HRIC Weekly Brief
June 9, 2026
Top News 头条
Last week, the 37th anniversary of the June Fourth Tiananmen Massacre was met by commemoration activities, statements, and continued repression and censorship from the CCP authorities. HRIC condemns all repression of Tiananmen commemoration activities, particularly the restrictions placed on the Tiananmen Mothers, who were prevented from mourning together at Wan’an Cemetery for the first time since 2009.
In Chongqing, this week, public anger over a case of severe animal cruelty has escalated into public gatherings and protests, with residents even calling for the enactment of a law for the protection of animals. These events have been heavily censored by the authorities.
This week’s issue includes a special section on June Fourth.
June Fourth 37th Anniversary 六四37周年
HRIC Executive Director Fengsuo Zhou Delivers Keynote at National Endowment for Democracy Commemoration of 37th Anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre: “The struggle of 1989 has never ended. It continues to inspire generations of human rights defenders: lawyers, pastors, labor activists, journalists, democracy advocates, and the young people of the White Paper generation. Today, in dozens of cities around the world, people continue to gather for vigils and rallies.”
37th Anniversary of June 4th | Tiananmen Mother Zhang Xianling: Thank you for not forgetting to condemn the June 4th crackdown for 37 years and urging the Chinese government to face up to the historical truth: Zhang Xianling, one of the last surviving founders of the Tiananmen Mothers issued a message of gratitude to all who have continued to condemn the massacre for 37 years, renewing the group’s three core demands to the Chinese government: truth, accountability, and compensation for victims’ families.
HRIC on Twitter/X: A Chinese college student allowed HRIC to share their anonymous statement in commemoration of the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. They wrote: “Remember the spirit of June Fourth; preserve the spark from our predecessors. One day, we will be able to exert our own great and small strengths to awaken this land from its long nightmare.”
HRIC on Twitter/X: Over 2000 people gathered outside Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in heavy rain for the annual vigil themed “Memory Beyond Borders, Resistance Without Boundaries,” observing 64 seconds of silence to mark the 37th anniversary of the crackdown. Taiwan is now widely regarded as the only place in the Chinese-speaking world where large-scale public Tiananmen commemorations can still be held.
HRIC on Twitter/X: HRIC co-hosted an event in New York to commemorate June Fourth and celebrate the book release of “NAFUS and the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement” by Wang Xing. This book’s contribution lies in its break from historical narratives focused solely on individual figures or major events. By systematically tracing the movement’s development from the perspectives of organizational building and collective action, it provides precious firsthand materials for understanding the internal logic of China’s democracy movement.
In Pictures: Foreign missions in Hong Kong mark Tiananmen crackdown with candles, social media tributes: With Hong Kong’s public commemorations banned, the US, UK, EU, Canadian, and other Western consulates lit candles on their premises and posted tribute messages on social media to mark the 37th anniversary—a quiet but visible act of defiance against the city’s political climate that drew no official response from the Hong Kong government.
No vigils: Hong Kong’s Victoria Park silent on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary: For the fourth consecutive year, a pro-China patriotic food carnival was held in Victoria Park on June 4, the same site where hundreds of thousands once gathered annually for candlelight vigils. Local media made no mention of the anniversary, with one veteran press freedom monitor noting that Hong Kong journalists “simply do not dare to touch the subject anymore.”
Tiananmen dissident lambasts China on massacre anniversary: Student protest leader Wu’er Kaixi, speaking in Tokyo on the 37th anniversary, declared that China’s democracy movement “is still there” and is sustained by hope, the same force that drove a generation to Tiananmen Square in 1989, and called on the international community to resist pressure from Beijing to forget what happened.
Hong Kong artist who tried to mark Tiananmen massacre intercepted by police: Performance artist Sanmu Chen was stopped and searched by plainclothes police within minutes of displaying a red thread 6.4 meters long — a symbolic reference to the June 4 crackdown date — near Causeway Bay, where Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen vigil was once held, marking the third consecutive year he has been detained during the anniversary period.
Related: Hong Kong police stop another performance artist on eve of Tiananmen crackdown anniversary. Hours after stopping Sanmu Chan with his 6.4-metre red string, Hong Kong police also stopped and searched a second performance artist, Chan Mei-tung, who had appeared in Causeway Bay holding a question mark-shaped balloon, escorting her to the nearby MTR station and instructing her to destroy it — as part of a heavy plainclothes police deployment across the anniversary’s traditional commemoration zone.
