that Choy, speaking outside the court, criticized RTHK’s decision to suspend her for work she had done for the broadcaster:

Before leaving the court, Choy said she was disappointed in RTHK, which had suspended her from work indefinitely and not offered to help cover her legal fees.

“Having worked for RTHK for so many years, I understand that the RTHK is a government department. But at the same time, it is also a media organisation and it is my wish that it would fulfil its moral duties as other media organisations would have,” she said.

“For me, it has been a double punishment. I started out doing my reporting based on my wish to find out as close to the truth as possible. But I was arrested and charged doing what a journalist does and then the role I most cherished has been suspended, it was not an easy thing for me.” [Source]

A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who was jailed following his advocacy for human rights and the rule of law has been named a finalist for a prominent human rights award, the same week that reports emerged of his poor health. The news on the health of Yu Wensheng, who is serving a four year sentence for ‘inciting subversion,’ came after his wife was unexpectedly granted permission to briefly speak to him via video call for the first time in three years. Sharing news of his condition, Yu’s wife Xu Yan reported that chronic trembling in Yu’s arm meant he could no longer write using his right hand, and that he had had three teeth pulled while in detention. Yu was detained and stripped of his law license in early 2018 after publishing open letters calling for political reform and Xi Jinping’s dismissal. Authorities later released edited video footage in an apparent attempt to discredit Yu, and produced a handwritten note in which he appeared to dismiss his defense lawyers, despite having previously vowed he would not freely do so.

Freelance journalist William Yang reported on Xu’s meeting with her husband, which followed years of personal campaigning by Xu:

When the meeting began, Xu saw Yu sit on a chair and dressed in a blue jumpsuit. His head was shaved and he was handcuffed. His face is a little pale and he seemed a bit malnourished. Xu said the scene made her very “sad and angry,” because Yu’s current state is very different from his professional image in the past.

[…] “I told him I would continue to advocate for his rights and me and our son both miss him and love him very much,” she said. “Every time I said I love him, he would respond by telling me how grateful he was. In fact, I wished he had said he loved me, he missed me or he was sorry that I had to endure all the hardship. These were the things that he used to say to me.”

[…] Xu also asked Yu if the detention center has implanted new tooth for him, and Yu said they hadn’t done that for him. Xu worries that his other teeth could also become loose if the detention center doesn’t perform dental implant for him soon. “I told him to choose a good dental treatment and if the government is unwilling to pay for the implant, I can pay for it,” Xu said.

Before the meeting was over, Xu gave Yu a thumbs up through the video and she also made a heart with her arms. Yu responded by forming a heart with his arms. “After I blew a kiss towards the video, the video froze while he tried to smile back at me,” Xu said. “Since I haven’t seen him in three years, I wasn’t able to hug him in person during this meeting. I will demand to meet him in person in the future.” [Source]

Also last week, organizers of the Martin Ennals Award announced that Yu was one of three finalists for the top human rights prize. The winner is selected by a panel of 10 leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Chinese authorities have staged continuous efforts to prosecute human rights lawyers and their legal representatives over the last several years. A former corporate lawyer, Yu gave up his career to work on human rights and public interest cases. In 2017, he was one of five lawyers who launched an unprecedented legal case to sue the governments of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei for failing to protect citizens from air pollution.

Yu was also known for representing another human rights lawyer, Wang Quanzhang, who was arrested alongside 300 other legal professionals and activists in the 709 crackdown in 2015. Yu’s own legal representative, Lu Siwei, had his license to practice law stripped by a court last week over allegations that he had endangered national security by tweeting about the Hong Kong 12, a development that would likely complicate Yu’s efforts to appeal his four year sentence.

The international community has not stayed silent.

Last year, we compiled all measures taken by the #UN and some States to call for #YuWensheng’s release: https://t.co/JtWqSTgd8J pic.twitter.com/PY1ypJFSYf

— ISHR (@ISHRglobal) January 19, 2021

China’s campaign to prosecute rights lawyers was one aspect of what made 2020 the worst year for China’s rights movement since 1989, according to Human Rights Watch. It is noteworthy that a small group of lawyers, diminishing in number, have been involved in so many of the high-profile rights cases in the last year. In addition to representing Yu in his appeals process, recently debarred Lu Siwei also represented lawyer-turned-citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was recently sentenced to four years in prison for her reporting on the Wuhan lockdown in the early days of China’s COVID-19 epidemic.

Other remaining rights lawyers have likewise been punished for their involvement in sensitive cases. Ren Quanniu, who also volunteered to represent the 12 Hong Kongers who were caught fleeing the city by boat to Taiwan, faces a hearing this week where his debarment for similar reasons to Lu’s is all but assured. Ren and Lu have received particular attention in the Hong Kong media in light of their involvement in the Hong Kong 12 case. This week, Hong Kong media outlet Stand News published an interview in Chinese with Ren, in which he reflected on being a lawyer in the current political environment:

Translated:

Regarding the outcome of losing his license, he smiles softly. Most of his rights protection cases have been defeats. Ren believes that in recent years, rather than talking about what help he’s done, it’d be better to say he’s done his duty to walk alongside society’s disadvantaged. “I think that as a lawyer in an ever deteriorating environment, I did the best that I could. With regard to my legal qualifications, this certificate has already lived up to its honor. What happens in the future is just a matter of a change in lifestyle” [Source]

Geng Xiaonan, a Chinese businesswoman who made her fortune publishing lifestyle and cooking books while supporting prominent dissidents in her personal capacity, has been sentenced to three years in prison for “illegal business activities.” Geng, who was arrested alongside her husband in September 2020, had stood out for her outspoken support of Xu Zhangrun, the Tsinghua University professor who wrote a series of articles highly critical of Xi Jinping. Her prison sentence is the latest example of the heightened scrutiny faced by China’s entrepreneurs, who are under renewed pressure to fall in line with Beijing.

Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK reported on the details of Geng and her husband’s sentencing:

According to the live stream of the court proceedings, Geng said she pleaded guilty to the charges and offered her apologies to society, adding that all the evidence were “very true”.

[…] Her husband, meanwhile, was given a sentence of two-and-a-half years, suspended for three years.

Geng pleaded for leniency, saying she had no previous criminal records, did not have any real intention to commit crimes and did not harm anybody.

