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Abstract

Hong Kong's Autonomy Further Eroded A Permanent Crackdown on Lawyers and ActivistsChina's crackdown on dissidents and activists showed no sign of abating in the final quarter of 2020. In early September, the nongovernmental organisation (NGO) workers known as the 'Changsha Three' were secretly tried for 'subversion of state power'. At the same time, publisher and art curator Geng Xiaonan and her husband, who had supported Chinese dissidents, including Professor Xu Zhangrun, were detained in Beijing on suspicion of operating an 'illegal business'. On 22 September, Ren Zhiqiang, a real estate tycoon critical of the Communist Party leadership, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. While citizen journalist Chen Qiushi resurfaced in late September after his disappearance in February, poet Wang Zang and his wife were arrested in Yunnan for 'incitement to subvert state power'. On 7 October, Chinese-Australian Yang Hengjun was formally charged with espionage after being detained in Beijing for nearly two years. In a crackdown on illegal access to foreign websites, a person named Zhang Tao was admonished on 24 October for using a virtual private network (VPN) to visit Wikipedia. On 2 December, the Haidian District Court in Beijing began hearing a landmark case wherein Xianzi, a former intern at CCTV, accused Zhu Jun, a prominent TV host, of sexual harassment. An indictment sheet released on 16 November showed that citizen journalist Zhang Zhan faced up to five years in jail for spreading false information. The year ended on a dramatic note with both Zhang and lawyer Yu Wensheng sentenced to four years, for spreading false information and inciting subversion, respectively. Roughly at the same time, Bloomberg News employee Haze Fan and Chinese filmmaker Du Bin were detained, the former on suspicion of endangering national security and the latter for 'picking quarrels and provoking trouble'. (JL)