By Simon Denyer, Published: September 13

BEIJING — Last month, Chinese police invited Wang Gongquan in for a “cup of tea,” often a prelude here to detention. He had launched a public petition calling for the release of arrested dissident Xu Zhiyong, and the authorities were not amused. But Wang effectively told the police to forget it — he had no time for tea, he was traveling, and he had said everything he wanted to say.

Wang figured he could get away with defying the Chinese government. He was a respected businessman, a multimillionaire who had made a fortune in real estate and in Silicon Valley. He was a social media sensation, and he had been careful, as he saw it, not to break any laws. But he knew he was taking a chance.

On Friday, the police came for him.

More than 20 police officers arrived at Wang’s house at 11:30 a.m. with a warrant accusing him of “organizing a mob to disturb public order.” He was led off to criminal detention as his wife looked on, she later told fellow activist and columnist Chen Min. The police searched his house for two hours and seized his computer, according to Chen, who had co-written the petition.

Since Xi Jinping took over as president in March, China has launched a crackdown on political activists and critics, whether they have been organizing street protests or merely commenting online. Wang, as one of a small band of Chinese entrepreneurs calling for political reform and a leading member of a new group campaigning for citizens’ rights, knew he was sailing close to the wind.

“It is people’s natural instinct to pursue freedom, but you have to decide how big a price you are prepared to pay for it,” he said during a series of interviews over the past two months.

Wang, 51, says he is not like other businessmen: Instead of spending time at banquets, on yachts or playing golf, he reads books. He says he has missed many business opportunities because he was not prepared to “collude with power.”

But in July, he went a step further, setting himself up in what he calls “constructive opposition” to China’s political system. In their petition for Xu’s release, Wang and Chen vowed never to “yield in the face of despotic power.”

“We believe we stand on the right side of history,” they wrote. “There is no amount of intimidation or bribery that can divide us.”

Usually dressed in a Chinese silk shirt, with rimless spectacles and a Tissot watch, Wang cuts an elegant figure. Lining his office in Beijing’s central business district are shelves of books he has commissioned or published to preserve the poetry of the turbulent period between the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 and the advent of communist rule in 1949, a cultural era long neglected for political reasons.

As a promising engineering student in the early 1980s, Wang was recruited by the Communist Party and later served in the propaganda department of the Jilin provincial government. But he became disillusioned, he said, after studying the history of the global communist movement and being granted access to books banned for ordinary citizens. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he was detained for six months, because, he said, some of his friends had taken part in the demonstrations.

On his release, Wang made his fortune, first by investing in real estate on the island of Hainan off southern China in the 1990s, then by investing in Silicon Valley during the dot.com boom later that decade. In 2004, he became a Buddhist and finally quit the Communist Party, an atheist organization.

But in 2011, Wang became the most talked-about man in the country, when he announced on his Weibo social media account that he was leaving his wife and eloping with his mistress. “I can’t explain to you guys and I am ashamed. So I leave without saying goodbye,” he wrote. “I kowtow for forgiveness!” The post went viral, reposted more than 70,000 times.

Ashamed or not, Wang later posted a video of himself standing in front of a lake singing a self-penned ode to his mistress that professed “a heart longing for love.” Nicknamed the “Emperor of Elopement,” Wang quit the venture-capital firm he had founded and spent a year as a visiting scholar at Columbia University, where he says he studied civil society, democratic transformations around the world and the supervision of public finances.

Even before that, however, Wang had emerged as a human rights advocate in China, protesting earlier in 2011 outside one of the secretive “black jails” where petitioners who bring grievances to the central government are often locked up because their complaints embarrass those in power. More recently, he has become a leading member of Xu’s New Citizens Movement, a social campaign to promote civil society, the rule of law and limits on the unbridled power of Communist Party officials.

This year, members angered authorities by unfurling banners in Beijing demanding that officials publicly declare their assets. More than a dozen were later arrested or detained, including Xu and now Wang, although neither took part in the protests.

Business leaders and activists said the detention of someone as respected as Wang would send a chill throughout their ranks.

“It’s a very serious warning for everyone,” said Chen, better known by his pen name, Xiao Shu. “I am prepared for the worst.”

Everyone is scared, said a businessman who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It seems we are no longer allowed speak out, or care about the country anymore,” he said.