She also said she needs to take care of her ailing, elderly father, and that she may not be able to be with him in the last years of his life if she is sentenced to a long prison term. [Source]

In charging Geng with the crime of “illegal business activities,” observers have noted an evolution in Chinese prosecutors’ tactics, potentially to avoid the greater publicity that comes with politically charged crimes such as “inciting state subversion.” South China Morning Post’s Mimi Lau reported on the alleged offenses that Geng and her husband were charged with, charges which were dismissed by activist friends of Geng:

After asking the court to disregard her legal defence, Geng pleaded guilty to charges including conducting illegal business activities, according to a video of the trial that was captured and posted online.

[… Ji Feng, an activist and friend of Geng’s] said Geng had been indicted over illegal business activities involving 200,000 copies of mostly cookery books for which the full publishing rights had not been obtained.

“‘Illegal business activities’ is just an alternative charge to ‘inciting state subversion’ when it comes to entrepreneurs who are critical of China’s political ecology,” Ji said. “The purpose is to intimidate, silence and cut off all social networks they have with political dissidents in a bid to isolate them.”

Geng, who is also an art curator and film producer, was detained, along with her husband, two months after she had spoken out in support of Xu. He had been detained by police for “patronising prostitutes” during a trip which Geng organised for a group of academics including Xu to the southwestern city of Chengdu last year. [Source]

Prior to her arrest, Geng had been a supporter of dissidents and liberal intellectuals who had been targeted by Chinese authorities in recent years. Privately, she had organized events that brought together government critics and retired officials. When Chen Qiushi, one of four citizen journalists “disappeared” for their reporting on the Wuhan lockdown, was taken in by authorities, Geng publicly lobbied on his behalf. She was also the first person to publicly reveal details about the detention of Professor Xu Zhangrun. Her friendship with many of China’s liberal intellectuals won her their outspoken support following her arrest–in October 2020, six Chinese scholars wrote an open letter to the CCP calling for her release.

#GengXiaonan is my dear friend. When I met her in Tokyo in 2019/7, she already sensed the danger because of her involvement in human rights in #China. For years, she keenly helped Chinese activists/dissidents a lot while keeping a low profile.https://t.co/atefr5tJXQ

— 滕彪 (@tengbiao) February 9, 2021

Her other "crime?" She has also tried to raise awareness of the ongoing enforced disappearance of citizen journalist Chen Qiushi, who reported from Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic & has been missing in police custody since Feb 6.

— CHRD人权捍卫者 (@CHRDnet) February 9, 2021

Analysts have interpreted Geng’s sentence as a warning shot to entrepreneurs and business people, deterring them from supporting government critics, let alone voicing criticism themselves. The News York Times’ Chris Buckley profiled Geng shortly before her sentencing, and wrote about authorities’ growing anxiety over the political loyalty of China’s entrepreneurial class as well as how their business activity could be seen as a kind of leverage for authorities:

“Nowadays, ideological things have been shattered; nobody believes in them,” Guo Yuhua, a professor at Tsinghua University who has been friends with Ms. Geng for years, said by telephone. “But now that effectively ideological rule has failed, they can also use economic punishment and crimes to convict you.”

Most Chinese businesspeople accept the party’s rule — despite complaints about taxes, fees and meddling officials — and many are party members. Only a few risk official ire by assisting or mixing with critics of the government.

But larger numbers of entrepreneurs are anxious about their wealth and security under a system that gives party officials so much power. The party, in turn, worries about the long-term loyalty of the country’s entrepreneurs, said Wu Qiang, an independent political analyst in Beijing. Those official anxieties, he added, appeared to intensify after pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, when some business owners in the former British colony supported the demonstrations.

“China’s future economic development depends on entrepreneurs,” Mr. Wu said. “But as long as you’re in business, the party can always use an economic crime to take you down.” [Source]

Other prominent business people have been punished for their outspokenness in recent months, including former property tycoon and longtime Party insider Ren Zhiqiang, who called Xi Jinping a “clown” and was sentenced to 18 years in September 2020 for corruption. Alibaba founder Jack Ma, meanwhile, has been blackballed and missing from public life since he delivered a speech highly critical of the state market regulator in October 2020.

The jailing of Geng follows another emerging trend in recent months suggesting the emergence of a new type of “crime”: assisting politically sensitive actors. In a similar vein, two veteran human rights lawyers, Lu Siwei and Ren Quanniu, were recently disbarred after they provided legal assistance to the 12 Hong Kongers detained in Shenzhen last year, after they were arrested at sea while trying to escape prosecution in Hong Kong. Lu told the South China Morning Post that their disbarment was likely intended to deter other lawyers from representing politically sensitive defendants from Hong Kong. By punishing the collaborators of Beijing’s critics, authorities seem increasingly determined to dismantle support networks and isolate their opponents.

The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

Screenshot of the notice translated below.

XX City Bar Association:

@Everyone

Important Notice

In accordance with instructions from above, the bar associations of all provinces and cities may only republish Xinhua copy to their official websites concerning today’s Tenth National Lawyers Congress, at which central leadership is in attendance; headlines and contents must not be altered. Do not post any material to Weibo, WeChat, or news clients—no exceptions. (October 13, 2021) [Chinese]

Guo Shengkun, member of the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, spoke at the opening of the National Lawyers Congress on Wednesday in Beijing, where he declared that “the legal profession in China has blazed new trails and achieved new successes since the 18th Party Congress.” Since that time in 2012, when Xi Jinping rose to power, these “successes” have straitjacketed the rights defense movement, “blazing” a “new trail” with the massive crackdown on lawyers and legal professionals on July 9, 2015, known infamously as 709. One civil rights lawyer spoke out last month about the torture he was subjected to in detention, only to be detained and tortured again.

The All China Lawyers Association, the official bar association of the PRC, was founded in July 1986 at the first National Lawyers Congress.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

Last week, prominent civil rights defenders Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi were put on trial behind closed doors on charges of subversion. The trials took place on Wednesday and Friday, respectively, in the Linshu County People’s Court, Shandong province, and ended without verdicts, which are expected to be issued at a later date. At the South China Morning Post, Mimi Lau and Guo Rui described the charges brought against Xu and Ding:

The pair have been held behind bars for more than two years. They were arrested soon after attending an activist gathering in southern Fujian province in December 2019.

[…] According to an indictment issued by the municipal prosecutor’s office in Linyi last year, Xu was charged with subverting state power for leading a “citizens’ movement” together with Ding.

Under the Chinese criminal code, the maximum penalty for subverting state power is life in prison.

