HRIC Weekly Brief
September 16, 2025
Top News 头条
Human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, known for his defense work in Tibetan, Falun Gong, and HIV/AIDS victim cases, has just been detained in Changsha while meeting the family of a political prisoner. Jiang traveled to Changsha around 3pm today, September 16 (China Standard Time), at the request of a friend. Around 4:45 p.m., while meeting with a member of the family at the Time City Café near Hunan Broadcasting, he was taken away by three unidentified men. His whereabouts remain unknown. Jiang has previously faced detention, strict surveillance, and even torture by the authorities in retaliation for his human rights work. HRIC is concerned about Jiang’s safety and urge the Chinese authorities to release Jiang immediately and explain the circumstances of his detention.
In case you missed it: Documents from Chinese surveillance company Landasoft revealed that despite their claims to the contrary, American tech companies were not only aware that they were partnering with Chinese defense companies to create and empower the state surveillance apparatus, “some also directly pitched their tech as tools for Chinese police to control citizens.” Plus, the largest-ever leak of internal documents about China’s surveillance and censorship system has revealed increasingly sophisticated individual surveillance capacities and alarming domestic and international expansion, including sales of censorship and surveillance systems to countries including Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar.
Law & Policy 法律与政策
Chinese Legislature Seeks Public Comment on 12 Bills: Cybersecurity, Foreign Trade, Ethnic Unity, Corporate Bankruptcy, Environmental Code, Standard Chinese Language & More: The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress is soliciting public comment on twelve bills through October 11, 2025, including several key pieces of legislation with major human rights implications.
Related: This Week in Asian Law - September 7-13. “The proposed revisions to the Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (国家通用语言文字法) seek to standardize language usage across education, public services, and digital platforms. Supporters argue that these measures will consolidate national unity but critics warn that they threaten minority languages and cultures.”
Hong Kong lawmakers say no to more rights for same-sex couples: A bill that would have granted limited rights to same-sex couples was opposed by 71 of Hong Kong's 89-member Legislative Council, despite chief executive John Lee’s backing and warning that a rejection would violate Hong Kong's rule of law.
Hong Kong judge rules in favour of lesbian couple seeking to include mothers’ names in son’s birth certificate: The judicial review stemmed from the couple’s challenge in 2023, when they went to court to seek a declaration under the Parent and Child Ordinance to recognize both mothers, who both biologically contributed to their son’s birth through RIVF, as the child’s legal parents and add both names on his birth certificate.
Cyber Security & Digital Rights 网络安全与数字权利
Interview: Jessica Batke and Laura Edelson on China’s “Locknet”: The authors of "The Locknet: How China Controls Its Internet and Why It Matters," an overview of China’s online censorship system, shared their thoughts on the future of circumvention. “Instead of making monolith technologies that are really robust and really technically sound, but are single points of failure that a state actor can devote a lot of resources to taking down, we should be investing in smaller, frankly shorter-lived bits of technology that might only stay up for 18 months,” explains computer science professor Laura Edelson.
AI Assists Chinese External Propaganda: A new report by Graphika found that a China-based network of domains and social media accounts have been engaging in external propaganda with the use of AI tools to “launder” Chinese state-media content and disseminate it in different languages.
Related: For Beijing’s Foreign Disinformation, The Era of AI-Driven Operations Has Arrived. The latest research on how generative AI tools are being deployed and integrated into China-linked foreign-facing disinformation campaigns shows that it is being used for both content creation and operations efficiency improvements, as well as an expansion of covered topics that may not be explicitly China-related but are relevant to Beijing’s interests.
Censorship Smothers Criticism of Military Parade: A recent censorship directive relating to the military parade in Beijing was leaked online, which advised cyber-regulators to remain vigilant against a long list of “ideological risks” related to the military parade and other events during the third quarter of the year.
China’s internet regulator says social media app Xiaohongshu issued ‘strict punishment’ over ‘negative’ posts: Xiaohongshu was criticized for hosting “numerous posts hyping celebrities’ personal dynamics and trivial matters and other negative content frequently populating the hot search list.” The platform is usually seen as relatively less censored, as users can be found posting content related to LGBTQ+ and single women, topics often considered sensitive in China.
Diaspora Community & Transnational Repression 海外社群和跨国镇压
After the Layoffs: Reflecting upon the personal impact of the shutdown of Radio Free Asia (RFA), ex-RFA journalists from China and Hong Kong discuss their sudden dismissal, the future, and the importance of maintaining journalistic integrity and resisting censorship.
British, Chinese nationals suspected of smuggling military tech flee Serbia house arrest: John Miller and Cui Guanghai had been detained in Belgrade since late April on a U.S. warrant accusing them of enlisting individuals to follow and prevent a U.S.-based Chinese dissident from protesting against Xi Jinping, as well as attempting to obtain and transfer sensitive US military technology to China.
Human Rights Defenders & Civil Society 人权捍卫者与公民社会
HRIC on X/Twitter: Hubei dissident Wang Yuping, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power," was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital by three police officers and subjected to forced medication without family accompaniment or legal procedures, just 5 months after his release.
HRIC on X/Twitter: The arrest and detention documents of Mei Shilin, who hung protest banners on the overpass at Chadianzi Bus Station in Chengdu in the early hours of April 15, 2025, have been obtained and published for the first time. He was charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble and is being held at the Chengdu Detention Center.
Hong Kong artist handed 3-week suspended jail sentence over ‘freedom’ graffiti: Chan King-fai was accused of tagging graffiti that depicted the Chinese characters for “freedom,” combined with dollar signs, in Kwai Chung and Sha Tin in 2023.
Macau’s first ‘patriots only’ election sees low turnout: Turnout was just 53 percent of more than 328,000 registered voters, putting this vote fifth out of seven elections held post-handover in terms of participation.
Ten Years: has the hit film’s dystopian vision of Hong Kong in 2025 become a reality?: The 2015 film, now showing at the Hong Kong film festival UK in London, was intended as a dystopic depiction of Hong Kong under the increasing influence of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet, many of its predictions have now come to pass.
China’s Reach & Internal Control 中国: 内控与外扩
China pilots village surveillance in Solomon Islands, seeks stability: In the Solomon Islands, Chinese police have visited several villages this year to implement the fengqiao method of community surveillance, originally implemented by Mao Zedong in the 1960s, by piloting fingerprint and data collection and familiarizing children with surveillance drones by playing games.
China Reacts to Nepal Protest Movement: On Chinese social media, while some nationalist accounts argued that the U.S. was behind the protests in Nepal, others pushed back against such claims, pointing out that reducing Asian protests to “Western incitement” minimizes the agency of the protestors, who naturally have the instinct to fight for their own interests.
International Responses 国际反应
US and China reach a framework deal for the ownership of TikTok: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that a tentative deal has been reached to switch TikTok from China’s ByteDance to U.S.-based ownership.