Viewpoint
07.30.20For Wuhan’s COVID Mourners, Little Has Been Laid to Rest
In a conversation on Weibo, Yang, 50, told me about the loss of her 24-year-old daughter, Yuxi, her only child, to COVID-19. She was grieving, of course, but she was also seeking justice for what she viewed as an avoidable death. She showed me a...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.05.17China Congress: BBC Team Forced to Sign Confession
BBC
The story reveals more about the exercise of power in China than any interview ever could. It is one that involves violence, intimidation and a forced confession—in which I found myself apologizing for “behavior causing a bad impact” and for trying...
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04.01.15Claims of Retaliation in Detention of Chinese Anticorruption Campaigner
New York Times
Ou Shaokun, 61, gained prominence by advising Guangzhou petitioners protesting government land seizures.
Caixin Media
04.29.14‘Black Jail’ Victims Hunt Down Captors, Get Day in Court
A recent one-day trial in the northern province of Hebei involving China’s “black jail” industry came about because people who say they were illegally detained did some detective work to find their former prison and then took the matter to the media...
Caixin Media
03.04.14Henan Villagers Seek Justice in Hepatitis C Scandal
Villagers from a county in the central province of Henan say they are still seeking justice almost two years after a doctor admitted reusing syringes and nearly 1,000 people were found to have hepatitis C.The scandal, which has received little...
Media
01.17.14You’ve Got Mail: Chinese Communist Party Received Almost Two Million Complaints in 2013
In 2013, China’s Communist Party disciplinary organs received an eye-popping 1.95 million citizen complaints about officials. This is a 49.2 percent jump from 2012, according to a January 13 report from state-run website China News Online—but...
Caixin Media
07.29.13Why a Reporter Feels Sympathy for an Airport Bomber
These past few years as a reporter, I have met some people with nothing left to live for and now another person can be added to the list. Ji Zhongxing, the disabled man who set off a bomb in a Beijing airport on July 20, is that person.Ji and I are...
Viewpoint
07.11.13China at the Tipping Point?
What will be the future of China’s authoritarian political system?Many predicted that China’s rapid development over the past several decades would inevitably lead to gradual liberalization. Economic growth was expected to generate a cascade of...
Caixin Media
04.08.13A Day in the Life of a Beijing “Black Guard”
After receiving his delayed wages, thirty-year-old Wang Jie decided to change professions.On March 7, he pressed a fingerprint onto a receipt that read: “Today I have received settlement of the 12,000 yuan in wages owed to me by Mr. Shao.”“Actually...
The NYRB China Archive
02.09.13Blogging the Slow-Motion Revolution
from New York Review of Books
Huang Qi is best known in China as the creator of the country’s first human rights website, Liusi Tianwang, or “June 4 Heavenly Web.” A collection of reports and photos, as well as the occasional first-person account of abuse, the site is updated...
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12.19.12Shifted by Officials
Global Times
A mysteriouys and heavily guarded suburban Beijing courtyard isn't open to public, only to the petitioners corralled there.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.02.12Chinese Media Partly Retreat After Black Jails Verdict
New York Times
A brief news article published on Sunday by a score of state-run news media outlets offered an account of an unexpected judicial verdict: a Beijing municipal court had sentenced 10 people to jail for illegally detaining and assaulting a group of...
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11.01.12Silencing a Voice for Justice
New York Times
I have been recently seeking to use the rule of law to achieve social justice. This isn’t easy in a country where legal vagueness and arbitrary enforcement make advocacy a constant uphill battle. But in my career, I’ve encountered few cases as...
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06.25.12Snapshots from a Rising China
Sina Blog
Mention China and people think of the Great Wall, tofu, kung fu, and of course, Confucius. They might also think of the skyscrapers in Beijing and Shanghai, and the unforgettable 2008 Olympics which heralded China’s rise as a great nation. People...
Reports
11.01.09“An Alleyway in Hell”: China’s Abusive “Black Jails’
Human Rights Watch
Since 2003, large numbers of Chinese citizens have been held incommunicado for days or months in secret, unlawful detention facilities. These "black jails" are housed in state-owned hostels, hotels, nursing homes, and psychiatric hospitals...
Reports
12.01.05“We Could Disappear at Any Time”: Retaliation and Abuses Against Chinese Petitioners
Human Rights Watch
This 2005 report is the first in-depth look at the treatment of Chinese citizens who travel to Beijing to demand redress to their complaints of mistreatment by officials. While petitioning has long been in use in China, it is now on the rise; an...