The two are accused of recruiting a network of people to produce an “illegal” documentary, set up websites and publish subversive articles, and of organising “secret meetings” for the purpose of overturning the state. [Source]

Their judicial treatment has been far from fair, as neither defendant has been permitted sufficient access to lawyers, and their relatives and supporters have been barred from attending the trials. Prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao argued that “Such a political case has nothing to do with the law or evidence. The whole trial process is dominated by political forces behind the court.” Reporting on these cases for The Washington Post, Christian Shepherd described the “opaque legal process designed to conceal from people the plight of the country’s human rights defenders”:

Luo Shengchun, Ding’s wife who now lives in the United States, described the process as having taken place in “pitch darkness.” Her husband’s lawyers said they could not provide her additional information about the case. Supporters who tried to attend the trial were thrown out of their hotel rooms in the middle of the night. All Luo received was a text message informing her that the hearing was taking place.

“It’s getting ever worse,” she said in an interview. “The power of defense lawyers has been stripped to zero, and every step of the way they must sign a nondisclosure agreement. Even calling this case a state secret has no legal basis, because all they did was organize two private gatherings. Yes, they talked about human rights, but that should be allowed under freedom of speech.”

[… The] hearing on Wednesday proceeded in almost complete silence. [Xu’s] lawyers, under threat of disbarment, were unable to speak to the press. Calls from fellow Chinese human rights lawyers for Xu’s and Ding’s trials to be open to the public were ignored. The courthouse did not release any statements about the hearings. [Source]

Teng Biao: #Xuzhiyong is a central figure in #China’s civil rights movement. The mvnt and the broader civil society are in the throes of a cold winter –a trend that has shown no signs of improving. The crackdown is set to continue for many years to come.
https://t.co/MSnRxg8Qzy

— 滕彪 (@tengbiao) June 22, 2022

Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi have long endured judicial harassment for their lifelong promotion of civil rights and the rule of law. They are perhaps best known as leading figures of the “New Citizens Movement” that aimed to promote transparency, civic engagement, and enforcement of the civil and human rights purportedly guaranteed by China’s constitution. In the months following an informal meeting that they organized to discuss these issues with colleagues in the town of Xiamen in December 2019, security forces hunted down and apprehended many of the participants. Ding was detained later that month, and Xu was detained in February of 2020 and formally arrested in June. There was speculation that the pair would be tried during the Christmas season of 2021, although that did not materialize.

As the NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders has documented, UN experts have deemed Xu and Ding’s detentions as arbitrary under international law, and both men have made credible allegations of having been tortured during their detention:

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has examined the cases of the detentions of both Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, and in both instances found that the detentions were arbitrary under provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that the appropriate remedy would be immediate and unconditional release and the right to compensation. 

[…] Both Ding and Xu have credibly alleged that they were tortured while they were held in China’s notorious secret detention system known as “residential surveillance in a designated location” (RSDL). 

From April 1-8, 2020, Ding was fastened to a “tiger chair,” with his back tightly tied to the chair, and with a band tightly tied around his chest, which inhibited regular breathing. Every day Ding was interrogated for 21 hours – from 9am to 6am the next morning. From 6am to 9am, he was allowed to use the bathroom and eat, but he was not allowed to sleep. Officials utilized these torture methods 24 hours a day. By the morning of April 7, due to sitting in the tiger chair for so long, Ding’s feet had swollen up into round balls and he was physically depleted. In his first interrogation sessions, authorities gave Ding Jiaxi extremely limited quantities of food and water: one quarter of a mantou (a bland Chinese bun), and 600ml of water, with no other food.

[…] Similarly, authorities in Yantai, Shandong tied Xu Zhiyong’s arms and legs to an “tiger chair” while interrogating him for 10-plus hours per day, making it difficult for him to breathe. Each meal consisted of only one mantou and Xu was taken to the interrogation chambers in a black hood. [Source]

This past Sunday, June 26, was the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, and many NGOs have spoken out against the arbitrary arrest and illegal treatment of Xu and Ding. “The Chinese government is making a grave and shameful mistake by proceeding with the trial of Xu Zhiyong,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, director of the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center at PEN America, who called for Xu’s release. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), stated that it “strongly condemns the alleged acts of torture and ill-treatment to which Mr. Ding Jiaxi and Mr. Xu Zhiyong were subjected while in detention […,] strongly condemns the closed-door trial of Mr. Xu Zhiyong and Mr. Ding Jiaxi, and urges the authorities to immediately release them.” An Amnesty International press release also criticized the arbitrary detentions of the pair: 

“The Chinese authorities have targeted Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi not because they committed any internationally recognized crime, but simply because they hold views the government does not like. These unfair trials are an egregious attack on their human rights,” said Amnesty International’s China Campaigner Gwen Lee.

“Having faced torture and other ill-treatment during their arbitrary detention, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi now face being sentenced to years behind bars in secretive trials that have been rigged from the start.”

[…] “These men’s bravery in defending the human rights of others should be commended, not punished. Xu continued to loudly advocate for disadvantaged groups even after being jailed for it, and spoke out about the government’s handling of Covid-19 when others remained silent,” Gwen Lee said.

“The Chinese government is systematically using national security charges with extremely vague provisions, such as “subverting state power”, to unjustly prosecute lawyers, scholars, journalists, human rights activists and NGO workers among many others.”

[…] “Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi have been targeted solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedoms of opinion and association. They must be immediately released,” Gwen Lee said. [Source]

Today, admirable Chinese human rights lawyer #DingJiaxi stands trial accused of 'subverting State power' for relentlessly fighting for a just, transparent society.

We @ISHRglobal join his wife @luoshch in urging China to respect basic due process & #ReleaseDingJiaxi #释放丁家喜 pic.twitter.com/Xa9fsoRXFS

— Raphaël Viana David (@vdraphael) June 24, 2022

#China govt prosecution of #XuZhiyong is scandalous–legally baseless, self-destructive, an indictment of no one other than #XiJinping. https://t.co/JPMnt6h7R0 @hrw_chinese

— Sophie Richardson (@SophieHRW) June 23, 2022

Their trials also generated protests, led by Ding’s wife Luo Shengchun, that took place online and in front of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. The French and British embassies in China, along with U.S. government officials, called on the Chinese government to release Xu and Ding. After it was published, the French embassy’s Weibo post on Xu Zhiyong appeared to have been censored.