With corruption rampant, inequality growing and the environment devastated, Wang says, citizens and entrepreneurs need to join together to push for change, or the country risks a social explosion. Like many of his peers, Wang says China needs a judiciary that is independent of the Communist Party, stronger property rights and economic growth that is less reliant on state-directed investment.

His father recently warned him over dinner not to put himself in jeopardy by opposing the government, he said in one interview; a longtime friend broke with him for the same reason. He had already steeled himself for his possible arrest but insisted he had no regrets.

“In China, we are at a moment when the old ruling system of the party and traditional value systems are changing and under reconstruction,” he said. “A new era is coming.”

Wang said he had refused to have tea with the police because they would not say whom he would be meeting with. “To be frank, I also wanted to conduct a small experiment,” he said. “I wanted to test if they came to me just to talk or if they want to pursue me. It seems they don’t mean to arrest me yet.”

Last Saturday, he attended his daughter’s wedding in Zhejiang province, and his last toast was “to love the motherland and obey your conscience,” according to a fellow guest.

Less than a week later, Wang was behind bars.

Zhang Jie contributed to this report.

王功权

消息称，曾声援被捕法律学者许志永的中国知名投资人王功权被北京警方以扰乱秩序为由带走。

媒体人笑蜀对BBC中文网说，据王功权的家人对他称，北京市公安局20多名警员星期五（9月13日）上午到其家中搜查近两个小时，随后把王功权以及其电脑等物品带走。

笑蜀说，警方出示了传唤通知书，涉嫌罪名是扰乱公共场所秩序。目前王功权下落不明。

王功权与笑蜀曾在7月份联署声援被抓捕的许志永。许志永在8月份被当局以“聚众扰乱公共秩序”的罪名正式逮捕。

这份联署名为《许志永事件之公民社会呼吁书》，目前已有近3000人联署。其他联署人还包括经济学家茅于轼与《南方人物周刊》主笔何三畏等。

《呼吁书》要求当局尽快释放许志永和其他因参与“新公民运动”而被拘禁的人员。

笑蜀向BBC中文网转发的传唤通知书所示，传唤王功权的单位为北京市公安局公共交通安全保卫分局。北京市公安局暂未对王功权被带走的消息有任何公布。

据报道，王功权被抓捕前刚在星期一参加了女儿王若静的婚礼，SOHO中国董事长潘石屹等“万通六君子”均有到贺。
“天使投资人”

53岁的王功权早年曾在中共吉林省委宣传部任职，后活跃于投资界，被视为“天使投资者”，从事风险投资。据财新网上的王功权博客介绍，他还是一位诗人。

王功权曾为鼎晖创业投资基金与国际数据集团（IDG）合伙人，投资过奇虎等知名中国网企。

2011年，王功权在微博上宣称与女资本家王琴私奔，并退出鼎晖和奇虎董事会。他后来在纽约哥伦比亚大学东亚研究所进修，今年1月返回中国。

王功权与许志永均为原公盟法律研究中心成员，该中心于2009年被北京当局以偷税漏税为由查封。

据称王功权的新浪和腾讯微博粉丝超过100万，但因他在微博上转发公盟汗衫的照片，两个帐号于去年9月被注销。目前腾讯微博把王功权的名字列为敏感词，无法搜索。

（撰稿：叶靖斯　责编：萧尔）

BEIJING (AP) — The formal arrest this week of one of China’s most well-known civil rights advocates underscores how unnerved the country’s new leaders are by any independent, vaguely organized political action — even if it is as mundane as gathering for a dinner party.

Beijing activist Xu Zhiyong, arrested Thursday, is one of the founders of a loose network of campaigners known as the New Citizens Movement, who, among other things, have called for people to get together on the last Saturday of each month for dinner to discuss China’s constitution and other legal issues.

Xu had been detained last month by Beijing police in the latest blow by Chinese authorities against a beleaguered activist community that has seen a widespread crackdown against peaceful assembly.

Zhang Qingfang, a lawyer for Xu, said his partner learned of Xu’s formal arrest from Beijing’s prosecuting office Thursday and that the arrest document should be delivered to Xu’s family soon. The Beijing prosecuting office could not immediately provide information on Xu.

Police have accused Xu of “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place,” a vaguely defined charge that rights groups say has increasingly been used against activists.

