HRIC Weekly Brief
May 26, 2026
Top News 头条
Human rights defender Dong Guangping arrived in South Korea on the night of May 25 after crossing the Yellow Sea in an inflatable boat to seek political asylum. He is currently being detained by the Taean Coast Guard in South Chungcheong Province on allegations of violating immigration laws. HRIC urges the South Korean government to uphold humanitarian principles and international human rights obligations by ensuring that Dong Guangping is not returned to China, where he faces a grave risk of persecution and torture. Read HRIC’s full statement here.
In Hong Kong, the closing arguments of Hong Kong Alliance leaders Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan’s national security trial began last week. Chow Hang-tung urged the court to safeguard ‘dignity, bottom line of law’ and warned judges not to become ‘accomplices’ in political repression, framing the case as a test of whether Hong Kong law protects CCP rule or the people’s right to advocate for democracy. Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung have been charged with inciting subversion for organizing Tiananmen vigils, with a verdict expected in July.
In other news, the only designated protest area at Hong Kong’s legislature has been repurposed as a car park, symbolically eliminating the last formal space for public demonstration at the seat of government.
Law & Policy 法律与政策
2025 Recording & Review Report: Hukou-Based Restrictions and Collateral Consequences Again Under Scrutiny: China’s NPC annual report on citizen-submitted legislative complaints again flagged hukou-based restrictions and the collateral consequences of criminal records as persistent problem areas.
USALI This Week in Asian Law: Key developments include China tightening state control over rare earths, and that the State Council instructed “local governments to gradually begin providing basic public services to long-term residents regardless of their “hukou” or place of household registration.”
Lawfare Daily: Ancient China and Modern Politics: A Lawfare podcast interview with Daniel Bell of the University of Hong Kong discusses how ancient Chinese political philosophy, including Confucianism, meritocracy, and cosmological statecraft, continues to directly inform PRC governance and Xi Jinping’s political ideology today.
Cyber Security & Digital Rights 网络安全与数字权利
China Expands Travel Curbs to Top AI Talent at Private Firms: Chinese AI start-up founders, researchers and executives are now subject to state-imposed travel restrictions, meaning they must seek permission from the authorities in order to travel out of the country. While China frequently constrains the movement of government officials and “sensitive” individuals, the move signals a new level of control over private industry.
HRIC on Twitter/X: A team from institutions including New York University, Princeton, and the University of California, San Diego, report that the outputs of global mainstream LLMs are already being influenced by government control over media worldwide, with Chinese users experiencing particularly pronounced effects.
HRIC on Twitter/X: Safeguard Defenders’ China Program Director Laura Harth publicly released a batch of AI-generated pornographic deepfakes targeting her personally, and named the culprit behind them: the Spamouflage foreign influence network linked to China’s public security system.
New Chinese surveillance leaves foreigners nowhere to hide: Cybersecurity researcher NetAskari spoke to Deutsche Welle about his discovery of an unsecured Chinese police dashboard, the “Dynamic Control Platform for Foreigners,” that compiles holistic surveillance profiles of foreign nationals, integrating facial recognition, visa records, travel data, and personal contacts, with foreign journalists and Five Eyes nationals as priority targets.
Netizen Voices: Is Xi Jinping on Top of the World, or a Tortoise on a Utility Pole?: Even as Xi Jinping hosted high-profile summits with Trump and Putin, a viral Douyin meme framed him as a tortoise perched on a utility pole, seemingly elevated but actually precarious, prompting online speculation about elite political tensions, succession, and the fragility of his position.
Eyes in the sky: Hong Kong police tackle petty crime with drone patrols, but privacy concerns linger: Hong Kong police have rapidly expanded automated drone patrols citywide like tracking visa overstayers, gamblers, and “evasive” individuals, raising unresolved privacy questions, as the force plans to add AI capabilities while declining to specify whether facial recognition will be applied to drone footage.
The CCP is using AI platforms to further digitize and intelligentize its control over Tibet: DeepZang, a Tibetan-language AI platform launched by China this year, provides Tibetan-language services and outputs content that aligns with the official stance on sensitive issues such as Tibet, religion, and governance.
Diaspora Community & Transnational Repression 海外社群和跨国镇压
HRIC on Twitter/X: The Chinese Embassy in Germany pressured the Technical University of Berlin to cancel a Xinjiang-related discussion event organized by the student union. The event, with the theme “A Decade of Mass Detention of the East Turkestan Nation,” was co-hosted by the student union and the Support Uyghur People Berlin Student Organization, and included a documentary screening and discussion.
HRIC on Twitter/X: Zhou Fengsuo, Executive Director of HRIC, recently spoke to Taiwan’s Central Broadcasting Corporation, where he shared his observations from participating in multiple democracy initiative events during his visit to Taiwan and praised Taiwan’s commemoration events around the June Fourth Tiananmen Massacre.