#无罪释放许志永丁家喜 #无罪释放人权捍卫者 非常感谢加州的朋友们🙏！当局总是企图用秘密失踪，延期关押，延期庭审，闭门庭审等手段让人们遗忘，但人们的记忆愈加清晰深刻！
愿高墙之内的人们感受到朋友们的关爱，愿他们早日归来！ https://t.co/1RlPx9YZc2

— Luo Shengchun丁家喜律师妻子 (@luoshch) June 25, 2022

PRC propagandists and state media make dubious claims about being "shadow banned" on Twitter. Here's a real example of the French Embassy in Beijing being shadow banned on Weibo: Its post about Xu Zhiyong does not appear in a search for "Xu Zhiyong" https://t.co/G7F4U8Wk9O pic.twitter.com/DigtYi1yli

— William Farris (@wafarris) June 25, 2022

A number of other Chinese human rights defenders remain in detention. Xu’s partner, Li Qiaochu, a labor rights and feminist activist, was indicted in February on the charge of subversion and does not yet have a trial date. Human rights lawyer Chang Weiping, who participated in the Xiamen gathering with Xu and Ding, also remains in detention and has reportedly been subjected to repeated torture. Authorities have prevented his lawyer from reading his case files or from meeting with his client. 

【许志永与丁家喜案件开庭审理｜ 翘楚朋友致大家的公开信】

作为翘楚的朋友，我们谨代表她的母亲和律师，密切关注许志永与丁家喜案件的开庭与审理。

以下是我们的公开信。

请大家持续关注李翘楚、许志永、丁家喜等人权活动者的处境。#FreeLiQiaochu #FreeXuZhiyong #FreeDingJiaxi pic.twitter.com/k20SbFSgNI

— FreeLiqiaochu李翘楚 (@FreeLiQiaoChu) June 22, 2022

Journalist and #MeToo activist Huang Xueqin and labor-rights advocate Wang Jianbing have been in detention since September of last year, and in March, both were charged with “inciting subversion of state power.” On Monday, the International Women’s Media Foundation awarded Huang the Wallis Annenberg Justice for Women Journalists Award.

.@IWMF announced the recipients of its 32nd annual Courage in Journalism Awards. The imprisoned CHN columnist #HuangXueqin was awarded the Wallis Annenberg Justice for Women Journalists Award, which is given annually to a journalist who is unjustly jailed, detained, or imprisoned https://t.co/n4sqUhg4BF

— Free Xueqin&Jianbing 释放雪饼 (@FreeXueBing) June 27, 2022

On Saturday, in a bereavement symbolic of China’s hostile atmosphere for rights defenders under Xi Jinping, veteran Chinese defense lawyer Zhang Sizhi passed away at the age of 94. Among the first lawyers to practice law in the newly formed People’s Republic of China, Zhang became famous for leading the defense team for the “Gang of Four” and others who had been closely affiliated with the late CCP vice-chairman Lin Biao. Zhang was dubbed “the conscience of Chinese lawyers” for his promotion of human rights. As described by Josephine Ma from the South China Morning Post, “His fearless persistence in upholding the impartiality of the legal profession over many decades won him […] respect among lawyers and intellectuals inside and outside China”:

In the decades following the landmark trials, Zhang represented defendants in many sensitive cases that no other mainland lawyers dared to touch, including famous dissident Wei Jingsheng; Wang Juntao, accused of being one of the “black hands” behind the 1989 Tiananmen student protests; and Bao Tong, secretary to reform-minded former party chief Zhao Ziyang.

[…] Zhang also spoke out openly against the sentencing of dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in 2009, calling it “absurd” and a “political judgment”.

[…] In December 2008, at a ceremony in Berlin, Germany’s then justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, presented Zhang with the Petra Kelly Prize from the Heinrich Boell Foundation for his “exceptional commitment to human rights and establishment of the rule of law in China”.

[…] “His pleas prove that, especially in trials against members of the opposition, the Chinese legal system is far from fair. His life mirrors perfectly the very contradictory development of the People’s Republic of China. In a unique way, he has been responsible for shaping China’s difficult path towards democracy and the rule of law.” [Source]

Human rights lawyer Zhang Sizhi (张思之) died at the age of 95.

In 2014, he was the lawyer for famed lawyer Pu Zhiqing. He also served as the lawyer for Wei Jingsheng, Wang Juntao, Gao Yu.

In 1957, he was labeled a "rightist" & did 15 years in laogai. https://t.co/mpB83tkJ67

— CHRD人权捍卫者 (@CHRDnet) June 27, 2022

Zhang Sizhi was a legal giant of China. Other than defending Jiang Qing in the trial of the Gang of Four, he devoted much time and energy on building a modern, professional lawyer system and promoting rule of law in the country. https://t.co/cejQgEzw5z

— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) June 24, 2022

Sad to see that Zhang Sizhi, one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever met in China, has died. He soldiered on for decades to defend human rights in an environment that was near-impossible and always gave journalists his time. https://t.co/41ZMb6P4NP

— Sui-Lee Wee 黄瑞黎 (@suilee) June 25, 2022

Mr. Zhang Sizhi, a veteran lawyer who acted for Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing, among others, passed way yesterday at age of 95. A friend sent me a photo taken in 2007 at a hotel in Beijing showing him taking with Mr. Liu Xiaobo, who became Noble Peace Prize laureate in 2010. RIP. pic.twitter.com/SMYUs2HAhT

— Jingzhou Tao 陶景洲 (@JingzhouTao) June 25, 2022

Chinese police have dramatically increased their use of house arrest during Xi Jinping’s ten years in power according to the new report “Home as Prison: The Increasing use of House Arrest in China” by Safeguard Defenders. Residential Surveillance (RS), the legal term for house arrest, is a form of detention prescribed in China’s Criminal Procedural Law for individuals under investigation, awaiting criminal proceedings, or identified as a threat to national security. Formally, it may last up to six months. Through searching the official Chinese database on verdicts and court decisions, China Judgement Online, Safeguard Defenders identified 270,000 instances of RS since 2013 but estimated that the real number of people subject to legal RS is far higher, between 560,000 to 860,000. The conditions under which people are held vary widely. While some maintain a degree of freedom under RS, others have found their homes turned into veritable prisons with police installing a barred gate accessible only by a fingerprint reader used by guards. In the excerpts below, the report details how the expansion of lawful RS has led to abuses that likely violate the Chinese constitution and international norms governing criminal detentions:

Activist Shen Aibin in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province, has been placed under RS several times, often during the investigation and while awaiting criminal proceedings. On 3 September 2019, the Liangxi Public Security Branch Bureau decided to put Shen under RS for six months while investigating his case. Shen was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a vaguely-defined crime used widely against journalists, activists, and lawyers as well as ordinary citizens to limit freedom of speech. Prior to the RS decision, Wuxi City police had summoned him and seized his mobile phone on 2 September. Under RS, Shen was monitored by cameras and guarded 24 hours a day by several people, and he was unable to leave or communicate freely with the outside world without approval of the enforcement authorities. In May 2020, during China’s National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, the Liangxi Public Security Branch Bureau, summoned Shen when he was about to take his train to Beijing and, again, placed him under RS for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. In addition to monitoring Shen by camera, the Liangxi Public Security Branch Bureau set up a guard post at his residence entry so that police officers could be stationed there 24 hours a day.

