Diaspora

Guan Heng fights for freedom in the US

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The court date is Dec 15 for Guan Heng who is being held in Binghamton, New York, despite a pending asylum claim. I’m horrified that the US seems to have completely abandoned human rights and might actually hand this man to torture and death by the Chinese Communist authorities? Sincerely, Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Human Rights in China (12/12/25)
Man who filmed Uyghur concentration camps now fights for his own freedom in the United States
“If he gets sent back, he’s really dead,” Guan Heng’s mother said. His fate hangs in the balance as he awaits his scheduled court appearance in New York on December 15th.
By Lu Jingwei (Atlas Luk)
Editor | Qiu Li

This post was originally written in Chinese: 中文版

Screencap of the video documenting Uyghur concentration camps released by Guan Heng.

This is a story of courage, escape, and absurd paradox.

In October 2020, Guan Heng, a young man from Henan, China, drove alone into Xinjiang, using a telephoto lens to document the concentration camp facilities hidden in the wilderness, towns, and military camps. To make these images public, he embarked on a thrilling escape: he made his way through South America and finally sailed alone in a small boat for 23 hours from the Bahamas, successfully landing in Florida. After arriving in the United States in 2021, he released the videos as planned. This footage became crucial evidence for the international community (including BuzzFeed News’ Pulitzer Prize-winning team) to confirm what China was doing in Xinjiang.

Four years later, Guan Heng, who had once thought he was safe, lost his freedom in the United States. In August 2025, during a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Guan Heng’s roommate, Guan Heng was arrested in upstate New York for “illegal entry.” Now, he is in the Broome County Correctional Facility in New York State, facing the threat of deportation—being forced to return to the China he risked everything to escape.

On the morning of August 21, 2025, in a residential area in upstate New York, Guan Heng was awakened by a violent knocking on his door. It was ICE agents. Continue reading Guan Heng fights for freedom in the US →

Sexually explicit letters about HK activists

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Source: The Guardian (12/10/25)
Sexually explicit letters about exiled Hong Kong activists sent to UK and Australian addresses
Exclusive: Letters with deepfake images of Carmen Lau in UK and targeting of Ted Hui in Australia part of growing harassment
By ,  and 

Carmen Lau, pictured in London in February, has said she was ‘terrified’ when she learned of the letters containing deepfake images of her. Photograph: Eleventh Hour/Alamy

Sexually explicit letters and “lonely housewife” posters about high-profile pro-democracy Hong Kong exiles have been sent to people in the UK and Australia, marking a ratcheting up in the transnational harassment faced by critics of the Chinese Communist party’s rule in the former British colony.

Letters purporting to be from Carmen Lau, an exiled pro-democracy activist and former district councillor, showing digitally faked images of her as a sex worker were sent to her former neighbours in Maidenhead in the UK in recent weeks.

It is the first time that people on the Hong Kong police’s bounty list, wanted for national security offences, have been directly targeted with this kind of explicitly sexualised harassment, highlighting the heightened risks faced by female activists and their associates.

At least half a dozen of Lau’s former neighbours in Maidenhead received letters showing fake, sexualised images of her. They were posted from Macau, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory near Hong Kong. The letters have five deepfaked images of Lau, with her face superimposed on women’s bodies either naked or in underwear. One image shows the fake Lau performing a sex act, which has been pixelated.

The text on the letter states Lau’s name and supposed body measurements. It includes her former home address in full and states: “Welcome to visit me! You have the right to choose me, and I also have the right not to accept you. Just want the process to be gentle. We can become close friends in the future!”

In Australia, Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong legislator, and his wife have been targeted with a fake poster advertising his wife’s services as a sex worker. The poster shows an old photograph of Hui and his wife under the headline “Hong Kong lonely housewife”. Continue reading Sexually explicit letters about HK activists →

UK university censorship scandal (1)

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Dramatic revelations, from inside the recently revealed Chinese state intervention against Sheffield Hallam University, in the words of Laura Murphy, the scholar whose research was targeted, but fought back. –Magnus Fiskesjö, magnus.fiskesjo@cornell.edu

Source: The Economist (11/11/25)
A human-rights researcher on why she pushed back when China bullied her university
By Laura Murphy, professor at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Centre for Human Rights.