The New Citizens participants have lobbied for the rights of rural migrant children to attend city schools and for officials to declare their assets — down-to-earth issues that resonate with the Chinese public and make China’s leaders worry about protests that could gain momentum and challenge Communist Party rule.

The campaigners have also held small demonstrations in several cities, usually involving a handful of people holding banners, making speeches or collecting signatures.

“Even though our principles and requests are moderate and lawful, the authorities see it as a challenge to the entire social order,” Xu’s friend and fellow legal activist Teng Biao said in a recent interview in Beijing. “In their view, they cannot tolerate this kind of activity that takes to the streets.”

Teng said that dinner gatherings have been held in as many as 31 cities, though attendance varies from a couple of dozen people to around 100.

Teng said peaceful demonstrations were the inevitable next step in the evolution of China’s activist community over the past decade. “It is not going to stop at writing essays or joint letters or petitions posted online,” Teng said. “We need to take specific actions to fight for our rights.”

During his detention, Xu urged Chinese citizens to unite in pursuing democratic freedoms in a video posted online.

“No matter how utterly defeated or absurd this society is,” Xu said in the video, “this country needs brave citizens who can stand up and hold fast to their convictions, who can take their rights, responsibilities and their dreams seriously.”

Hu Jia, a veteran activist, said he attended one such dinner in December in Beijing at which around 100 participants discussed how to push rules for officials to declare their financial assets. Such a mechanism has been recommended by many mainstream anti-corruption experts as an effective way to curb graft, but they also acknowledge that officials are wary of introducing such reforms any time soon.

Hu said discussions at the dinner led to the drafting of recommendations for lawmakers, as well as several demonstrations in Beijing earlier this year. Campaigners held banners outside subway stations and outside a temple fair during the spring festival, he said. A number of demonstrators have since been detained.

“When people gather across many cities for dinner to discuss politics on the same day every month, the authorities panic,” Hu said.

Such a civil rights movement, however loosely organized, appears to have unsettled China’s recently appointed leadership, which is eager to cement its authority. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the country’s top prosecutor, issued a notice in June saying that “national political security, public safety and social harmony and stability” should be of paramount importance to Chinese authorities.

More than 50 people have been detained or arrested for “unlawful assembly” and other similar charges in Beijing and half a dozen other provinces since March this year, according to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Wen Yunchao, an online rights activist who was recently a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, has kept an independent, incomplete tally from January. He says around 100 people remain detained or arrested for political expression.

Most recently, the veteran rights activist Yang Maodong, who goes by the alias Guo Feixiong, was detained Saturday for “disrupting public order.”

In an editorial Monday, the Global Times newspaper, a nationalist tabloid paper published by the Communist Party, criticized Xu and Guo by name — a rare mention of activists who Chinese authorities prefer to treat as nonexistent.

“They are always stirring up society and posing a challenge to social governance,” the editorial said, adding that the country is in a period of “transformation.”

Though the paper does not necessarily reflect the views of the government, the editorial was the closest thing to an official comment on the New Citizen detentions. It warned of legal reprisals for Xu and Yang.

But activists seemed undeterred. Chen Jianfang, a Shanghai-based activist who has tried organizing dinner parties, said the movement was essentially leaderless and would continue despite the detentions.

“We want to use these dinners to discuss exactly why society faces the problem that when ordinary people have been wronged they have nowhere to turn to,” Chen said.

AUGUST 30, 2013 来源：人权观察 Human Rights Watch

(New York) – The Chinese government has undertaken a nationwide crackdown on dissent in an apparent campaign against perceived challenges to one-party rule, Human Rights Watch said today. Since February 2013 the government has arbitrarily detained at least 55 activists, taken into custody critics and online opinion leaders, and increased controls on social media, online expression, and public activism, rolling back the hard-won space China’s civil society has gained in recent years.

The crackdown is unfolding as China campaigns to be elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the UN’s preeminent human rights body, in November 2013, and prepares for the review of its human rights record before the council in October 2013.

“The Chinese government has embarked on a repressive drive at home that attacks the very freedoms that Human Rights Council members are supposed to protect,” said Sophie Richardson, China director. “Every arrest of a peaceful activist further undermines the Chinese government’s standing at home and abroad.”