7 taken away by Hong Kong police on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary: Seven people, including former League of Social Democrats chairperson Chan Po-ying, who appeared with a yellow paper flower, were taken away by police in Causeway Bay on the anniversary, while activists who bowed in prayer, held candles, or simply sat cross-legged near the Sogo department store outside the former vigil site were also removed from the area.
Trial of Hong Kong Tiananmen activists looms over crackdown anniversary: The 37th anniversary was shadowed by the ongoing national security trial of Hong Kong Alliance leaders Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung — charged with inciting subversion for organizing Tiananmen vigils — with residents marking the day through subtle personal acts as the former Victoria Park vigil site hosted a pro-Beijing food carnival for the fourth consecutive year.
Related: Ahead of Tiananmen Anniversary, Protest Held to Call for Release of Hong Kong Activists. Hong Kong diaspora and democracy supporters held a demonstration ahead of the anniversary calling for the release of jailed Tiananmen vigil organizers Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, whose NSL trial is framed by activists as a direct effort by Beijing to permanently criminalize the memory of June 4 in Hong Kong.
HRIC on Twitter/X: On X, a Japanese used created an image using Japanese railway station names whose initial characters spelled out “June Fourth Beijing Tiananmen.” The post was later reportedly suspended after being mass reported.
Related: Sensitive Words: Search Censorship, Tiananmen, “8 Squared,” and “64 + Division”. Ahead of the 37th anniversary of the June Fourth crackdown, CDT documented an expanding list of Citizen Lab-tracked search terms censored across Chinese platforms—including oblique numerical codes like “8 squared,” “535 + 64,” and “64 + division”—with editors noting that the phrase “64 + division” in particular reflects authorities’ heightened alertness toward any content that might trigger societal polarization around the June 4 anniversary.
‘Every year I get new pictures’: the fight to preserve the memory of Tiananmen: Amid intensifying erasure efforts by Beijing, a network of diaspora archivists and international institutions is preserving a growing body of photographs, diaries, and eyewitness accounts of the massacre — including the legally contested diaries of senior CCP official Li Rui, who witnessed the crackdown from a balcony overlooking Tiananmen Square and described it as a “black weekend” of soldiers “firing randomly,” now housed at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
HRIC on Twitter/X: In an interview with RFI, young activist Jiang Bu offered a key observation: the “June Fourth” crackdown did not end in 1989, but exists as an everyday presence. From the “routine construction” on Tiananmen Square during specific periods, to live-stream sellers inadvertently triggering censorship taboos with a “tank cake,” the fear embedded in the stability-maintenance system allows this history to permeate the air like an invisible gas.
President Lai urges China to confront Tiananmen Square legacy, grant civil rights: Taiwan President Lai Ching-te issued a statement on the 37th anniversary calling on Beijing to confront the historical truth of the Tiananmen crackdown and restore the civil rights and political freedoms denied to the Chinese people, framing democratic Taiwan as a model for how Chinese society could one day reckon with its past.
US top diplomat’s Tiananmen comments ‘smear’ China, Beijing says: Beijing’s foreign ministry accused Secretary of State Rubio of “smearing” China after he issued a statement marking the 37th anniversary and condemning the crackdown, with a ministry spokesperson repeating the standard line that the Party had long ago made “a clear conclusion” on the 1989 “political incident” and that the US had no right to “point fingers.”
[Feng Xigan’s Thirteen Dimensions] Opening “Witnesses of June Fourth”: Hong Kong media commentator Feng Xigan reviewed “Witnesses of June Fourth,” a newly published collection of firsthand testimonies from survivors, journalists, and bystanders of the 1989 crackdown, describing it as an essential act of memory preservation at a moment when direct accounts are increasingly difficult to access and the living witnesses are aging.
Law & Policy 法律与政策
Security law update to formalise power of Hong Kong leader to certify any criminal act as a national security case: The Hong Kong government has proposed subsidiary legislation under Article 23 granting the chief executive binding power to certify any criminal act as a national security offense—meaning that if an alternative charge exists for the same act, it too would automatically be treated as a national security offense—with the law designed to pass via negative vetting before full LegCo scrutiny.