Illustration: Dan Williams

In august last year a senior colleague informed me that the university where I work, Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), would not publish my team’s research exposing Uyghur forced labour in the critical-minerals sector in China. I was also told that, if necessary, SHU was prepared to take the highly unusual step of voluntarily returning hundreds of thousands of pounds in grant funding rather than have future projects bear the imprimatur of the Helena Kennedy Centre (HKC), the university’s human-rights research institute for which I had been working since 2019.

What could possibly induce a university to make such a surprising decision, especially one that had spent years standing up to harassment from Chinese authorities for its research on Uyghur forced labour, and whose own chancellor had been hit with sanctions by the Chinese government for her criticism of rights abuses in China?

It took a freedom-of-information request for me to find out. Last month I learned that only weeks before I received that call, Chinese security-service agents had visited the university’s student-recruitment office in Beijing and “confirmed that access to shu.ac.uk [the university website] is restricted [within China] due to the HKC research papers being available through the website”. The agents had told the university’s student-recruitment officer that they wanted her to share with them the details of upcoming conversations with SHU colleagues in Britain. This was, an administrator noted, “an instruction, not a request”.

There had also been a similar visit in April 2024. A SHU internal document reported: “The tone was threatening and the message to cease the research activity was clear.” Continue reading UK university censorship scandal (1) →

IndieChina Film Festival cancelled

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Another new milestone in the Chinese Communist party’s intimidation and interference on foreign soil: Inaugural IndieChina Film festival in New York cancelled after China puts pressure on directors. Was due to have opened today Nov. 8, 2025. –As usual, the tactic appears to have been to threaten filmmaker’s families at home in China. So that they can’t talk about it. Effective.

Not too much in the media about this yet — which is weird. Why? A few news reports so far:

Film festival in New York cancelled after China puts pressure on directors (The Guardian)

Transnational repression at the IndieChina Film Festival (Donald Clarke)

Authorities shut down film festival in New York (Human Rights Watch)

BTW — wasn’t this a big chance for NY politicians and leaders to step up and condemn the Chinese regime’s censorship actions right under their noses? But, some have been co-opted by the longstanding CCP efforts to influence New York politics. We know they infiltrated the NY governor’s office (a spy was expelled), and they have been using the CCP “United Front” scheme to take over “community” organizations, as they do around the world, to silence Chinese dissent and then use these fake fronts to gain a foothold in local politics in the name of “representing the Chinese community.”

And it seems that this time, these tactics have scored a big victory against free speech on US soil — brazenly shuttering a film festival. Continue reading IndieChina Film Festival cancelled →

UK university censorship scandal

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On the Sheffield Hallam University China slavery censor scandal breaking today: Chinese authorities brazenly and at first successfully intimidated and shut down research on China’s Uyghur slavery at a UK university! Today, they have been outed. Deepest sympathy for and solidarity with Laura Murphy and her colleagues — and with the millions of victims caught up in the atrocities that they have exposed. Shame on Sheffield Hallam U for caving to Chinese intimidation, even if they seem to have backed off when duly warned by the UK government, which is as it should be.

But, how many such horror cases of selfcensorship by universities go undetected, out of fear? The Chinese Embassy in the UK are openly admitting that their own students are now their WEAPONS: “there are over 200,000 Chinese students in the UK, making China the largest source of international students in the UK,” adding “educational cooperation has become a driving force in bilateral ties” … yeah, and not just in the UK but around the world.

If universities cannot stop such Chinese intimidation by themselves, then national governments obviously will have to override them, to protect the universities’ freedom and our freedom.

This today is a huge scandal — and a warning to all the world’s academia and the world, of China’s brazen intimidation and shameless weaponizing of their own students in order to silence the BEST RESEARCH in our free universities.

On today’s breaking news, see the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq50j5vwny6o

Continue reading UK university censorship scandal →

Ai Weiwei visits Ukrainian front lines

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Source: The Art Newspaper (8/18/25)
‘Their resolve is incredibly strong’: Ai Weiwei visits soldiers on Ukrainian front lines
As Ukraine’s president prepared for a high-stakes visit to Washington, DC, the Chinese artist and activist visited Eastern Ukraine
By Sophia Kishkovsky

Ai Weiwei with Ukrainian troops Photo courtesy Ai Weiwei, via Instagram

Ai Weiwei with Ukrainian troopsPhoto courtesy Ai Weiwei, via Instagram.

Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and activist, has travelled to the front lines of Ukraine’s war against Russia’s full-scale invasion just weeks before unveiling a new commission in Kyiv. In eastern Ukraine, near Kharkiv, Ai met with Ukrainian fighters and cultural figures as well as Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Pussy Riot who is fighting against Russia for Ukraine.

In a series of photographs and videos posted on Instagram without any commentary over the weekend, Ai documented his meetings with Ukrainian soldiers in forests and trenches, cultural figures and landmark Constructivist architecture in Kharkiv—which is under regular Russian attack—and images of support including the blue and yellow national flag, fields of sunflowers and a puzzle of Reply of the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks (1880-91), a painting by the Ukrainian-born artist Ilya Repin.

At least ten people were killed in Kharkiv and in Zaporizhzhia by Russian drone strikes on Sunday night and Monday morning (17-18 August), just hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders were scheduled to meet at the White House with US President Donald Trump. Following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on 15 August, Trump is pressuring for a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky. Continue reading Ai Weiwei visits Ukrainian front lines →

‘Reverse Runology’

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Source: China Digital Times (8/15/25)
“Reverse Runology?” Some Émigrés Reconsider Their Escape from China
By Arthur Kaufman

The struggle for a better life has long pushed many Chinese citizens to escape difficult conditions at home. In the most recent waves of emigration, tens of thousands of Chinese migrants have made perilous journeys through Central America along the “walking route,” or zǒuxiàn (走线), in an attempt to reach the southern U.S. border. But the political climate at their destination has become increasingly hostile, particularly under the new U.S. administration, which has deterred Chinese tech talent and restricted Chinese student visas (building on restrictive measures under the previous administration). Now, some Chinese migrants are reconsidering their escape routes and looking beyond America—or returning home.

The impetus to emigrate in recent years is encapsulated by the term “run” (润) or “runology” (润学). Recent CDT translations have illustrated how persistent youth unemployment, continual pandemic-era surveillance, and a repressive political environment, among other issues, have contributed to a feeling of malaise and a loss of faith in the Chinese Dream. Last week in the Made in China Journal, Dino Ge Zhang situated “runology” in the context of “Sinopessimism”, describing it among other negative affects and exit strategies for youth disenchanted with contemporary Chinese life. But the author hinted that the practice of runology ultimately may not yield desirable results, particularly for those who have chosen to flee to the U.S.: Continue reading ‘Reverse Runology’ →

The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet

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Source: China File (7/3/25)
Balancing What Can Be Said with What Can Only Be Implied: The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet
By Shelly Kraicer

A still from Ridiculous Nurshad (2022).

The young Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet is now in a Chinese prison. Arrested in May 2023, he was accused by the Chinese government of “actively participating in terrorist activities.” Human Rights Watch called the charges “politically motivated,” and reported that Ikram was “tortured . . . until he gave a false confession.” Convicted in January 2024, Ikram was sentenced to six and a half years behind bars. He was likely targeted because he had studied in Turkey between 2010 and 2016. His arrest and imprisonment has occurred in the context of Chinese authorities’ continuing persecution of minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that has intensified since 2017.

It is always difficult for what China calls “ethnic minority” (i.e. non-Han Chinese) filmmakers to make the films they want to make inside China, where review by the state Film Administration is mandatory for all. Staying inside the system allows filmmakers to have their work shown publicly in China and, if they can get official approval, abroad. What may be surprising is that filmmakers from Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang have succeeded in making important and eloquent works of cinema that grapple, at least indirectly, with the particular situations of their communities in China, despite the constraints under which they work.

Since 2017, a new generation of Uyghur filmmakers, including Ikram Nurmehmet, Tawfiq Nizamidin, Emetjan Memet, Mirzat Abduqadir, and Pahriya Ghalip, has emerged. Most studied at the Beijing Film Academy, and all have made creatively challenging, formally interesting, socially engaged short films that carefully explore—with humor, passion, and a savvy sense of how to balance what can be said with what can only be implied—what life is like for Uyghurs in China today.

