News & Views

Several thousand people gathered in the coastal town of Quanzhou, Fujian province to protest the confiscation of their farmland. One protester claimed that farmers had not received a penny in compensation for their land.

The Chinese government dispatched ten busloads of police to harass and detain activists, petitioners, and journalists who gathered outside of Beijing’s Number One Intermediate People’s Court during the trial of Xu Zhiyong, a prominent lawyer and activist.

The trials of at least eight people associated with the New Citizens Movement will begin this week in Beijing. The New Citizens Movement is a loose collection of Chinese citizens who promote constitutionalism and have urged Communist Party officials to disclose their personal wealth. 

The trial of Xu Zhiyong, lawyer and co-founder of the New Citizens Movement-a loosely organized group of activists seeking to develop Chinese civil society-will begin on Wednesday, January 25.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Chinese legal expert Stanley Lubman argues that a recent speech delivered by Chairman Xi exposes the hollowness of prior official directives seemingly urging judicial reform and independence.

Chinese authorities detained Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti for “breaking the law.” Many regard Tohti, an economics professor at Beijing’s Minzu University, as the country’s most high-profile Uighur academic. Tohti’s arrest is part of Chairman Xi Jinping’s recent broader crackdown in China’s restive Xinjiang province.

Providing a glimpse into the anticipated role of China’s national security committee, the creation of which was announced at the Third Plenum last November, a senior colonel stressed the need for the high-level agency to focus on “five unconventional security threats,” which includes ideological struggle against Western nations.

Although the Chinese government has pledged to combat the country’s thriving black market for organs, international medical observers, human rights experts, and Chinese citizens are skeptical that the government has the will or ability to make significant progress in phasing out the highly profitable organ transplant industry.

Although some Chinese legal experts recently expressed hope that the Communist Party might implement reforms that would enhance judicial independence and rule-of-law, as

Approximately 600 people gathered outside of the National People’s Congress building in Wuhan, Hebei province to protest the practice of local authorities forcibly evicting residents from their land to make way for commercial development projects. The forcible expropriation of land has long served as a primary cause of unrest and mass protests in China.

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