You’re listening to a Barefoot Lawyer’s Reports on China presentation on the history of human rights abuses in modern communist China. To listen to other parts of this series, check the links in the description.

Chen Guangcheng: The business situation got worse. At that time, Zhu Rongji was the premier.

Will Deatherage: What does the premier do?

Chen Guangcheng: The premier in mainland China does not have a lot of power. Usually the Khan Party just allows them to manage the business in China.

Will Deatherage: So they deal mostly in economics.

Chen Guangcheng: Exactly. He wanted to make China better. He wanted to push for democracy in China, but the party chairman, Jiang, tried to keep him out of politics. Tried to keep him focused on business. At that time in 1998, the Internet grew a little.  If you used the phone to call, it was very expensive. If you called someone in foreign country, 1 minute would cost more than $1 in mainland China. Even if you called each other in China, it still was expensive.

The Khan Party controlled all the communications, and the people asked them to become cheaper. Zhu Rongji wanted it to become cheaper, but Jiang Zemin disagreed. I still remember that year, one journalist from Hong Kong named Wu Qiaoli brough that concern into the light. When the CCP opened up to journalists to ask them questions after the big conventions, Wu Qiaoli said, “Okay, I want to ask you one question about Chinese people. If I call you from Hong Kong, I have to pay more than $1 per minute. But if I called Washington, DC to talk with President Clinton, I just spent $0.80. Why is that?”

At that time, some people did not just believe what the CCP said; they started awakening. Since Tiananmen Square happened, a lot of people in Hong Kong understood that the Khan Party would get Hong Kong back. People were scared about this, and they prepared to move to another country. Of course, the CCP promised them a lot of things. Deng Xiaoping is still there and said, “We will not change any policy in the future for 50 years. Maybe after 50 years, Hong Kong people can choose if they want to keep the democracy system and the rule of law system”. Of course, some people still try to protect Hong Kong’s situation. The freedom of speech and the rule of law are managed by an office in Hong Kong, and the journalists who work there called mainland China to tell them they should use the law to protect their rights like that.

That was very helpful, but the Khan party didn’t want Hong Kong to do that. So at that time, the CCP prepared a lot of people to come from China and moved to Hong Kong to live there to try to influence Hong Kong’s media.

Will Deatherage: Wow.

Chen Guangcheng: Yeah. They started around 1995.

Will Deatherage: They think ahead a lot.

Chen Guangcheng: Precisely. They did that while Britain still controlled Hong Kong.

Will Deatherage: That’s crazy.

Chen Guangcheng: In 1997, England helped give to Hong Kong, to mainland China. After that, the CCP prepared to influence Hong Kong more and more. In 2003, China tried to create a new law to control Hong Kong. But at the time, more than 500,000 people went to the street to protest. So the CCP stopped that, but the CCP didn’t stop to influence Hong Kong. Two years ago, the CCP created a new law in Hong Kong.

Will Deatherage: Right. This was in 2022, right?

Chen Guangcheng: I believe 2021 or 2022.  In fact, this most recent law is the same one they tried to implement in 2003, but they just changed the name. A lot of people stood up to protest and the CCP was not prepared yet in Hong Kong, so they couldn’t control everything in Hong Kong there. They needed more time to do that.

Will Deatherage: It took them almost 20 years, but they did it. That’s very depressing.

Chen Guangcheng: If the CCP wants to do something, they will prepare beforehand and they will spend a long time to achieve that. In the US, we just think four or eight years ahead, and that is  not enough to oppose the CCP.

Will Deatherage: Right. They’re thinking decades in advance. 

Chen Guangcheng: Yes. I want the US leaders to understand what the CCP is doing in the whole world. Not just in mainland China, not just in Hong Kong, but also in Europe and in the U.S. They will take us by surprise. We should stand up now! We should join hands together to protect our freedom and life, to protect our democracy, the rule of law and the freedom of religions.

Will Deatherage: Yes!

Chen Guangcheng has recently published an article about the CCP’s punishment of families of human rights activists in communist China. The article on public discourse is titled “Zhulian: Implication by Relation”. The article can be found at humanrights.catholic.edu under our Research and Analyses page.