A close reading of Ikram’s four short films—from Elephant in the Car’s mysterious energy, through the absurdly dark comedy of Ridiculous Nurshad and rambunctious humor of Tu Cheshang Erbai (200 Per Puke), to the brilliant formal control of A Day by the Sea—can elucidate some ways that a filmmaker under systemic political pressure can navigate the closely regulated Chinese censorship system while preserving an articulate, sustainable, and authentically expressive voice. Continue reading The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet →

Dalai Lama will reinarnate

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Source: NYT (7/2/25)
Dalai Lama Says He Will Reincarnate, but China Has No Say in Successor
The aging Tibetan spiritual leader is looking to prevent Beijing from taking advantage of a power vacuum that might arise after his death.
By Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar, Reporting from Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist leaders are meeting to discuss the future of the spiritual leader’s institution

Monks in saffron robes sit as a video of the Dalai Lama speaking onscreen plays in front of them.

Tibetan Buddhist monks gathered in Dharamshala, a Himalayan hill town in India, to discuss the future of the Dalai Lama’s spiritual office, as China tries to control who will succeed him. Credit…Atul Loke for The New York Times

The Dalai Lama gathered senior Tibetan Buddhist monks on Wednesday in Dharamsala, the Himalayan town where he has lived in exile for over half a century, to chart the future of his spiritual office — and how it might survive growing pressure from China.

In a recorded video statement to the three-day conference, the 89-year-old offered few specifics on how Tibetan Buddhism’s highest office might avoid a period of uncertainty after he dies, a moment that Beijing may try to seize by installing its own choice as the next Dalai Lama.

But he made one thing clear: his own doubts about whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue after him have now been put to rest. He had previously been open to ending the role to avoid it being exploited by China after his death, but now affirmed that the lineage would go on.

He also made what was seen as another move at shutting China out from the future reincarnation of the Tibetan spiritual leader. He said in a statement that Gaden Phodrang Trust, which is registered in India and run by the Dalai Lama’s office, has “sole authority” to recognize such a reincarnation.

“No one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter,” he said.

The Chinese Communist Party, which has sought to erode the influence of the Dalai Lama in Tibet, asserts that only it has the authority to choose his reincarnation, despite being committed to atheism in its ranks. In Beijing, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the reincarnation had to be approved by the central government. Continue reading Dalai Lama will reinarnate →

Poll shows attitudes toward China improve

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Source: China Digital Times (6/11/18)
Polls Show Global Attitudes Towards China Improve, At Expense of U.S.
By Arthur Kaufman

Numerous public opinion surveys from around the world have highlighted a significant shift in global attitudes towards China. Respondents from countries in both the Global South and Global North have expressed increasingly favorable views towards China and less favorable views towards the U.S. As the surveys and other analyses suggest, this shift is in part due to perceptions of U.S. instability and a global media landscape that produces a less hostile picture of China.

The latest poll was published on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. In a survey of 24 countries, respondents in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, and Mexico expressed a higher confidence in Xi Jinping than Donald Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs. Those in Greece, Italy, France, Australia, and Kenya trusted Trump more than Xi only by five or less percentage points. (Respondents in Japan, Israel, and Poland had the lowest levels of trust in Xi.) Across all 24 countries, Xi obtained a median of 25 percent, compared to Trump’s 34 percent and Vladimir Putin’s 16 percent.

Last week, Xinlu Liang at the South China Morning Post described the results of another survey by U.S. intelligence company Morning Consult showing that, between January and April, favorable views towards China surpassed those towards the U.S. for the first time in recent years: Continue reading Poll shows attitudes toward China improve →

Chasing Traces open access

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Chasing Traces: History and Ethnography in the Uplands of Socialist Asia
Now available as Open Access from University of Hawaii Press.
Download and share

Table of contents is below, including my own chapter on the Wa people’s history between China and Burma.