[…] On 22 July 2019, activist Shi Minglei and her husband Cheng Yuan, co-founder of Changsha Funeng, were both taken by the Changsha City State Security Bureau for ‘subversion of state power”. Shi was hooded, cuffed, and then taken to a local community office to be interrogated untilthe next morning at around 3 AM. On 23 July in the afternoon, Changsha City State Security Bureau finally announced that it was more appropriate to place her under residential surveillance for the needs of the case. Her phone, computer, ID card, passport, and Hong Kong/Macao Travel Permit were seized. Meanwhile, the authority also froze her bank account. She was given a phone that could only make and receive calls or text messages and had a new SIM card to allow the authority to monitor her communications.

[…] Following [Shi Minglei’s complaint to the Changsha City Procuratorate on 3 August against the Changsha City State Security Bureau’s case officers for abuse of power, favouritism, and criminal handling of the case], on 13 August, two police officers from the Changsha City State Security Bureau came to intimidate Shi by showing videos of her husband, Cheng Yuan, begging the police not to harm Shi. On 29 September, Shi was visited by two police officers of the Shenzhen State Security Bureau who warned her of having violated the RS restrictions, adding that the authorities could arrest her anytime if she did not obey. Shi asked one police officer, “I am under residential surveillance because I am accused of subverting state power, so how did I subvert? What did I do to constitute subversion? Where are the facts and evidence?” One police officer replied, “Don’t talk about the law with me. You have touched politics, so don’t talk about the law now.” On 15 January 2020, Shi Minglei was finally released from RS, but her complaint against the Changsha City State Security Bureau was never addressed. [Source]

A one-page summary of the new report out today, #HomeAsPrison, for an easy overview of key points concerning mass-use of #HouseArrests under #XiJinping. https://t.co/5YsoNuN6tq pic.twitter.com/hTdLhcXck0

— Peter Dahlin (@Peterinexile) September 6, 2022

Beyond the above instances of lawful RS, the true number of unlawful or arbitrary house arrests is impossible to verify. A number of prominent human rights activists and legal practitioners have been held under illegal house arrest. Lawyer Wang Quanzhang was released from prison in 2020 only to be placed under house arrest, a form of “non-release ‘release’” used to silence critics of the state. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo’s widow Liu Xia was held under extralegal house arrest from 2010 until 2018, when she was given permission to leave to Berlin. In 2021, businesswoman Duan Weihong briefly “resurfaced” from house arrest to warn her ex-husband against publishing a memoir on corruption among the CCP elite. At The Washington Post, Christian Shepherd and Alicia Chen reported on authorities’ motives behind embracing RS, and interviewed a man who claims to have been living under unlawful house arrest for the past decade :

Chinese human rights lawyer Tang Jingling sees the increased use of house arrests as another piece of the expanding security state that can be turned on activists at any time. “To surmise the purpose, it is to eliminate any kind of civil resistance,” he said. “There is basically no space to challenge authorities once you are confined.”

[…] Xu Wu, a former employee of Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation who repeatedly sued the company over wage cuts, said in an interview that he has been under house arrest since he was released from a psychiatric hospital over a decade ago, with a dozen security cameras and a group of security officials guarding his sixth-floor apartment.

“I have been living in this small prison since 2011,” he said. “There is no lawful notice saying that I am under house arrest. They still say nobody is watching me.” [Source]

Ascertaining the true number of house arrests is difficult because of the opaque Chinese legal system. Last year, vast troves of judgements published on China Judgements Online were summarily taken down, ostensibly due to “technical reasons.” A researcher tracking the missing judgments, however, found that the removals corresponded to the presence of keywords such as “Twitter,” “Weibo,” “false information,” “national leaders,” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” regardless of the true sensitivity of the case. At The Atlantic, Richard McGregor reported on the history of China excising legal records in an effort to preserve political security, thus creating a culture of “radical secrecy”:

Glenn Tiffert, a historian of modern China at the Hoover Institution, made a remarkable discovery about a decade ago when researching the legal debates in China in the 1950s over issues such as judicial independence and the ascendancy of the law over politics and class. By comparing the original journals in his possession that aired these usually savage debates with their digital editions, Tiffert noticed that scores of articles had been excised from the online records. Any historian fresh to the issue and without access to the scarce hard copies could never have known that China had conducted such debates at all.

The doctoring of the records was designed to buttress the party’s vehement opposition to Western legal concepts. “The more faithful scholars are to this adulterated source base and the sanitized reality it projects, the more they may unwittingly promote the agendas of the censors,” Tiffert wrote. [Source]

Sun Lijun and Fu Zhenghua, formerly powerful ministers in China’s state security apparatus, have been sentenced to death with a two year reprieve for corruption and other crimes. Such sentences are typically commuted to life in prison without parole. The timing of the verdicts and the allegation that Sun led a “political clique” that was disloyal to Xi Jinping place the two cases squarely in the shadow of the upcoming 20th Party Congress, which opens later this month. A host of less senior police chiefs were also convicted in connection with Sun and Fu’s cases. The Associated Press reported on Sun’s sentencing: 

Sun was convicted by the court in the northeastern city of Changchun of collecting 646 million yuan ($91 million) in bribes, China Central TV reported on its website.

Sun was charged with using his official position in 2018 to manipulate stock trading to help a trader avoid losses. He also was accused of selling official jobs and abandoning his post during the COVID-19 outbreak.

[…] The ruling party’s anti-corruption agency accused Sun last year of having “extremely inflated political ambition.” It said he engaged in unspecified “superstitious activities.” [Source]

In a state-produced anti-graft documentary released earlier this year, Sun, who was behind bars at the time, recalled receiving annual gifts of boxed “seafood” from a provincial official which were actually filled with $300,000 in cash, totalling $15 million over the years. Sun was also involved in corruption in the United States. Earlier this year the Justice Department sued casino mogul Steven Wynn, alleging that he has acted as a foreign agent for the Chinese government—Sun allegedly lobbied him to call for billionaire Guo Wengui’s placement on a no-fly list. In 2017, Guo Wengui leveled unverified claims of corruption against Sun and others. 

