Great piece on the grim reality facing Chinese journalists working in Western media today. CCP censorship, combined with declining Western interest in human-centered stories, means we are increasingly flying blind when it comes to understanding China. read.mangmang.run/p/ta?r=4bhy7...

Your annual reminder of what the Chinese people aspire to and what the Chinese Communist Party is capable of. 勿忘六四.

I choose to challenge the CCP is never because I think I could actually challenge the CCP, but because I want to say what I think and how I feel. And I think I am entitled to do that simply by virtue of being a human being. I want to do the same in the U.S. now.

A Chinese dissident’s worst nightmare: You escape China, only to find the CCP still making your life hell — and the interpreter for the police in your new country, the person who is supposed to help you, turns out to be a CCP shill. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The reality right now is that the foreign journalists, writers, and influencers living in China are mostly propagandists, while real foreign correspondents have been expelled or denied to the point of near extinction. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/u...

Kudos to the on-the-ground reporting, but details are still scarce. 20 years ago, there would have been far more foreign and Chinese journalists investigating, activists protesting, and netizens angrily discussing it online. The CCP's control has gotten so severe. SIGH.

Great review. Worker's literature (工人文学) shows the China behind GDP numbers: millions of people drifting from one precarious job to another, powering the country’s “miracle” while receiving little of its rewards. chinabooksreview.com/2026/05/21/w...

Yes, technology has strengthened the CCP’s control over its population. But as Pastor Ezra Jin’s case shows, it has also enabled some people to resist state control and live out their convictions — in his case, by spreading the gospel. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

The severe lack of foreign reporters in China is contributing greatly to the positive but superficial coverage of the country these days. Nothing makes a foreigner more critical of the CCP than living in China and interacting with real Chinese society, which is what good journalists do.

Trump’s complete abandonment of human rights in foreign policy has left many victims of CCP abuses, particularly the Uyghurs, with nowhere to turn and feeling deeply betrayed. www.independent.co.uk/voices/uyghu...

Great reporting, and such a deeply human story. Someday, China will have to reckon with what it has done to the Uyghurs.

I always encourage ordinary people to go to China. But engagement should not be an end in itself. Try to see things the CCP doesn't want you to see, talk to the people the CCP doesn't want you to talk to, and ask the questions the CCP doesn't want you to ask. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/w...

These is a cost to pleading with Trump on human rights.

I sincerely hope Jimmy Lai will be released because of Trump’s intervention. But if he is not, I wonder how the act of pleading Trump - who doesn't give a damn about his cause and denigrates his extraordinary activism - for his release will shape how his story will be told in historical accounts.

Trump is in China making deals, focused entirely on trade and technology, without an iota of interest in human rights. But the two are deeply intertwined: much of China's trade advantage is built on human rights abuses. Forced labor- especially in Xinjiang - gives Chinese companies an enormous edge.

It's good that the US government is cracking down on CCP agents, but it also needs to ensure that it doesn't target members of the Chinese diaspora simply for holding pro-CCP views. It's not okay to secretly work for the CCP, but it's okay to have misguided views. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Western media tends to cover China through the lens of its technological achievements. But as human rights researcher Yaqiu Wang (@yaqiu.bsky.social) writes for WPR, that coverage misses a China defined not by factories and AI models but by exhaustion, disillusionment and a profound lack of agency.

The U.S. president aspires to rule like the president of China. What a time we are living through.

In light of Trump-Xi summit, I wrote a piece for @wpr.bsky.social on the issue the two leaders will NOT discuss: discontent in China. I argue it's a mistake for the West to focus only on economic and technological issues while ignoring the Chinese society. www.worldpoliticsreview.com/china-west-d...

Reading the flurry of articles on the upcoming Trump-Xi summit, it pains me to see the absence of human rights -- although it would be comical for Trump to raise the issue. What a sign of the times we are in.

For those who are still engaging the Trump administration on China human rights advocacy, you/we all need to recognize that: the guy from whom you are seeking support is the same person who is greatly undermining the cause you want to advance. By @toddstein.bsky.social👇 substack.com/home/post/p-...

For those of us from China who came to America because we admired this country's "no king" ideal, what this country is turning into feels, for lack of a better word, traumatic.

So the Trump administration is not only going after Chinese scientists, they are now going after Americans who defend them. Who would have thought?

It's so sad to see China turned into this -- thanks to CCP's never-ending anti-American and anti-Japanese propaganda. Growing up, I loved watching Japanese anime and TV shows, dubbed into Chinese by state media. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

I feel exhausted even just by reading purge after purge. One day, you are lauded as a loyalist, the next, you are purged for being disloyal. The lives of these people with immense power seem no fun. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/w...

The U.S.-Iran war only adds to the reasons the China human rights movement needs to move away from reliance on the support from the U.S. govt, who is increasingly a human rights violator both domestically and internationally. (My conversation with @asiasociety.org's Hai editor @goldkorn.bsky.social)

Teacher Li is the leading overseas Chinese activist today, making real changes inside the country. A new generation of overseas Chinese activists has emerged post-white paper protests: new media-savvy, globally minded, and innovative.