Seventeen of those arrested in recent months had participated in the New Citizens’ Movement, a peaceful civil rights platform that rejects authoritarianism and promotes freedom, justice, equality, and the rule of law. The New Citizens’ Movement organizes a range of activities, including a nationwide campaign that advocates for the disclosure of assets of public officials as a way to curb corruption, and monthly gatherings over meals for activists around the country to exchange ideas and build solidarity.

On August 2, 2013, the State Prosecution approved the formal arrest of Xu Zhiyong, the most prominent activist detained so far and considered the intellectual force behind the New Citizens’ Movement. Xu has been held since July 16 for “gathering crowds to disturb public order,” even though he has been under house arrest since April. If convicted, Xu faces up to five years in prison. Xu, 40, is a law lecturer at Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications, and was once distinguished by the state broadcaster CCTV as one of the “top ten rule of law people” in China. In 2009 he was forced to disband the legal aid center he helped set up, the Open Constitution Initiative, after police detained him and a co-worker for tax evasion.

“Xu Zhiyong is one of the most important activists behind the birth of China’s ‘rights-defense’ movement that emerged around 2003,” Richardson said. “While Xu’s cautious approach has helped keep him out of jail for the past 10 years, his recent arrest indicates that even safer strategies won’t spare activists from severe consequences.”

The 38 other activists recently detained were taken into custody for organizing and participating in other public, collective actions not directly related to the New Citizens Movement, including protests. Many were charged with crimes such as “gathering crowds to disturb order” and “creating disturbances” and of those, 16 have been released, some on bail. But a number of the activists detained have been charged with the more serious crimes of “inciting subversion” and “subversion.” Inciting subversion carries up to 15 years in prison, while subversion can result in life imprisonment.

Among those detained is prominent activist Guo Feixiong. Guo, a 47-year-old Guangzhou-based lawyer, who has been detained since August 8 for “gathering crowds to disturb public order.” Police have denied Guo access to lawyers on the grounds that his case involves national security. Beyond his right to legal counsel, Guo’s lawyers are concerned that denying him access to lawyers makes him more likely to be subjected to torture. Guo was tortured during his previous imprisonment between 2006 and 2011.

Government efforts to curb criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party have widened to individual critical voices on the Internet. Since August, the government has taken into custody hundreds of Internet users accused of “spreading rumors” online. Most have been released, but some remain detained under criminal charges. The campaign has targeted influential online opinion leaders, or what the state media call the “big Vs” (V for “verified users”).

According to state media, the State Internet Information Office held a meeting on August 10 with some of these bloggers, including liberal commentator Xue Manzi (also known as Charles Xue), “achieving a consensus” that these opinion leaders would not breach “seven bottom lines,” including China’s “socialist system,” the country’s “national interests,” and “public order.” On August 23, Xue, 60, who has 12 million followers on Sina weibo, one of China’s main social media networks similar to Twitter, was detained for “soliciting a prostitute,” an administrative offense under Chinese law. State-owned media harshly criticized Xue while explicitly warning other “big Vs” against becoming the “loudspeakers” for rumors. Since May, the government has closed down more than 100 “illegal” news web portals, citizen-run websites that have provided important channels for citizens to expose government misconduct.

The crackdown on dissent reflects the general hardline shift taken by the Xi Jinping leadership in recent months. It contrasts sharply with Xi’s rhetoric at the beginning of his presidency in March, when he promised to “uphold the constitution and the rule of law” and “always listen to the voice of the people.”

In April, the office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued an internal directive stressing that the party must eliminate “seven subversive currents” in China today, including those who advocate for “Western constitutional democracy,” “universal values” such as human rights, civil society, and “Western press values.” In June, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate issued a notice demanding that prosecutors at all levels “combat the crimes of endangering national security” by “resolutely combating crimes such as illegal assemblies, the gathering of crowds to disturb social and public order, and others, which aim to subvert state power.” Reflecting an apparent departure from a rule of law approach, the notice stressed that legal organs should “unify social, political, and legal results” in their work, rather than solely base their decisions on the law.

China is currently seeking a seat at the UN Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body charged with addressing human rights violations and promoting respect for human rights. In a pledge submitted in connection with its candidacy, the Chinese government said it “respects the principle of universality of human rights,” and that it “has made unremitting efforts for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Chinese people.” The next elections for the council are slated for November.