A host of other officials have fallen alongside Sun, accused of participating in his “clique.” At The South China Morning Post, William Zheng reported on former Minister of Justice Fu Zhenghua’s sentencing: 

Fu was convicted of accepting 117 million yuan (US$16.6 million) in bribes and using his position to cover up his brother’s crimes, CCTV reported. Wang was found guilty of accepting more than 440 million yuan in bribes, and for covering up triad activities and forging identity documents.

[…] The court said Fu Zhenghua had admitted all charges, shown remorse and provided information to investigators on other corruption cases. But it said there would be no further commutation or parole granted after Fu’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment following the two-year reprieve due to the “serious harm caused to the country and society”.

The court described the bribes received by Fu as “particularly large”, the circumstances of his crimes as “particularly serious” and their social impact “particularly severe”.

[…] The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party’s anti-corruption watchdog, said Fu had “lost his party spirit and principles” and accused Fu of colluding with Sun – the former vice-minister of public security who in July pleaded guilty to taking bribes, manipulating the securities market and illegal possession of firearms. [Source]

The former police chiefs of Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shanxi province were also convicted on corruption charges and accused of colluding with Sun Lijun. State media labeled them “two-faced” people.  Liu Yanping, who led the Party’s anti-graft arm within the Ministry of State Security, was expelled from the Party in September for his alleged involvement with Sun. His expulsion paves the way for a lengthy prison sentence. Wan Like, the provincial official who gifted Sun the boxes of “seafood” mentioned above, was also convicted of corruption and handed a suspended death sentence. Xi has warned that the “stubbornness and danger” of corruption has not subsided despite the decade-long campaign against it. Yet the extraordinary raft of corruption charges tied to an alleged political clique do not appear to be simply a matter of graft. At The Financial Times, Edward White interviewed experts on Chinese politics about the political implications of the latest corruption crackdown: 

“This clearly was a warning . . . against overt acts of factionalism and disobeying Xi Jinping diktats in the run-up to the 20th party congress, and beyond,” said Victor Shih, professor of Chinese political economy at the University of California, San Diego.

[…] Yuen Yuen Ang, an expert on China’s political economy at the University of Michigan, said it was “hard to believe” the latest cases were “routine” given the sensitivity of the timing. “Sometimes corruption crackdowns are about curtailing graft and other times they are a political instrument,” she said.

[…] “As Leninist regimes are ruled by man, not laws, any new leader overwhelmingly must rely on a purge of his rivals and promotion of loyalists within the regime to consolidate power and to implement his programmes,” said Wu Guoguang, [who worked as an adviser to former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang and is now at the University of Victoria, Canada]. [Source]

Ironically, Fu Zhenghua’s sentencing coincided with the release of his former law school classmate Zhou Shifeng, a human rights lawyer imprisoned for seven years on charges of subversion. Zhou was one of 300 lawyers arrested as part of the 2015 “709 crackdown” on human rights lawyers. Wang Quanzhang, Zhou’s friend and a former human rights lawyer also imprisoned in the crackdown, spoke with Zhou and relayed his comments to the South China Morning Post: “Zhou reckons that the ‘709 crackdown’ is a major historical, political and legal event. Lawyers and human rights defenders involved in this event are important contributors in the history of the rule of law and human rights protection in China.” Wang added that Zhou “greeted Fu [Zhenghua’s] conviction with relief.” 

Two months after the spontaneous nationwide protests that broke out in response to a deadly fire in Urumqi and draconian pandemic controls, an unknown number of peaceful protesters remain in detention on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” or “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.” Human rights groups and others have called for the release of the “A4” or “blank paper” detainees (so called because of the blank sheets of A4 paper used as protest signs during the gatherings), some of whom have been threatened, physically abused, or denied access to legal representation while in detention.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders has compiled a list of known detainees and issued a call to release all of the “blank paper” protesters:

At the time of this press release, there are names of 30+ people who were taken into custody; we estimate that at least 100+ people have been detained, and some of them have been simply released or released on “bail pending trial” (取保候审). Under Chinese law, defendants released on “bail pending trial” can see the charges against them dropped if they do not commit further violations of the law, but often remain under close police surveillance for one year. In other cases, involving unknown names or other details, family members are reluctant to go public out of the fears for retaliation from the Chinese government. [Source]

Several of those arrested for attending the peaceful protest held in late November at Beijing’s Liangmahe Bridge are current or former journalists. “By arresting and detaining four reporters for the simple fact of being present at the place of the protests, the Chinese regime has sent one more chilling message to those who believe that factual information should be reported even when it contradicts the official narrative,” noted RSF East Asia bureau head Cédric Alviani. “The regime should release [the remaining] two reporters as well as all other journalists and press freedom defenders detained in China, and to drop all charges against them.” 

Particularly worrying is the fact that security forces seem to have zeroed in on young female protesters, interrogating them about their involvement with feminism, LGBTQ+ issues, NGOs, book clubs, and foreign study or travel. A recent report by CNN details this concerning trend:

People who know [the detained women] echoed a sense of confusion over the detentions in interviews with CNN, describing them as young female professionals working in publishing, journalism and education, that were engaged and socially-minded, not dissidents or organizers.

One of those people suggested that the police may have been suspicious of young, politically aware women. Chinese authorities have a long and well-documented history of targeting feminists, and at least one of the women detained was questioned during her initial interrogation in November about whether she had any involvement in feminist groups or social activism, especially during time spent overseas, a source said.

All felt the detentions indicated an ever-tightening space for free expression in China. [Source]

A thread of people arrested for and charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a catch-all offence criminalising peaceful dissent in China – for their participation in the 2022 White Paper protests:

— Sophie Mak (@SophieMak1) January 27, 2023

Li Siqi 李思琪 is a freelance journalist and photographer with a master’s degree in cultural studies from @GoldsmithsUoL. She was arrested on 18 Dec for participating in a vigil in Beijing on 27 Nov. She spent her 27th birthday in custody. pic.twitter.com/TFzrQb49pA

— Sophie Mak (@SophieMak1) January 27, 2023

Cao Zhixin 曹芷馨 works as an editor at Peking University Press. She was arrested on 23 Dec for participating in a vigil in Beijing on 27 Nov. She had plans to do a PhD on Chinese environmental history in the US this year. pic.twitter.com/hctThmzJdw

— Sophie Mak (@SophieMak1) January 27, 2023

Another A4 protester in Beijing, #QinZiyi, have been forcibly disappeared for a week. She was briefly arrested in early Dec after the protest. Qin is a former Caixin journalist, with a bachelor of law at Tsinghua Uni, two master’s degrees from UChicago and HKBU. #FreeA4Protester pic.twitter.com/zUsOPb0o4q

— Zuowang 左望 (@zuowang51) January 1, 2023

Ziyi Qin, a former student of U Chicago, was recently detained. She’s a good writer, a passionate journalist, a free mind with a loving soul. Hope there would be more universities like @UChicagoCEAS showing their support for current/former students like Ziyi❤️ #白纸抗议 pic.twitter.com/OFM2SM2SHF

— Jing Wang (@JingWang0815) January 20, 2023

Some of the protesters wrote letters or recorded videos prior to being detained. Helen Davidson of The Guardian reported on a video by Cao Zhixin, a 26-year-old editor at Peking University Press, who was summoned by police and later detained after she and some friends attended a November 27 vigil in Beijing:

[Cao Zhixin] said she recorded the video after several friends were detained. She gave it to unnamed friends with instructions to publish it if she were arrested.