First, the book’s description:

In the connected highlands of southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos, recalling the past is a highly sensitive act. Among local societies, many may actively avoid recalling the past for fear of endangering themselves and others. Oral traditions and rare archives remain the main avenues to visit the past, but the national revolutionary narrative and the language of heritagization have strongly affected the local expression of historical memory. Yet this does not prevent local societies from producing their stories in their own terms, even if often in conflict with both national and Western categories. Producing history, ethnohistory, historical anthropology, and historical geography in the Southeast Asian highlands raises significant questions relating to methodology, epistemology, and ethics, for which most researchers are often ill-prepared. How can scholars manage to competently access information about the past? How is one to capture history-in-the-making through events, speech acts, rituals, and performances? How is the memory of the past transmitted—or not—and with what logic? Continue reading Chasing Traces open access →

Hong Yen Chang

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Source: NYT (6/6/25)
Overlooked No More: Hong Yen Chang, Lawyer Who Challenged a Racist System
He struggled to become the first Chinese American person to practice law in the U.S., then used his training to fight for other Chinese Americans.
By Julie Ho

A black and white portrait of Hong Yen Chang formally dressed and looking off to the side.

Hong Yen Chang in about 1890. He was one of 120 young men selected by the Chinese government to study in America, where he chose to stay. Credit…Bushnell Photography, via Huntington Digital Library

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

Before Hong Yen Chang graduated from Columbia Law School in New York, he was breaking barriers just by being there.

Before he became the first Chinese person allowed to practice law in the United States, he had to wrangle with New York’s judiciary for permission.

Before he could protect Chinese immigrants in court, he studied tirelessly to master a legal system that was not inclined to welcome him. Essentially, Chang realized that before he could help anyone else, he had to help himself.

Chang was born on Dec. 20, 1859 (some records say 1860), in what was then called Heungshan, a prosperous district in Southern China connected to the Portuguese port of Macau. His father, Shing Tung Chang, was a merchant who died when Hong Yen was a child; his mother was Yee Shee. Continue reading Hong Yen Chang →

US will ‘aggressively’ revoke visas of Chinese students

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Source: NYT (5/28/25)
U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the students who will have their visas canceled include people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in “critical fields.”
By Edward Wong, Reporting from Washington

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, wearing a dark suit and red tie, points with his right hand while seated in front of a microphone.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week. Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.”

He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.

The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States.

Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers.

Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support.

American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue. Continue reading US will ‘aggressively’ revoke visas of Chinese students →

Walasse Ting

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Source: NYT (5/16/25)
Overlooked No More, Walasse Ting, Who Bridged Cultures With Paint and Prose
His style as a poet and artist was informed by his upbringing in Shanghai and his years in Paris. He then joined the Pop-fueled studios of New York.
By Will Heinrich

A black-and-white photo of him leaning casually against a sidewalk railing along a city street with stone buildings behind him. He is stylishly dressed in a jacket and slacks and print shirt.

The painter and poet Walasse Ting in Hong Kong in 1953. Credit…The Estate of Walasse Ting

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

Flickering among the major figures of postwar art — the Minimalist sculptor Dan Flavin, the avant-garde artist Pierre Alechinsky, the abstract painter Sam Francis and others — is the radiant shadow of Walasse Ting.

Ting, a painter and poet from China, introduced Flavin to Japanese ink. He turned Alechinsky on to acrylic paint. Together, he and Francis explored the interplay between Western action painting and Asian brush techniques.

In an era when artists were typically siloed by geography and genre, Ting broke free, effortlessly creating fertile connections wherever he went. His own work, at its best, melded the elegance and delicacy of traditional Chinese ink painting with an eye-grabbing palette equally influenced by American Pop Art and the lurid colors of the Florida aviary he frequented, Parrot Jungle (now Jungle Island) in Miami. Continue reading Walasse Ting →

The Mediterranean through Chinese Eyes

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The Mediterranean Through Chinese Eyes: Transcultural Encounters and Representation in Chinese Sources
May 16th-17th, 2025
UNIVERSITY OF PALERMO
Botanical Garden, Lanza Conference Room (and online)

The international conference The Mediterranean Through Chinese Eyes: Transcultural Encounters and Representation in Chinese Sources is the second conference of the MeTChE research project. This event aims to investigate how the Mediterranean has been perceived, represented, and reimagined in Chinese sources across time. Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines, the conference will explore the construction of a transcultural perception of Mediterranean civilization(s) in Chinese geographical texts and travel diaries. Particular attention will be given to how representations of the sea and distant lands contributed to shaping the image of the “other” in Chinese thought.

The conference will be transmitted live on Microsoft Teams. We invite you to attend remotely and participate in the discussion. Full program, link and other details are available at the conference website.

Posted by: Renata Vinci <renata.vinci@unipa.it>