Human Rights Watch called on the Chinese government to drop all charges against individuals for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and to ensure that they are not subject to torture or other ill-treatment in detention.

“The authorities’ abuse of the law to go after critics is counter-productive, as it closes one of the only effective channels for airing grievances about the government,” Richardson said. “The government’s only ‘unremitting efforts’ on display these days are the denial of universal rights.”

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union called on China on Wednesday to release one of the country’s most prominent rights activists, Xu Zhiyong, telling Beijing to respect international standards on freedom of expression.

Police arrested Xu, who has called for officials to disclose their wealth, last week, raising the stakes in the government’s crackdown on anti-graft campaigners.

“The EU calls on the Chinese authorities to respect the right to freedom of expression … and to release Xu Zhiyong as well as all other activists who have been detained or put under house arrest for peacefully expressing their views,” Europe’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement.

Western governments have sparred repeatedly with Beijing over human rights and the United States raised Xu’s case this month during its annual rights dialogue with China.

Beijing police arrested Xu on a charge of “gathering a crowd to disturb order in a public place”, one of Xu’s lawyers said at the time. He was detained last month on the same charge. Before that, he had been under house arrest for three months, with no reason given by the authorities.

China has detained at least 16 activists involved in pushing for asset disclosure by officials, in what rights groups say is a new, coordinated crackdown by the ruling Communist Party against graft campaigners.

Tensions between EU and China worsened in May because of a separate row over Chinese solar panel imports to Europe that threatened to start a trade war.

The solar trade dispute, by far the biggest between China and the EU, was defused in July with a deal to set a minimum price for panels from China. But trade tensions are likely to persist because China is seeking to produce sophisticated products that compete with Europe.

(Reporting by Justyna Pawlak; Editing by Alison Williams)

北京警方本周正式逮捕了呼吁政府提高透明度的知名人士许志永，外界担心中国当局正在加大力度打击要求其放权的呼声。
全文请见：http://cn.wsj.com/gb/20130824/bch152508.asp

华泽

来源：New York Times By HUA ZE (华泽)
Published: August 18, 2013 23

XU ZHIYONG, a lawyer for the underprivileged, knew he risked his freedom by challenging the Chinese Communist Party to fulfill its vows to fight corruption and promote the rule of law.

His fight made him one of China’s best known human-rights advocates, and it has now landed him in prison.

On the evening of July 16, Mr. Xu’s wife, Cui Zheng, came home from work to find her husband, who had already been under house arrest for three months, missing. The police officers who had stood outside the door, enforcing the house arrest, were also gone. Their home had been searched: books were in disarray, computers seized, the lunch she’d prepared for her husband untouched.

At midnight, two police officers delivered a notice: Mr. Xu had been detained on suspicion of “assembling a crowd to create disorder in a public place.” For more than 90 days of his house arrest, no one except Mr. Xu’s family had been allowed to pass through the door of their home. So how could he have committed the crime he was accused of?

I first met Mr. Xu, who is now 40, on a Christmas evening 12 years ago, while he was studying for a doctorate at Peking University Law School. We were among friends in a bar in the Sanlitun district of Beijing; it was noisy, but he and I sat apart in a quiet corner as he told me of his dreams of constitutional government, and his research on grass-roots elections in a small village. He spoke of serving the public good and creating a better society, an ambition he had had since age 14. His brow and eyes radiated sincerity.

I found it hard to imagine how devotion to public service could take root in the heart of a village boy. He tried to explain it in an essay: “After chasing around in the wilderness, and ruminating along rivulets and in snowy wastelands, I finally came to a clear understanding of what would make my life meaningful.”

In 2003, Mr. Xu joined two legal scholars, Teng Biao and Yu Jiang, to petition the National People’s Congress for repeal of the “custody and repatriation” procedures abusively imposed on rural migrants. That year, the three men, joined by a fourth, Zhang Xingshui, also formed a legal-aid organization, the Open Constitution Initiative, or Gongmeng.

