The following is an excerpt from an episode of Life Legal Minnesota’s Rooney Report with Russ Rooney. In this interview, featuring both Chen Guangchang and Dr. William Saunders, Russ discusses Guangchang’s harrowing escape from Communist China and many of the atrocities still happening 14 years later. To watch the whole episode of the Rooney Report, check the link in the description.
Russ Rooney: What is it that gave you the drive? You know, when you, when you broke your ankle early on in the escape and you just kept going, a lot of people would have given up.
Chen Guangcheng: Ah, you know, I had to get free. You know, one thing is, if I came back, the CCP will kill me. And another thing is, I cannot come back because, you know, if I come back, I need to climb the wall. You know, the highest [part is] almost 12 feet high.
So… and you know, I, I believe if I come out, I can get free and I will let, I will let the whole world know what’s happening about me, about my family, about the one-child policy, how the CCP, it did about the forced abortions. So, I needed to tell the whole world about this.
I cannot just come back. So, I have to keep going and, you know, crawl on my hands and knees to keep going to get free.
R: I encourage everybody who’s watching this to read your book, The Barefoot Lawyer.
William Saunders: You can get it anywhere, including on Amazon.
R: So, another question for you. Back in 2012, um, that’s when you escaped, and the one-child policy was in force, but now China has changed. And it’s as though, you know, you were right all along. I mean, just for human rights reasons also, but there’s been a real change. Is that correct?
G: Yeah. The CCP changed their policy, and because of the birthrate [is] very, very, very low now. Last year, the whole country, only got 7.90, uh, million new babies. The whole country. Usually the population balance should be 2.1% for 1 year. 2.1%.
But in mainland China now, you know, [it’s] just 1.09%. Very, very low. Yeah. If the CCP [did] not change the one-child policy, if the CCP [did] not stop to do the forced abortion, after five years, you know, China will [have] lost around 30, even 40% [of its] people, population. So, yeah, I don’t understand, you know, why the CCP [did] not stopped the one-child policy before.
W: But it’s stopped now.
Okay. Yeah. Now, they stopped. And, not just stopped. And now, the CCP [is] going to another side; they tried to force the people to have more babies.
W: Obviously, their population is collapsing. If you only had a few million births in a country with over a billion people… So, they’re trying to get more babies, but the people aren’t having more babies. Why? Tell Russ why they’re not having more babies.
G: Yeah. Because the people, you know… the CCP did a lot of, how to say, the cruelty in the one-child policy. And now, if you have a baby, you have to… you know, the CCP [does] not give the people benefits for their education. If you have a baby, you have [to] spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of your… you know, and the whole family [will] have to focus on the baby.
And another thing is the economic situation is very, very bad. If the people just stay in the village, their life will get in trouble. Before, in rural China, the farmers can come to the city to find a job, to get some money, to feed their family. But now, because the economic situation getting worse and worse, the people cannot find [a] job in [the] city.
So, they have to stay in the village, they have to try to, how to say, to get the food from the land, the field… So, that is very, very, difficult. And another thing is that the CCP did around 40 years of forced abortion. The people are so angry about that. They think, “Oh, before you forced us to kill our baby. Now, you need us to have more baby. Why [is it] you can always to do the wrong things and we have to pay the bill?”
W: The people don’t trust the government and so when the government tells them this, to do this for the country and they’re… you know, they don’t trust.
G: Yeah. The people [do] not trust the CCP now.
R: So a lot of the Chinese people, are they aware of what’s happening with the Uyghurs and, you know, organ donation?
G: Yes. A lot of people know that. My friend told me, on the phone, “Of course, we use [a] secret app.” Before, she said, “You know, in our area, we… Before we can let our children – even five years old, [or] six years old, even four years old – they can come out to play with their childhood [friends], but now we should [be] very careful. We should look at them every moment, because a lot of people tried to kidnap the children around China.”
That happened in different provinces, not just one place. So yeah, that is why, you know, a lot of people understand what happens, but they don’t have the opportunity to talk about that online.
If they discuss about this on the social media or some web page, the CCP will censorship immediately, will delete their comments, and even the CCP will order the police to come to their house to threaten them, so they only can discuss [with] each other about this in secret groups online.
W: They abduct children, just to make sure, Russ, that’s clear. Parents are afraid their children will be kidnapped to be taken for organ harvesting. Guangcheng… I mean we’re gonna talk more about this, but you know, we have a podcast and he’s talked about on the podcast, cases in China where people have disappeared and then been found dead without these organs.
G: Yeah. Not just children, you know, even the university students. If they disappeared, no one can find them back. Even the CCP set up 200 million cameras in Mainland China anywhere – you know, we call it the Sky Eyes – but if the people disappear, no one knows where they are. The CCP cannot find them.
R: So with all those cameras now, there is probably… You know, if you were under house arrest today, there was probably no way you could escape. Is that true, you think?
W: Could you escape today with all the cameras?
G: In fact, you know, when I escaped, the CCP took away some cameras, but [they] still have some cameras surrounding my house too. Before this, they installed several cameras, you know, in even in my yard, you know, and they set up some poles outside of my yard. But on the poles, they… the poles have a long arm and the camera comes in my yard to see us. They just changed that, a little farther, maybe 30 feet away surround[ing] my house; still the cameras [are] there.
W: Why did they not catch you if there were cameras?
G: Oh, yeah. That is my experience. I know, you know, in prison, every room they have the cameras, right? But I know the police; they don’t watch the screen every moment. They just say that to scare the people. I know no one works very hard to focus on the screen, the computer screen, every moment, so I think maybe I believe later they check their computer.
They know what time I escaped. I was escaped. But at that time, they didn’t find it.
The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world-class human rights experts from former state department officials to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu.
The full interview with Russ Rooney can be found here: https://lifelegalmn.org/videos/