China integrating lawfare into broader Taiwan strategy: U.S. report: A CECC report on the CCP’s transnational repression and malign influence in 2025 found that China has escalated from administrative sanctions to criminal prosecutions against Taiwan-linked figures, citing Beijing’s criminal investigation of DPP legislator Puma Shen as a prime example, as lawfare becomes a central instrument of Beijing’s cross-strait pressure campaign rather than a peripheral one.
Hong Kong competition body mulls criminalising bid-rigging after deadly Tai Po blaze: Following reports that bid-rigging syndicates corrupted the renovation project at Wang Fuk Court, where a 2025 fire killed 168 people, the Competition Commission announced plans to amend the Competition Ordinance to make bid-rigging a criminal offense carrying up to seven years’ imprisonment, replacing the current civil penalty regime.
China’s New Infant Food Safety Campaign Signals a Shift Toward Continuous Compliance: China’s State Administration for Market Regulation launched a nationwide “Growth Protection” campaign on May 29 introducing continuous, data-driven oversight of infant food manufacturers, brand owners, and distributors, shifting regulatory expectations from one-time product approvals to ongoing compliance and traceability.
China’s ODI Rules Just Changed—Here’s What It Means for Cross-Border Tech Transactions: China’s new Outbound Investment Regulations, effective July 1, 2026, integrate technology export licensing, export controls, and data transfer compliance into a single ODI review framework.
Cyber Security & Digital Rights 网络安全与数字权利
Xianzi Silenced, Again: Weibo permanently banned the account of Zhou Xiaoxuan, also known as known as Xianzi, the face of China’s #MeToo movement who publicly accused a CCTV host of sexual harassment in 2018, in the latest of multiple platform silencings that authorities have imposed on her since her case was dismissed by a court in 2022.
HRIC on Twitter/X: VIGINUM (France's service for vigilance and protection against foreign digital interference) released a report uncovering direct links between 13 multilingual fake news websites and the Chinese state media CGTN (China Global Television Network).
HRIC on Twitter/X: Chinese company Geedge Networks is developing an artificial intelligence technology aimed not just at monitoring dissidents, but at predicting who “might” become a dissident before they take any public action.
Leaked Documents Show the Success of China’s VPN Crackdown: Leaked documents on cross-border internet traffic from China’s most surveilled region suggest that VPN usage is far closer to a few percentage points of the population than the often-cited 30 percent estimate. This article argues that Beijing’s combination of platform substitution, aggressive technical blocking, and legal deterrence has successfully kept cross-border internet traffic to a minimum and rendered the Great Firewall more effective than widely assumed.
Chinese spies use LinkedIn to target UK officials and military staff: the UK’s MI5 warned that Chinese military intelligence operatives are using an “aggressive” strategy on LinkedIn and other job platforms to target UK government officials, military personnel, and anyone with access to classified information by posing as employees of private consultancies or think tanks and advertising fake foreign policy and defense analyst roles before pressuring recruits to provide sensitive, non-public information.
Related: Chinese spies pose as recruiters to glean state secrets, Five Eyes alliance warns. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance (comprising the UK, US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) issued an unprecedented joint bulletin extending the warning beyond the UK, confirming that Chinese intelligence is systematically targeting government, military, academic, and think-tank personnel across all five countries through fake recruitment campaigns on LinkedIn, Indeed, and Upwork.
Diaspora Community & Transnational Repression 海外社群和跨国镇压
HRIC on Twitter/X: On the 37th anniversary of June Fourth, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) held a hearing on Capitol Hill to examine the issue of China’s transnational repression. Liu Jun, father of U.S. figure skating star Alyssa Liu, testified. At the end of 2021, he received a call from someone claiming to be an official from the U.S. Olympic Committee, demanding passport information for both father and daughter. A Chinese agent in the Bay Area had tracked his movements, installed a GPS on his car, and attempted to obtain the passports and Social Security numbers of his entire family.
Author of Home Office report on China reveals attempts to compromise him: Dr. David Wilson, author of a now-declassified Home Office-sponsored report on the Chinese state and organized crime in the UK, revealed that he was the target of multiple failed honey traps and a suspected compromise attempt by a naturalized British citizen who had been a Chinese national, interference he said began as soon as he started interviewing officials from 14 UK law enforcement agencies about CCP-linked policing challenges.
American journalist pleads guilty to acting as unregistered agent for China: Thomas Pauken II, 50, who had lived in China since 2010 and worked for Chinese state media outlets, pleaded guilty in federal court to acting as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security from 2019 to 2026, including receiving $100,000 for intelligence reports and traveling to Washington in an FBI-monitored sting operation to recruit a Trump administration-linked official.