Mr. Xu didn’t sit in his study writing reports, and he didn’t carry out his legal aid in a courtroom alone. For a 2005 report, he spent two months in an illegal encampment of impoverished petitioners who had traveled to Beijing to protest local injustices. He was beaten outside the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, where the petitions are filed. His findings helped bring an end to routine beatings of petitioners by official “interceptors” from their native communities. During one attempt to free petitioners from unofficial “black jails” where they were held pending repatriation to their hometowns, Mr. Xu told the assailants who beat him: “Go ahead. I won’t hit back.” In 2009, Mr. Xu was jailed for the first time, for nearly a month.

Rights activists say that a special investigative team has been gathering evidence against him, and was responsible for forcing Gongmeng’s office to close a year and a half ago. They say its landlord was coerced into revoking its lease, and other landlords were blocked from offering it space. Some volunteers and staff were arrested, and Mr. Xu’s young followers were threatened, the activists say.

But Mr. Xu has refused to buckle to pressure — from anyone. In 2011, when fellow dissidents criticized him for quickly concluding that the government was not to blame in the death of a village leader, I implored him: “Can you just not say anything?” That was the only time he lost his temper with me. He said the truth is the truth, and if we kept silent when the truth doesn’t fit our imagination or hopes, then how are we different from what we oppose?

President Xi Jinping has talked of “the Chinese Dream” of a prosperous and harmonious nation. Mr. Xu gave his version of the dream in an interview: “I hope for a free and happy country, where no one needs to go against his conscience, and can find his place based on his abilities and moral character; a simple and happy society that optimizes the goodness in human nature and puts the greatest restraint on evil; where honesty, trust, friendship and mutual assistance are the norm; where vexation and indignation are rare, and a smile of genuine happiness is on every face.”

In a secretly recorded video that went viral this month, a handcuffed Mr. Xu reached out from his cell and said, “No matter what becomes of this society, however crushed or absurd, this country needs a group of brave citizens to stand up and abide by their convictions, turning their rights, responsibility and dreams into reality.”

A few nights ago, I dreamed of my friend. He was wearing handcuffs and dragging himself in a pair of oversized cloth shoes down a long prison corridor. He said, “This is the path a nation must walk toward freedom.”

Hua Ze is a documentary filmmaker and an editor of the forthcoming book “In the Shadow of the Rising Dragon: Stories of Repression in the New China.” This essay was translated by Stacy Mosher from the Chinese.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 19, 2013, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Misrule Of Law.

作者原文：

许志永的中国梦

写下第一行文字，我的眼泪已夺眶而出。虽然我知道志永早已做好了再次入狱的准备，我也一直知道那一刻总会来临，但当这一切真的发生时，我仍然难以接受。

7月16日下午，志永的妻子下班回家，发现丈夫失踪了。为软禁志永而守候在门外多日的警察也已撤离。一种不详的预感袭上心头。她惊慌的四处查看，家里有明显翻动过的痕迹，书柜上的书籍凌乱不堪，几台电脑都不见了，她为丈夫准备的午餐却原封未动的放在冰箱里。接近午夜时，两名警察送来了许志永因涉嫌“聚众扰乱公共场所秩序罪”被刑事拘留的通知书。此前，许志永，这位著名的法律学者、人权活动家，已被软禁在家95天了。除了家人以外，没有任何同事、朋友被允许走进他的家门，他怎么可能犯下被指控的罪行呢？

从2009年7月29日志永第一次身陷囹圄，到今年7月16日再次入狱，期间整整四年里，志永常常失去自由。尤其是最近两年，他发起公民承诺签署，呼吁新公民运动，使当局又恨又怕。当局害怕臣民、顺民成为公民，害怕有民主、法治意识的公民们走到一起，共同推动中国变革。据知情人士说，中央政法委专门成立了专案组，专案组全部的工作就是收集和编造给志永治罪的证据；他们逼迫房东撕毁合约，使公盟办公室被迫关闭；他们逮捕公盟的志愿者、律师，恐吓、要挟那些追随志永的年轻人。而志永一次又一次被绑架、失踪、软禁，在这个他深爱的国度里，自由对他而言，不过是一次囚禁与另一次囚禁之间的过渡。

