The Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America has recently published an op-ed by Chen Guangcheng commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. To view this article, check the link in the description or go to 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. Joining me as always is Chen Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng: Hello everyone. Hi Will, I’m glad to be here to talk with you today too.
W: Yeah, so today we’re gonna talk about a topic that, uh, has a lot of relevance to you, Guangcheng, like, personally, right?
G: Yes, yes. Me and Bob Fu. You know, Bob Fu has an organization, the name is China Aid, you know, the China Aid helped a lot of people who escaped from mainland China and help them to come here, and support the activists in mainland China too.
W: So can you tell us what’s been going on?
G: Okay. Because we did a good job of the human rights to expose CCP, to fight back [against] the CCP, so the CCP always thinks [about] how to give us trouble. You know, this year, 2025, since March, the CCP ordered the people online to try to give us trouble.
W: Right.
G: They put our addressed online.
W: Like your home addresses?
G: Yeah, home addresses. Yeah, Bob Fu and me. So they tried to use this way to give us trouble. And later, you know… someone of course is a liar, you know; for example, Bob Fu. The commenters said he embezzle money from his charity to pay for these houses.
W: Okay.
G: Yeah, but of course, that is not true, but you know, if the people live in mainland China, they don’t understand anything about US.
W: Right.
G: So maybe they think, “Oh, that activist is not good.” Yeah, “They’ve stolen the money from the organization,” like that.
W: Yeah, they’re trying to discredit you guys, right?
G: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what they want. There is one account in particular that has given us trouble, and they encourage people to use the US judicial system to punish us. So most people don’t know the truth, so they stand up with her and try to fight us, give us a lot of trouble. Made our life more difficult.
W: Okay.
G: In March, someone on her account claiming to be her child said that she died, and then she registered a second fake account and kept using it to encourage the people to try to give us trouble.
W: So Guangcheng, how do you know that those two accounts are the same person?
G: The situation changed three days ago because the netizens look like… the sentence[s]-very similar; the habit[s]-very similar.
W: Gotcha.
G: Yeah, and then some netizens online write the comments to her and said, “Okay, stop hiding. We know who you are.” So three days ago, in late August of this year, she went on Twitter Spaces and admitted she faked her own death.
W: Gotcha. Oh, so she just admitted it on Twitter?
G: Yeah, yeah. And later, you know. A lot of these supporters [were] so angry about because she is a liar, so now more and more people don’t believe her.
W: Right. How influential was she, you know, on Twitter?
G: Her account was not very popular, but they encouraged a lot of people to give Bob Fu and I trouble.
W: Gotcha. Sounds like they were really trying to, turn people against you and turn people against each other. Is that right?
G: Yes, yes, and of course, I think more than half the teams, they work for [the] CCP. Of course, some people, they don’t know the truth, they don’t understand the US, that she scammed them.
W: How many people sometimes would be in these Twitter Spaces, Guangcheng?
G: Before, around several hundred people together.
W: Would participate in the Twitter Spaces?
G: Yes, yes, but later, just around 30 or 50 people together to discuss how to give us trouble.
W: So Guangcheng, would you ever report her account to Twitter or X? Like, did they ever do anything about it?
G: Someone did, but it looks like until now, she still can use it.
W: Right.
G: So… but a lot of people know she is a liar now.
W: Yeah, I think we covered in another episode that a lot of these media companies kind of struggle with non-English accounts. Because Guangcheng, I can guarantee that if she was saying these things about you in English, there’d probably be a lot more attention from Twitter, right?
G: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that is good, yeah. And I want to let our listeners know even in March, her teams, some were writing this letter to our university to make me lose the job. They said, “Oh, we can write a letter to his employer and get him fired.”
Yeah, so later, I let our university know what’s the situation, why they did this. Of course, our university understand because our human rights work did a good job, so we got this letter. And another thing is; [they] write like this letter – not the first time. They did a lot before. So we should [be] very careful.
W: Yeah.
G: Yeah. Don’t think the CCP [is] just prosecuting Chinese people in mainland China. The CCP’s commenters, they work in the US now. [They] surround you and me.
W: I guess if there’s any silver lining to this, it means that the work that you’re doing is working. You know, it’s catching their attention, and they feel a need to attack you. So we’ll keep reporting on those situations that pop up, right, Guangcheng?
G: Yes, yes. And I want to let our listeners know one person writes in my account, the person said, “Waiting. I will kill you.”
W: Really?
G: Yeah.
W: You’ve gotten death threats because of that?
G: Yeah, yeah. So, so you can see how evil the CCP [is]. Yeah. Of course, I’m real careful about this, but I will keep fighting.
W: Good, good. Well, we encourage you all to check out the rest of Guangcheng’s work at our website, humanrights.catholic.edu. Guangcheng, thank you so much for, you know, giving us all the information as always.
G: Thank you, Will. Thank you everyone. Yeah, see you next time.
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.