Hats off to @accessnow.org for its transparency. Let this sink in: the CCP just cancelled a 2000-person human rights conference in another country one week before it was supposed to start. We, the global human rights community, will make sure both governments pay a cost for censorship.

The @wired.com confirms that cancellation of this year's @rightscon.org was indeed due to pressure from Beijing. I hope this blatant act of transnational repression will galvanize the global human rights community to push back against the CCP's long arm of repression. www.wired.com/story/the-ch...

I applaud global human rights orgs like @accessnow.org for making the effort to host events in the Global South - shifting their center of gravity away from the West that keeps failing on rights, but soon people will discover the extent to which China has captured the Global South.

Local reporting now suggests that China pressured the cancelation of @rightscon.org. If true, this is the latest example of the CCP successfully exporting censorship far beyond its borders. 1/4

The world’s largest digital rights conference was just canceled a week before it was supposed to take place. It feels emblematic of the state of human rights right now. But that's not a reason to give up. Everyone deserves rights. Everyone wants rights. That will never change.

Yesterday, I assisted Tang Mingfang in telling his moving story before USTR. (You can read more about his case here: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...) Regardless of Trump’s motives for holding these hearings, they offer an opportunity to make things right. But how? Read Laura’s paper👇

I understand the excitement about cheap EVs. But workers at BYD are treated terribly, they went on strike in Feb bc take home pay was under US $300/month. We can't overlook the social impact of green energy just b/c it's happening in China

Honored to be included!

Nobody should be surprised that Labubu has sourced from Xinjiang. Chinese companies have repeatedly been found flouting anti–forced labor laws. The question is why this had not been scrutinized before Labubu has become ubiquitous in the U.S. market. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/b...

What Xu Zhiyong and his allies want is "a free China ruled by democracy and law." I have quoted Xu himself. He is a political prisoner, as was his partner, Li Qiaochu, until recently. This is "a great love story," says @yaqiu.bsky.social. From me, a column. www.thenextmove.org/p/horror-and...

Honored to be part of this Peace Research Institute Oslo project. I've been arguing that human rights & democracy-promotion work needs to move away from reliance on partnership with the US govt. This is my effort to live by that conviction—and I urge others to do the same. www.prio.org/projects/2050

United Front actors are rarely genuine loyalists to the CCP; they are small-time grifters trying to squeeze benefits from both sides: Frank Liu first worked for CCP to harass dissidents, and now, after being caught, trying to bribe Trump in the hope of being acquitted. www.wired.com/story/the-we...

Under Tim Cook, Apple aided the CCP's censorship and surveillance of its population. It removed almost all VPNs from the Chinese app store, and built a joint-data center with the Chinese government. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/t...

Glad to read @yaqiu.bsky.social on #China #AI: "The long-term implication is a global information environment heavily shaped by Beijing, alongside AI governance norms that legitimize expansive governmental discretion over the protection of individual rights." jamestown.org/prc-state-ce...

The U.S.-China AI competition discourse is getting more concerning. On both sides, the competitive impulse feels very real, while the language about “serving the people” and “improving society” feels mostly performative.

Mandatory reading for two types of people: 1) "I just want to China, it was awesome." 2) "China is taking over the world, stop resisting and just submit."

While I am no fan of the Falun Gong disinformation machine, I admire the persistence of Falun Gong practitioners in seeking to hold Cisco accountable for its role in helping the Chinese government torture them. The first time I heard the case was when I started to work on human rights 15 years ago.

"The baseline pension for retirees who lacked formal employment—a category that includes almost all farmers—is 163 yuan ($24) per month." Endless billions for AI and robotics while the generation that built the miracle is forced to toil until their last breath

I periodically receive trolling emails, most of them are virulent misogyny (you realize CCP-paid trolls hate me more because I am a woman than I am a CCP critic). But this one really looks like AI hallucination. Hello, CCP, I think you need to "drink tea" with your AI.

Of course, Falun Gong media gossip is no comparison to CCP propaganda. But principled CCP critics should speak out against Falun Gong media's rumor-mongering, because it makes the broader anti-CCP camp look less credible.

The China discourse on social media: on the one hand, you have the "useful idiots" on the left denying mass atrocities in Xinjiang; one the other hand, you have Falun Gong media on the right peddling rumors about political infighting in Zhongnanhai every other day. SIGH.

Yes, democracy sometimes fails to deliver, but autocrats always fail to deliver. Now one is thrown out of power by THE PEOPLE. On to the next. When will that man in Beijing face his turn? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/w...

On Lawfare Daily, @michael-feinberg.bsky.social and human rights advocate @yaqiu.bsky.social discussed the role of AI in China’s surveillance and censorship apparatus, both online and offline. youtu.be/fT_albJp40A