German authorities arrest 2 on China espionage allegations: German federal prosecutors arrested a married couple in Munich on May 20 on suspicion of working for Chinese intelligence, using cover identities as translators and auto industry workers to cultivate university professors in aerospace, AI, and IT, some of whom were allegedly lured to China to deliver lectures that actually took place before state arms company employees.
‘Taiwan Travelogue’ author hopes award-winning novel can be read in China, spark dialogue: Yang Shuang-zi, who became the first Taiwanese author to win the International Booker Prize for her novel Taiwan Travelogue, said she hopes the book can one day reach Chinese readers and open dialogue about “what future Taiwanese people want.” The novel, though published in 2020, has never been released in China.
Human Rights Defenders & Civil Society 人权捍卫者与公民社会
HRIC on Twitter/X: Xu Guang recounts his prison hunger strike: “I have been on hunger strike for four years, I have no other demands whatsoever. The only demand is: do not forget June Fourth! Do not forget 8964 in our lifetime. Our generation of June Fourth is fighting for freedom and democracy for the country and the nation. We have sacrificed for this, paid for this, strived for this. We have no regrets!”
HRIC on Twitter/X: The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report on the circumstances of Beijing Zion Church pastor Jin Mingri’s detention by Chinese authorities, as well as the large-scale crackdown on Chinese Christians. Jin was a student in Peking University’s Department of Geophysics in 1989. After experiencing the Tiananmen Square events, he converted to Christianity, went to the United States to pursue a PhD in theology, and returned to China in 2007 to found Zion Church.
Prominent Uyghur Religious Scholar Abdushukur Rahmatulla Hajim Reportedly Detained by Chinese Authorities: Abdushukur Rahmatulla Hajim, a prominent Uyghur imam, Islamic scholar, and former CPPCC delegate, has reportedly been detained by Chinese authorities, with Xinjiang Daily announcing he had been stripped of his political advisory seat for suspected “illegal and criminal activities” without further explanation.
Chinese Restrictions Tightened at Choktrul Dorje Ten Rinpoche’s Monastery During Saga Dawa: Months after the arbitrary detention of Tibetan spiritual leader and educator Choktrul Dorje Ten Rinpoche, Chinese authorities have tightened restrictions at his monastery.
“I Tried to Warm Him Up… But He Never Opened His Eyes Again”: Uyghur survivor Mihrigul Tursun gave testimony recounting how her infant son died during her family’s detention in Xinjiang.
Careful Words on the Trump-Xi Summit: Lingua Sinica analyzes how China’s People’s Daily covered Trump’s first Beijing visit in nearly a decade with deliberate understatement, burying the summit beneath routine ideological content, as a calculated exercise in controlling the narrative and avoiding any appearance of concessions.
China’s Development Journalism Goes Global, an Oops Moment for AI Anchors, and Taiwan’s Public Broadcaster in Limbo: Lingua Sinica’s media digest covers China’s push to export its “development journalism” model to the Global South, an AI anchor gaffe, Taiwan’s public broadcaster PTS mired in political uncertainty, coordinated online attacks on Hong Kong’s main press association, and Vietnam’s impossible bind when covering China.
2-month suspended jail term for elderly man who reposted social media call to boycott legislative elections: According to a press release from the Independent Commission Against Corruption, Lam Kin-sik admitted to “inciting” another person not to vote, in violation of the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance.
4 plead guilty to rioting at PolyU during 2019 protests: The four defendants were not prosecuted after their initial arrests in 2019 and 2020, but were apprehended again in June 2024 for “rioting” at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus at the height of the anti-extradition protests.
Construction worker pleads guilty to distributing ‘seditious’ materials, incl. calls to boycott ‘patriots only’ polls: Raymond Wong has pleaded guilty to making and distributing “seditious” materials, including calling for a boycott of the “patriots only” legislative elections last year.
Affective Encoding: Coping with Political Depression through Urban Wall Writing in Post-2020 Hong Kong: Despite numerous challenges, Hong Kong’s art scene is proving resilient. Artists continue to produce work that reflects political depression under censorship in the city’s complex socio-political landscape, through nuanced and innovative means.
Host of Hong Kong LGBTQ radio show ‘We Are Family’ says Metro Radio halts relaunch: Metro Radio abruptly cancelled plans to relaunch ‘We Are Family,’ Hong Kong’s only LGBTQ radio show, which was axed by RTHK in 2023 after 17 years, with the incoming management offering no explanation.
China’s Reach & Internal Control 中国: 内控与外扩
Numbers of Tibetan exiles plummet as China tightens grip: The number of Tibetans reaching exile has collapsed from thousands per year in the late 1990s to just 81 in the past five years combined, as Beijing tightens border controls, cutting off the exile community’s main source of firsthand information about conditions inside Tibet.
