HRIC Weekly Brief
July 22, 2025
Top News 头条
Concerns over restriction of movement have increased this week, as several high-profile cases have emerged: a U.S. government employee who traveled to China in his personal capacity was hit with an exit ban over “actions Beijing deemed harmful to national security” from earlier this year; Wells Fargo suspended travel to China for its employees after an exit ban was placed on one of its Atlanta-based employees, who had traveled there for business; and a Japanese pharmaceutical employee was convicted of espionage and sentenced to three and a half years in prison, intensifying concerns about transparency around detained foreign citizens in China and humane treatment of prisoners. Exit bans are nothing new for Chinese human rights defenders and activists, but their use has expanded in recent years to target non-Chinese nationals, families of defenders, and individuals who are only peripherally related to investigations on “sensitive” topics.
Law & Policy 法律与政策
This Week in Asian Law: New regulations for implementing China’s national internet identity authentication system took effect on July 15. While participation in the new system is currently voluntary, the Ministry of Public Security reported that six million persons had already registered for internet IDs by May.
Tightened prison rules restricting visits on nat. security grounds to take effect on Friday: Fast-tracked legislative amendments allowing the Correctional Services Department to broadly restrict or ban lawyers and religious leaders from visiting inmates took effect just two weeks after the proposal.
Cyber Security & Digital Rights 网络安全与数字权利
Chinese tech firm Tencent seeks removal of anti-censorship archive FreeWeChat, watchdog says: Tencent is attempting to remove FreeWeChat—a watchdog archive of deleted and censored posts on politically sensitive topics—from the internet on copyright infringement grounds, amid a tightening censorship regime inside China and dwindling international support for digital rights work due to foreign aid cuts.
How China’s Patriotic ‘Honkers’ Became the Nation’s Elite Cyberspies: A new report, by Eugenio Benincasa, senior cyberdefense researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich university, details how hacker communities like the “Honkers,” who targeted Western websites they deemed harmful to China, have been recruited by the Chinese government to become officially sanctioned cyberspies.
Spain Leaves Key Under Mat for Huawei: A recent deal between the Spanish government and Huawei allowing the company to manage Spain’s lawful intercept system has sparked cybersecurity concerns.
China denies link to espionage group accused of attacking Singapore critical infrastructure: Singapore recently suffered a cyberattack on critical infrastructure by a group called UNC 3886, which cybersecurity firms have described as a “China-nexus” group. The Chinese embassy in Singapore denied any connection to the attack.
Diaspora Community & Transnational Repression 海外社群和跨国镇压
Innovative Chinese dissident uses cryptocurrency to fund his activism: Exiled pro-democracy activist Li Ying, also known as “Teacher Li”, launched a cryptocurrency, $Li, sparking new discussion about possible uses of cryptocurrency to support human rights defenders and democracy activists in mainland China. While some have criticized Li for purely seeking profit, others see it as an innovative new way to raise funding for domestic activism in China.
Human Rights Defenders & Civil Society 人权捍卫者与公民社会
Gov't defends Jimmy Lai's detention arrangements after newspaper op-ed alleges 'appalling conditions' in custody: A Wall Street Journal op-ed described Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai’s detention conditions as “appalling,” raising concerns about the heat in Lai’s non-air-conditioned solitary confinement cell and health concerns given his advanced age. Overseas advocates have called out the government’s “aggressive” response to inquiries about Lai’s detention conditions.
2 jailed Hong Kong activists had unfair trial, lawyers tell court in appeals against subversion convictions: The appeal trials of several pro-democracy Hong Kong activists continued this week. Lawyers for Owen Chow and Winnie Yu claimed that the judges had intervened in questioning and attempted to sway testimony, causing an unfair trial.
Hong Kong activists' appeal ends, judgement due in nine months: The appeals trial for 12 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists ended on Thursday, with judgment to be rendered in 9 months.