“When you see this video I have been taken away by the police for a while, like my other friends,” the video says.

Cao said her friends were made to sign blank arrest warrants, without criminal accusations listed, and that police refused to reveal the location of their detention. [Source]

At the New York Times, Vivian Wang and Zixu Wang described the arrests of the young women, none of whom are seasoned activists, as a way for the Chinese government to deflect from the underlying dissatisfaction that fueled the protests, perhaps pin the blame on “hostile foreign forces,” and deter others who might have drawn inspiration from the demonstrations:

“The Chinese government has to look for an explanation that fits their logic, and they don’t believe that people organize on their own, according to their own political feeling. There must be a ‘black hand,’” [said Lu Pin, a Chinese feminist activist who now lives in the United States]. “In China, feminism is the last active, visible social movement.”

[…] Ms. Lu […] said the police’s evident focus on people who were not prominent organizers, or even apparently part of any larger group, underscored how the authorities had decimated civil society.

“After all the repression, in the eyes of the police, these people have become the most threatening forces,” she said. “These communities that normally would not be considered political — people eating together, watching movies, talking about art — at key times, these can have the potential for political activation.” [Source]

On the Chinese internet and social media, discussion of the protests and the detained protesters is heavily censored, although netizens have attempted to share related content and updates. CDT Chinese editors have archived two now-deleted posts that sought to circumvent censorship by not including the names of specific female detainees, referring to them only by “she” or “them.” Both were shared and commented on before eventually being taken down.

The first post, from Weibo user @宪跬法律 (Xiankui Falu), describes a December 29 visit made by an attorney to a young woman in detention: “This afternoon, at a detention center 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, I was able to meet with a brave young woman.” Although the young woman is not named, those who commented on the post speculated that it could be one of the detained A4 protesters, or perhaps even Wuyi, a feminist activist who was detained after she attempted to visit a woman in Jiangsu who had been chained and shackled in a shed by her husband. A partial translation of the post and some of the comments appear below:

Lastly, I asked her if she had anything to say to her parents.

She said, “I hope my parents will look after their health and eat more fruit. I’ll be able to adjust to being here, so please tell them not to worry. … My mom knows that I did nothing wrong.” As she said this, she choked up a bit.

(Selected comments):

举报人的离奇遭遇：I don’t know who this young woman is, but we can see from lawyer Zheng’s Weibo post that she is a brave young woman, and I hope that she will regain her freedom soon!

YZWB001：These women are a ray of light for 2022.

土猫晴空月：Not only didn’t she do anything wrong, she is the most courageous person among us, braver than all of us combined!

企鹅饲养员一号机：So many brave people were forcibly disappeared. Now that the New Year is upon us, are they okay? [Chinese]

The second post is a now-deleted essay, written in response to the story of the lawyer’s visit to the detained woman. Published by WeChat account “声声不息的我们” (Shengsheng Bu Xi De Women, “We Who Will Not Be Silenced”), the essay draws a parallel between the unnamed young woman in detention and all of the brave young people who spoke out for justice in 2022: 

Because of you [young people], the suffering that we have endured during these three years of the pandemic seems to have some small shred of meaning after all. It was you who, by boldly speaking your minds, won back a modicum of dignity for every person who has been harmed and enslaved. [Chinese]

May 10, 2023 marked the second anniversary of the detention of program-think (Biānchéng suíxiǎng, 编程随想), an incisive and influential blogger who for twelve years managed to maintain his anonymity while maintaining a prolific output—penning hundreds of blog posts on topics as diverse as computer programming, Great-Firewall circumvention, political commentary, philosophy, historical analysis, e-book reviews, and current events in China and abroad.

Earlier this year, a court document published on the Chinese human rights website Weiquanwang revealed that program-think, whose real name is Ruan Xiaohuan (阮晓寰, Ruǎn Xiǎohuán), had been sentenced on February 10, 2023 to seven years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” (a charge based on his online writings), two years deprivation of political rights, and a fine of 20,000 yuan. The harsh sentence was widely condemned, with PEN America’s China research and advocacy lead Angeli Datt commenting, “Blogging is not a crime and the heavy prison sentence on national security charges for his writing illustrates the dire situation for free expression in China.” Iris Hsu, China Representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), called on Chinese authorities to immediately release Ruan, and added that his “unjust sentencing highlights how the Chinese government employs brutal tactics to suppress critical reporting on its internet policies.” Ruan himself declined to accept the ruling and lodged an appeal on the day of the verdict, but the court refused to recognize his two selected legal representatives (Shang Baojun and Mo Shaoping, both well-known human-rights lawyers), and instead gave him two state-assigned lawyers.

After news of the verdict surfaced, Ruan’s wife Bei Zhenying gave a series of interviews to CNN, RFA, and the CPJ detailing the charges against Ruan, her surprise at discovering that her husband was the legendary blogger program-think, and her concerns for his well-being and hopes for his eventual release. Ms. Bei has also established a Twitter account which currently has over 22,000 followers. Her Twitter bio urges followers to pay close attention to Ruan’s appeal, and to express solidarity but avoid talking about politics. In one tweet, she describes her husband as “a person who immerses himself in research and treasures time,” and says, “I want him to be free, to come home, and to recover.”