Uyghur Advocates Highlight Transnational Repression at Oslo Freedom Forum 2026: At the 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum, Rushan Abbas warned that Beijing’s repression of Uyghurs is intensifying under the new Ethnic Unity Law, highlighting the continued imprisonment of her own sister, Gulshan Abbas, as an example of China’s use of family detention as coercion.
Human Rights Defenders & Civil Society 人权捍卫者与公民社会
Tibetan monk Jamyang Tashi of Labrang Tashikhyil Monastery detained again, fate unknown: Jamyang Tashi was detained for a second time by Sangchu County police in early February, just two months after being released from a previous six-month arbitrary detention, on suspicion of maintaining contact with Tibetans in exile. The authorities disclosed no charges and warned his family against making inquiries about his whereabouts.
US law society’s Hong Kong conference plan meets scholar resistance: The US-based Law and Society Association’s decision to hold its next annual meeting in Hong Kong has drawn significant pushback from scholars who argue that holding an academic conference on law and society in a city whose legal system now operates under national security restrictions sends the wrong signal and may compromise the safety and academic freedom of participants.
China wants to suppress independent cinema. But young film-makers are undaunted by red lines: While seasoned Chinese directors describe a suffocating censorship regime that has crushed the country’s once-lively independent film festival scene and requires a government “dragon seal” even to submit films abroad, a new generation of young filmmakers attending underground workshops remains undaunted, even though their mentors warn that the moment they attempt a feature film, censorship will become their nightmare.
Hong Kong’s LGBTQ community ponders future of Pride events after Pink Dot’s second cancellation: After Pink Dot was canceled for the second consecutive year when its venue backed out citing unexplained “licensing issues,” Hong Kong’s LGBTQ community is confronting a broader question about whether large-scale outdoor Pride events have any viable future in the city, given that a gay-themed play, an outdoor Pride committee event, and multiple venue applications have also been blocked or denied in the past year.
The daughters who were raised to be everything under China’s one-child policy: The essay blends personal reflection with peer testimonies to explore the distinctive psychology of only daughters raised under China’s One-Child Policy. This generation received levels of parental investment once reserved for sons, yet also inherited the weight of being the sole object of family attention, expectation, and control, creating a tension between emotional abundance and emotional scarcity that now defines their adult relationships.
A brief history of anonymously scattered leaflets: HKFP columnist Tim Hamlett uses the prosecution of a 55-year-old public housing resident charged with throwing homemade political leaflets from his 12th-floor flat to draw a pointed parallel with Cold War-era anti-communist pamphlet-scattering cases, reflecting on how the act of anonymous dissent, once treated as a sign of democratic vitality, has now been recriminalized in Hong Kong.
China’s Reach & Internal Control 中国: 内控与外扩
Human rights and religious freedom in Tibet worsening: TCHRD 2025 annual report: The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy launched its 2025 Annual Report alongside a 13-year Religious Freedom Report at a press conference in Dharamshala, describing 2025 as a year of intensified political and ideological control over Tibet. The report documents the mass arrests of Tibetans opposing mining and infrastructure projects, the extrajudicial killing of Tibetan religious leader Tulku Hungkar Dorje in Vietnam during a joint Chinese-Vietnamese operation, and an expanding campaign of transnational repression targeting Tibetan activists and religious figures abroad.
Related: 2025 Annual Report on the Human Rights Situation in Tibet. Tibet received a Global Freedom Score of zero out of 100 for the third consecutive year from Freedom House. Notably, new monastery regulations enforced from January 2025 require religious institutions to formally support CCP leadership as a condition of operation.
China exporting its surveillance state to others to help entrench their power: China has held nearly 900 police-training sessions for at least 138 countries since 2000, embedded officers in police forces in Africa and the Pacific, and supplied surveillance infrastructure across Southeast Asia and Latin America. The Chinese surveillance model appeals to authoritarian and weak democratic governments seeking to entrench their hold on power while suppressing dissent.
China bans New Zealand lawmakers over Taiwan trip: In China’s first-ever travel ban imposed on New Zealand parliamentarians, Beijing barred four cross-party MPs who had met Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim in May from entering mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau for one year, and demanded they apologize, a demand all four publicly refused.