我认识志永是在十二年前的圣诞夜，那时他还在北大法学院攻读博士学位。在北京三里屯的一间酒吧里，在朋友们喧闹嘈杂的狂欢中，我们坐在角落里静静地交谈，志永谈自己的宪政理想，谈他定点去做基层选举调查的小乡村；他说自己在十四岁那年开始意识到未来要献身公益，要成为一个美好社会的推动者……说起这些，他的眉宇间流露着超出年龄的凝重神情，而他的眼神里却闪烁着孩童般的纯真光芒。我很难想象公益两字是怎样在一个乡村少年心里生根发芽的，我只能说命运选中了他去承担这样的使命。后来他在一篇文章里写到：“1987年对我来说是一个重要的开始。在无数次旷野中疯狂奔跑、小河边或者雪野中长久沉思之后，我终于想清楚了这一生做什么才最有意义。”

2003年，志永和滕彪、俞江三名法学博士上书全国人大，推动了《城市流浪乞讨人员收容审查办法》的废除。不久，志永成为了公益法律援助组织“公盟”的负责人。从此，志永走上了一条光荣而艰难的道路。

志永写中国问题报告不是在书斋里，他进行法律援助也不仅在法庭上。2005年，为写《中国信访报告》，志永在北京“上访村”与访民共同生活了整整两个月；他一次又一次到国家信访局前“找打”，并将自己被打的经历写成文章，引起舆论的关注，从而改变了访民被截访者普遍殴打的现象；为了从黑监狱救出访民，志永被打手们围殴，一次次被打倒，他一次次站立起来，看着那些歹徒，他平静地说：“随便打，我绝不还手。”

志永对真相有近乎偏执的坚持。记得2011年初，他因为发布乐清事件调查报告受到许多质疑和攻击，甚至一些朋友也因此与他分道扬镳。我曾经恳求志永：“能不能不说，能不能沉默？”那是他唯一一次跟我发脾气。他说真相就是真相，如果真相与我们的想象或希望不一致，就保持沉默，那我们和我们反对的东西有什么不同？最后我选择了支持他。我支持志永不是因为我确信他看到的一定是真相，而是我深信志永出说的正是他所看到的真相。只是我心里暗自叹息，这样一个率真的人，如何能够参与政治？但我知道这不是志永心中的政治，他心中的政治是美好而单纯的。正如他在一次关于中国梦的访谈中描绘的那样：“我希望我们是个自由幸福的国家。每个人不需要违背良心，只要靠自己的才能和品德就可以找到合适的位置；一个简单而幸福的社会，人性的善得到最大的张扬，恶得到最大的抑制；诚实、信用、友爱、互助将成为我们生活的常态，没有那么多烦恼和愤怒，每一个人脸上是纯真的笑容。

昨晚我梦见了志永。他带着手铐，拖着一双特大号的布鞋，穿过监狱长长的走廊和一道道铁门走向监室。他说，那是一个民族通往自由的必经之路。

华 泽

2013年7月20日

BEIJING — A prominent Chinese rights advocate who was detained last month has spoken out in a video shot from behind bars at a detention center in Beijing, urging citizens to stand up against the government and turn their rights into reality.

The unusual act of defiance by the advocate, Xu Zhiyong, was available for viewing on a number of Web sites Thursday, including YouTube and Voice of America, after being disseminated by his supporters.

Handcuffed and wearing a neon orange jail vest, Mr. Xu, 40, spoke in the video for just over a minute to an unidentified visitor.

“I propose that we all act as citizens, upstanding citizens, and exercise the rights of citizens under the Constitution,” he said. “No matter what becomes of this society, however crushed or absurd, this country needs a group of brave citizens to stand up and abide by their convictions, turning their rights, responsibility and dreams into reality.”

A Chinese journalist, Chen Min, who has led efforts to secure Mr. Xu’s release, said the video was made on Aug. 1 but declined to say who made it. Mr. Xu’s lawyer, Liu Weiguo, did not answer calls to his cellphone.

A lawyer with a decade-long record of using litigation, petitions and publicity to seek broader political rights, Mr. Xu was among a number of dissidents whose cases were raised by the State Department at the annual United States-China Human Rights Dialogue held in China last week.

After three days of talks, the acting assistant secretary for human rights, Uzra Zeya, said that the United States believed there was “a deterioration in the overall human rights situation in China,” including a pattern of arrests and extralegal detentions of public-interest lawyers like Mr. Xu. Mr. Xu was the first name on a list of eight people that Ms. Zeya said she had discussed with the Chinese authorities.

Mr. Xu was arrested on July 16 on charges of “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” He had been under informal house detention for more than three months.