CDT editors have compiled and summarized a number of tweets from Ms. Bei’s account, describing how people might offer support to Ruan Xiaohuan as he appeals the court’s verdict and stands up for freedom of speech, as well as some supportive responses:

• Pay attention to his case, because your attention will help keep him safe.
• Please retweet so that more people may learn about and pay attention to his case, and generate more support for his pending appeal and release!
• No (monetary donations) needed, thank you. Your attention and support means everything to us.
• As a blogger, or online diarist, he posted on overseas blogs, exercised his freedom of speech, and did not speak about “inciting subversion” within China. I hope that his supporters who speak out here [on Twitter] will keep this in mind as they express their solidarity. Avoid talking about politics.
• There is no such thing as impeccable (i.e. invulnerable) online “security.” He is well aware of this himself, though his security skills and security awareness are top-notch.
• He is a rigorous thinker. His blog imparts knowledge, encourages independent and critical thinking, advocates online freedom, and strives to be thorough and objective in the information it presents.

Some Twitter users expressed their admiration and support:

jinzhi06933742: My children and I are learning so much from your husband’s articles, thank you very much!! We stand with you, and we share your ideals and values. In my opinion, your husband is a great warrior and teacher. He has done what he can, and we will do what we can, striving to make China a more civilized society.

zhngsn0909: Thank you for your hard work! Regardless of the outcome, your husband will surely be honored with a great place in history.

stfrt3: Please tell your husband that many of us are paying attention and are supportive, and we hope he can stay healthy and keep his spirits up. Thank you.

cohlint007: “Man has but one short life; grass, but one brief springtime.” Mr. Ruan is worthy of inclusion in the history books. A true patriot, a human being writ large. Respect.

realcaixia: Pay attention to the plight of Mr. Ruan Xiaohuan (program-think) and his wife, Ms. Bei. The more witnesses, the better. Witnessing is solidarity.

Wei_inDe: Your husband is brave, clear-headed, and wise. He has the respect and gratitude of many Chinese people. That, at least, will never change.

fling_wang: It is people like Mr. Ruan who keep me from despairing about this country … Highest respects to Mr. Ruan! [Chinese]

It is difficult to overstate how influential program-think’s writings are. Over the course of 4497 days, Ruan Xiaohuan penned 712 blog posts on a dizzying array of topics. (Over one hundred of these were cited as “evidence” to justify the stiff seven-year prison sentence meted out by the court.) Below are a number of tributes collected by CDT that describe his essential contributions to Chinese online discourse over the years:

From an article by netizen “47小管家” upon the first anniversary of program-think’s disappearance:

program-think, hero of China’s Internet era and anonymous pioneer of resistance against the party-state, is destined to be recorded in history. Not only is he the “godfather of GFW-circumvention,” but also a great enlightener. The breadth of his knowledge is astounding, ranging from infosec to political science to psychology and beyond.

A comment from “OverthrowCPC” posted to the old version of the Quora-like website Pincong (品葱):

Of all the overseas “subversive” counter-brainwashing content out there, program-think’s blog offers by far the most in-depth, rational, objective, and highest-quality content, second to none. It is no exaggeration to say that this blog is essential reading for all those beginners who have just learned how to scale the Great Firewall.

A comment from netizen “co-memory”:

program-think is the “Tank Man” of the digital age. Even greater, perhaps, because a brief moment of courage pales in comparison to persistent, long-term success.

From an essay by China Digital Times Founder and Editor-in-Chief Xiao Qiang, upon program-think being chosen as the 2014 “Chinese Internet Hero of the Year”:

I hope that future generations will remember the real-life individuals—whether named, unnamed, or anonymous—who carried out those small acts of resistance that laid the groundwork for an era of freedom, and that they will recognize their wisdom, courage, persistence, and sacrifice. In each and every one of program-think’s blog posts, readers will find proof positive of 21st-century Chinese people’s online resistance to tyranny and their struggle for freedom. [Chinese]

In addition to his writings, program-think’s various interactions with readers in the comments section of his blog offer clues to his motivations for blogging, how he viewed his relationship with readers, and his philosophical attitude toward the possibility of being unmasked or apprehended by the authorities. CDT Chinese editors have compiled some of the comments to and from program-think in the comments section under one of his best-known blog posts, “A Security Guide for Political Activists”:

From: Anonymous, January 30, 2019 21:56:00

He finally updated the blog. I was really worried that something had happened to him.

From: Anonymous, January 30, 2019 23:32:00

Anonymous supporter here. Mr. program-think is the most enlightened person I have ever met.

From: 灭绝支那贱畜, January 31, 2019 00:23:00

It’s been a long time since his last blog update. What I appreciate most are the technical articles. This article is a great summary, because it systematically explains the key points about network security and anonymization. It will prevent many opponents of the regime from being locked up and thrown in prison. By saving people from that fate, the author of this blog has done us all a tremendous service.

From: 辛德林记, January 31, 2019 00:44:00

The CCP dictatorship is unyielding in so many areas, but it can’t do a damn thing about program-think. That’s fucking awesome, totally amazing.

From: 比你好五倍, January 31, 2019 20:18:00

You’ve survived the first decade, now what comes next? I have been following this blog for nearly 10 years. But when you oppose the powers-that-be for so long, there will be an inevitable day of reckoning.

From: program-think, February 1, 2019  18:36:00

To: dir. Even if I am exposed and physically annihilated tomorrow, it will still have been worth it. (I said something similar in the comments section a few years ago.) Because I have already influenced so many people.

From: Anonymous, February 1, 2019 16:47:00

I’ve been reading your blog for eight years, but never dared to leave a comment. I still remember what the person who taught me to “scale the wall” said to me: “Get a look at the wider world.” This blog was first recommended to me by him. For so many years, I’ve been quietly promoting GFW-circumvention technology to those who need it, just like how that person taught me back then. Today, reading program-think’s look back at the last decade, my eyes teared up a few times. It’s hard to imagine just how much pressure program-think has had to deal with all these years. I hope that one day program-think will become a shining symbol, encouraging more people to go forward!

From: program-think, February 1, 2019 18:17:00 

To: 61楼的网友. Thank you very much for your support as a long-time reader! Of course, I also want to thank the person who taught you to bypass the Great Firewall and who recommended my blog. Many readers are quietly helping me to spread the word about this blog and related tutorials. Like us, they too are the “gravediggers” of the CCP! [Chinese]

Not long after program-think was detained in 2021, CDT translated a representative selection of his writings, including a piece on the “Princeling Network Map” he published on Github; an essay on the origins of the meme “Zhao family member,” used to describe CCP cadres and those embedded in the power structure; and an account of how he managed to elude the authorities and maintain his anonymity for over a decade. CDT editors chose him as our “2021 Person of the Year,” and have also compiled Chinese-language summaries of his top-ten blog posts and a timeline with important milestones in his 12-year blogging career.

Tony Hu contributed to this post.