New Research Warns Chinese Trade Network Could Undermine Uyghur Forced Labor Law: A Jamestown Foundation study warns that an expanding network of Chinese-controlled digital trade platforms and logistics systems is restricting US authorities and investigators from accessing the supply chain data needed to enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, creating a growing documentation gap that allows goods linked to forced labor to enter the US market while Beijing’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law provides a potential legal mechanism to block information from reaching Customs and Border Protection.
The head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee demanded that Tibetan studies serve political goals and emphasized enhancing the CPC’s international discourse power on Tibet: United Front Work Department head Li Ganjie visited China’s largest Tibetan studies institution and directed Tibetologists to “strengthen theoretical guidance” and treat their scholarship as an instrument for “enhancing China’s international discourse power on Tibet-related matters.”
International Responses 国际反应
Lawmakers pass resolution condemning China’s obstruction of Lai Eswatini trip: Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan unanimously passed a resolution condemning Beijing’s alleged coercion of Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar into revoking overflight permits for President Lai’s April state visit to Eswatini, a trip Lai ultimately completed by secretly boarding King Mswati III’s personal aircraft.
New prime minister says Solomon Islands will review its secretive security treaty with China: Solomon Islands’ new Prime Minister Matthew Wale announced during his first overseas trip to Canberra that his government would review the 2022 security treaty with Beijing, while simultaneously agreeing to pursue an upgraded comprehensive strategic treaty with Australia.
HRIC on Twitter/X: Florida U.S. Senator Rick Scott and Tennessee U.S. Representative Andy Ogles have jointly introduced the “Tiananmen Square Memorial Act of 2026,” which proposes officially renaming a segment of the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. to “Tiananmen Square Memorial Boulevard.”
Parliamentarians from the three Baltic states issued a joint statement condemning the Chinese Communist Party on the Tibet issue: Parliamentarians from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania issued a joint statement condemning China’s Ethnic Unity and Progress Law and its broader repression in Tibet, calling on Beijing to resume dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s envoys, release all Tibetan political prisoners, and allow independent international observers access to the region.
French lawmakers called on Macron to express concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s use of the “Law on the Promotion of National Unity and Progress” to suppress Tibetans: A cross-party group of French National Assembly members called on President Macron to formally raise the CCP’s Ethnic Unity and Progress Law with Beijing, warning that the legislation represents a significant escalation in China’s legal campaign to erase Tibetan identity, and calling on France to press for EU sanctions against officials responsible for its drafting and implementation.
Companion House Bill asks US to investigate China’s crime-against-humanity atrocities in Tibet: Bipartisan House sponsors Chris Smith and Tom Suozzi introduced a companion to the Senate’s Tibet Atrocities Determination Act, requiring the Secretary of State to submit a formal report to Congress within one year assessing whether China’s actions in Tibet constitute genocide or crimes against humanity, including documentation of atrocities, analysis of Sinicization policies, and specific recommendations for sanctions, visa restrictions, and diplomatic responses.
Republicans probe China’s influence in data center opposition: Three House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel and Trump’s science advisors citing “strong evidence” that China-linked entities are conducting coordinated influence campaigns to fuel grassroots American opposition to AI data center construction, requesting a briefing by June 18 as state-level moratoriums and community protests threaten to slow US AI infrastructure development.
Trump keeps the door open to a call with Taiwan’s president even though China has warned against it: Trump told reporters that he would “always talk” to Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te despite Beijing publicly urging him not to engage directly with Taipei’s leader. Analysts suggest the ambiguity may give Trump room to announce a $14 billion arms sale while managing Beijing blowback.
Taiwan coast guard says deploys vessels in response to China operation: Taiwan’s coast guard deployed vessels to “respond appropriately” to a Chinese law enforcement operation in waters east of the island, which Taipei declared a violation of international law.
ASEAN’s U.S.-China Balancing Act Is Getting Much Harder: ASEAN economies face a worsening squeeze between two opposing forces: the Trump administration’s tariff and economic security agenda, which has targeted Southeast Asian nations for allegedly serving as China export proxies, and a surge of Chinese industrial overcapacity whose exports to ASEAN rose 19 percent in early 2026.
France hits Shein with 22 million euros in new fines over consumer violations: France’s consumer protection watchdog DGCCRF imposed two fines totaling over €22 million on Shein for failures in product traceability, environmental labeling, microplastics disclosure, and consumer return rights, bringing total penalties levied by French authorities against the fast-fashion platform to over €210 million within roughly a year.