Related: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has restricted the exit of Tibetans, Uyghurs, and human rights lawyers from the country, and the ban is trending towards expansion.
Rights group says global executions hit 44-year record high: Amnesty International recorded at least 2,707 executions in 2025, a 78% increase and the highest figure since 1981, driven primarily by Iran more than doubling its executions to 2,159, while China remained the world’s top executioner with thousands of additional cases classified as state secrets.
China’s Africa trade push: Partnership or power grab?: China’s zero-tariff push into Africa is as much a geopolitical play as a trade offer, seizing on AGOA’s expiry and Trump’s tariff chaos to lock in raw material supplies and soft power.
Chinese Authorities May Have Banned Uyghur Doppa Hats Even in Commercial Designs: According to a video message shared by human rights activist Zumret Dawut, Chinese authorities may have gone so far as to prohibit the use of the traditional Uyghur doppa hat, a symbol of Uyghur cultural identity, even in commercial product designs.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) warned India against interfering in the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, claiming it is China’s “internal affair.”: The Chinese Communist Party recently warned India not to interfere in the matter of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, stating that it is China’s “internal affair.” China also stated that it hopes India will not provide a platform for activities supporting “Tibetan independence.”
International Responses 国际反应
Rights organizations issue joint letter on human rights ahead of EU–China engagement and MEP visit: Over 40 human rights organizations issued a joint public letter urging MEPs visiting China to raise specific cases of political prisoners and systemic abuses, warning against allowing trade interests to sideline human rights in EU-China engagement.
US Department of State calls on China to release 11th Panchen Lama of Tibet: U.S. Department of State issued a statement on May 18, 2028, the day after the 31st anniversary of the disappearance of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the 11th Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. The State Department calls on China to immediately release the 11th Panchen Lama and his family, and stop persecuting Tibetans on the basis of their religious beliefs.
EU presses Nepal to address the rights of undocumented Tibetan refugees: The European Union has formally urged the Government of Nepal to address the longstanding humanitarian and administrative challenges faced by undocumented Tibetan refugees in the country, according to an official communication from the European External Action Service.
Chinese human rights cases in limbo after Trump-Xi summit: Trump raised the cases of Jimmy Lai and detained Pastor John Cao at the Beijing summit, but families of both men say there have been no further developments, leaving advocates to pin hopes on Xi’s planned White House visit in September as the next opportunity for progress.
Canada Defies Beijing as MP Michael Chong Visits Taiwan: Canadian MP Michael Chong, who is sanctioned by Beijing, visited Taiwan in a deliberate show of solidarity, defying Chinese pressure and signaling continued Canadian parliamentary support for Taiwan’s democratic governance despite diplomatic costs.
The United States has introduced a Tibet-related bill that requires the State Department to push for recognition of the Central Tibetan Administration: Representatives McCain and McGovern, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, jointly introduced a resolution in the House calling on the State Department to push for recognition of the Central Tibetan Administration. The bill has been submitted to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for consideration.
Trump’s shifting remarks on Taiwan are perfect for China to exploit: Trump’s contradictory signals on Taiwan — praising Xi while floating a pause on arms sales and suggesting a direct call with Lai — hand Beijing a strategic gift by creating deliberate ambiguity that China can exploit to pressure Taipei and test American resolve without firing a shot.
Related: US arms sales to Taiwan on ‘pause’ due to Iran war, says acting navy chief. The US acting navy chief confirmed that a planned $14 billion arms package to Taiwan has been paused because American military resources are strained by the Iran war, alarming Taipei and its supporters who warn Beijing will read the delay as a weakening of the US commitment to Taiwan’s defense.
Serbian president deepens ties with China while facing pressure from protests at home: Serbian President Vucic traveled to Beijing and signed over 20 cooperation agreements with Xi Jinping, receiving China’s Friendship Medal, while mass anti-government protests and police clashes raged in Belgrade, underscoring how Vucic uses China partnerships to shore up his increasingly embattled rule.
‘Multipolar world’: What Xi and Putin announced after Beijing summit: Xi and Putin’s Beijing summit produced declarations of a deepening strategic partnership and commitment to building a “multipolar world” order, with both leaders positioning their alignment as a counterweight to US global dominance, while announcing increased energy and military-industrial cooperation.
Germany urged to stop admiring Beijing and wake up to ‘China Shock 2.0’: A Centre for European Reform report warns that Germany, losing 10,000 industrial jobs a month with its trade deficit with China doubling to $25 billion in a year, risks sleepwalking into de-industrialization unless it stops viewing China’s export surge with “admiration” and treats it as a structural threat requiring urgent policy action.
Current Events 热点新闻
HRIC on Twitter/X: A coal mine gas explosion occurred in Qinyuan, Shanxi, trapping 247 miners underground. At least 82 people have been confirmed dead so far. Xi Jinping has not expressed condolences, but foreign and regional leaders have issued statements one after another.