The 2026 Human Rights Essay Contest is open to students of all ages and offers $4,000 in prize money. The focus for this contest is on the sentencing of human rights activist Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison and how this sentencing should impact US-China relations. Essays must be submitted by June 15th. For more information, visit humanrights.catholic.edu.
Will Deatherage: Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China. My name is Will Deatherage, the producer, and joining me as always is Cheng Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng: Hello everyone, I’m glad to see you here again today. Thank you, Will.
W: Yeah, of course. And today we’re going to continue following up on the conversation of Communist China’s involvement and their stakes in the US-Iran conflict. Guangcheng, can you tell us what’s going on?
G: Yeah, yeah, that is very important information to share. And usually the CCP does not use their mouthpiece to say they will oppose the US or Israel. But the CCP used their mouthpiece, and used their internet police to support Iran. And when netizens visited Israel’s embassy website in Beijing, and a person saw on the website [that] people can post comments, and all the people just criticized Israel.
No one supported Israel. The netizens think, “Oh, that is strange. Even if most people support Iran, there should be some comments that are pro-Israel.” Yeah. But one netizen tried posting a pro-Israel comment.
W: Okay.
G: Yeah. And then the netizens came back to visit the website and could not find the comment he or she just wrote. Then the same netizen posted some comments to support Iran. And then he visited the website and he can see that comment. That is a very important proof. The person’s comment, if it is criticizing Israel, you can post it.
If you say, “I support Israel,” the censorship will not let you upload. So yeah, that proved the Communist Party [is] using all their internet police to do censorship to support Iran, to oppose the US and Israel.
W: So Guangcheng, why would the Communist Party do that? For those who aren’t familiar, what does China… Why would China support Iran?
G: Iran never stopped opposing the US, right?
W: Right.
G: So the CCP thinks all the democratic countries are the CCP’s enemy. He’s very worried they will lose their power. All the authoritarian regimes are afraid they will lose their power. So they need to support each other against the free world. Yeah, that is very important. If you try to visit mainland China’s internet to try to understand how many people still support the Communist Party, that is not true.
Even the activists, they cannot express their idea on the internet in mainland China.
W: Right.
G: They only can see [them] in secret chat rooms online. So this proves the Communist Party always stands with the authoritarian regimes. Like Iran, like North Korea, like Cuba.
W: Guangcheng, you mentioned earlier that the Communist Party hasn’t officially declared support for Iran. Is that right?
G: Yes. The CCP used a lot of rumor to try to scheme Chinese people. “Oh, Iran will win, the US will fail. You know, even the US people oppose the Iran war,” blah, blah, blah, like that.
W: So, Guangcheng, are you saying that the… When American media opposes the war, does the Communist Party like that? Do they use that to, like, tell the Chinese people, “Oh look, the United States is going to lose?” Or—
G: Yeah, if the Western media sees some bad things, they will use it. For example, the US media criticized the government, the Communist Party will quote it and use it to prove their media disagrees with what the US government is doing. If the US looks divided, the CCP will take advantage of that.
W: Gotcha.
G: Yeah, that is normal. The CCP never stopped doing that since the 1990s when the US tried to tear down Saddam Hussein’s regime.
W: Yeah, can you talk about that? What happened then?
G: At that time, you know, I was in mainland China. The CCP used their mouthpiece – the central TV or the radios – to see how many planes Saddam shot down, and how many US people stand up to protest against George W. Bush’s government to ask the US government stop the war in Iraq.
Every time something happens between the authoritarian regime and the democratic country, the CCP always stands with the authoritarian regime. They don’t care [about] the truth. They don’t care what is the justice, what is the injustice. Yeah, they just think [about] how they can use that to scam Chinese people, how they can benefit.
W: Well, we’ll continue reporting on the situation, and we encourage our listeners to go to our website at humanrights.catholic.edu Guangcheng, thank you so much for all the information today.
G: Thank you, Will. Yeah, thank you everyone.
The 2026 Human Rights Essay Contest is open to students of all ages and offers $4,000 in prize money. The focus for this contest is on the sentencing of human rights activist Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison and how this sentencing should impact U.S.-China relations. Essays must be submitted by June 15th. For more information, visit humanrights.catholic.edu.