Co-organiser of independent book fair rebuts ‘soft resistance’ accusation from Beijing-backed paper Wen Wei Po: A Hong Kong book fair called “Reading Everywhere” has come under fire for selling books with supposedly seditious content, such as a biography of pro-democracy news mogul Jimmy Lai. This is the latest in ill-defined allegations of “soft resistance,” which can entail completely legal acts that authorities consider anathema to their political priorities.
Related: Hong Kong literary organisation calls off book fair, citing ‘factors beyond our control’: The fair, which was scheduled to run for ten days, was suddenly called off after only two. After the city’s official book fair turned away some independent bookstores for publishing works about the 2019 pro-democracy protests, independent book fairs such as the one hosted by the non-profit House of Hong Kong Literature sprang up to promote the city’s publishing industry.
China’s Reach & Internal Control 中国: 内控与外扩
Chinese Officials Helped Cover Up Lead Poisoning of Children, Report Says: Health officials in Gansu province tampered with blood tests to conceal lead poisoning in more than 250 kindergarteners from food coloring used in school meals. Parents and concerned local residents protested outside the school, demanding an investigation.
Xinjiang’s Organ Transplant Expansion Sparks Alarm Over Uyghur Forced Organ Harvesting: International experts and human rights lawyers are raising serious concerns over plans to open six more organ transplant facilities by 2030. Some fear that the new facilities will lead to increased organ harvesting from detained, interned Uyghur prisoners.
China starts building world’s biggest hydropower dam: The dam has drawn criticism from India and Bangladesh, as well as protests from Tibetan groups and environmentalists. Recently, planned hydropower projects in Tibet have inspired rare on-the-ground protests that resulted in brutal crackdowns from authorities.
China's influence in Southeast Asia to increase amid cut in Western aid, study finds: A study released by Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, forecasts increasing Chinese development influence in Southeast Asia, given the combined influence of trade tariffs and development finance cuts from the US.
Backyard Furnaces of Propaganda: Through four new state-run social media platforms like IP Guangdong, Guangdong province is attempting to leverage local and international content creators to popularize external propaganda and advance its soft power, especially targeted towards foreign nationals living in Guangdong.
Bureaucratized Confucianism: How Tradition Became a Tool of Control in China: A new five-part series explores how Chinese authorities are reconstructing Confucianism as a “calibrated instrument of bureaucratic control” and refitting traditional Confucian values to serve the Party’s goals and system.
Hong Kong to add 4,000 sets of surveillance cameras within 2 years: The Hong Kong Police Force is expected to install 2,000 sets of CCTV cameras this year, with each set containing two to three cameras, and another 2,000 sets to be set up in 2026 to further expand coverage.
Related: Hong Kong gov’t to require all taxis to install in-car cameras with audio recording functions by early 2027. Reportedly, only law enforcement agencies, the Transport Department, or those authorized by the department can access the in-car recordings for purposes such as facilitating an investigation related to a traffic-related contravention.
International Responses 国际反应
Oxford University Press to stop publishing China-sponsored science journal: Oxford University Press announced that it will no longer publish a controversial Chinese forensic science journal after allegations that the Chinese Ministry of Justice-sponsored journal’s DNA data were collected from nonconsenting Uyghur subjects.
Hong Kong Watch Briefing on Human Rights Developments: June 2025: Hong Kong Watch, a UK-based nonprofit, released a briefing on recent human rights developments, including Tiananmen Anniversary commemorations, human rights activists’ legal battles, and the disbandment of civil society groups.
Scott Morrison to testify before US House panel on China: The former Australian prime minister will testify about Chinese influence and use of “economic coercion” next week in Washington.
UK: House of Lords must block Chinese influence and halt foreign media ownership: On 22 July, the UK’s House of Lords will vote on whether to allow up to 15 percent foreign ownership of domestic media in the UK. American investment firm RedBird Capital, which is planning to purchase the parent company overseeing the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph and its global distribution, has close ties to China, potentially raising risks of Chinese information influence in UK media and globally.