Mr. Liu, his lawyer, has said the charges are a baseless effort to silence Mr. Xu, who had been encouraging people to join the New Citizens’ Movement, a newly formed group that has demanded that government officials publicly declare their assets.

The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, started an anticorruption campaign after assuming office in November. But Mr. Xu’s push to organize citizens around corruption, a sensitive issue for the Communist Party, appears to have pushed the government’s limits. His detention has made him the focus of a deepening confrontation between activists and the Communist Party authorities.

Under Chinese law, the government has a little more than a month after Mr. Xu’s arrest to formally charge him. Another legal advocate, Teng Biao, a friend of Mr. Xu, said it was likely that Mr. Xu would be convicted, which could result in a prison sentence of up to seven years.

“Xu Zhiyong has many supporters across the country,” Mr. Teng said in a telephone interview from northeast China, where he was traveling. “If he is convicted, that will be a huge blow” to activists.

Appearing tired and haggard but speaking with steady conviction, Mr. Xu said in the video that the charges against him were really about his push to abolish discriminatory barriers against schoolchildren from rural areas and calling for public disclosure of officials’ wealth.

In the video, Mr. Xu suggested that he was willing to face imprisonment.

“Social progress always demands that someone pays a price,” he said. “I am willing to pay all it takes for freedom, the public good, love and faith.”

The video of Mr. Xu was largely blocked in China, where censors heavily monitor Web sites and people are prevented from seeing banned sites based abroad unless they have access to technology that can outsmart censorship barriers. The footage appeared, at least briefly, on Youku, a Chinese video-sharing site.

Officials at the detention center in Beijing where Mr. Xu’s lawyer and friends earlier said he was being held refused to say whether he remained there.

Mr. Xu won nationwide attention in 2003 as an advocate for the family of Sun Zhigang, a young man beaten to death in a detention center for vagrants and rural migrants without the right official documents. The case provoked an outcry against arbitrary detention in those centers, which the government soon abolished.

In his statement from the detention center, Mr. Xu renewed his call for citizen activism.

“I am proud to have the word citizen put before my name, and I hope that everyone will do the same and put citizen before their names,” he said. “We will certainly be able to build a free, public-spirited, loving and beautiful China, as long as we are united and strive together, and make real our rights as citizens.”

Jane Perlez reported from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.

PPDCECC Xu Zhiyong

Source: ppdcecc.gov

美国国会中国委员会（Congressional – Executive Commission on China）政治犯数据库(Political Prisoner Database)

个人情况
CECC 纪录号：2005-00199
拘禁状态：被拘押
分类：civil/assoc/rol/spch
姓名：Xu Zhiyong
中文姓名：许志永 另名：
其他名：
拼音名：
民族：汉
性别：男
被拘时年龄：40
宗教信仰：
职业：法学教授
所属：北京邮电大学
居住省：北京市
居住区：
居住县：

拘押情况
被拘日期：2013/07/16
目前监狱：北京第三看守所
刑期(年)：
刑期(月)：
刑期(日)：
被拘地点(省)：北京市
被拘地点(区)：北京市区
被拘地点(县)：大兴

法律程序
法律程序：PSB (公安局)
审判法庭：
宣判法庭：
上诉法庭：
上诉裁决法庭：
罪名(条款)：
正式被捕日期：
审判日期：
宣判日期：
上诉日期：
上诉裁决日期：
刑期结束日期：
实际释放日期：

简述
根据CHRD(中国人权卫士)(2013年7月17日报道)和HRIC(中国人权)(2013年7月16日报道)报道, 2013年7月16日，北京市公安局公共交通安全保卫分局以涉嫌“聚众扰乱公共场所秩序”罪名将法律学者和公民权利活动家许志永刑事拘留。据报道，许的律师刘卫国前往北京市第三看守所试图会见许时也被拘留(中国人权2013年7月17日)。许的妻子向国际媒体证实许在被捕前已被”非正式软禁在家超过三个月”(纽约时报2013年7月17日)。中国人权卫士(CHRD)将许的被捕描述为2013年当局对反腐败和公民权利呼吁者的大规模打压的一部分。十多年来，许作为法律维权者、法学学者和北京市海淀区独立当选的人大代表(经济观察家2008年11月13日)，一直在从事权利抗争，2009年，北京当局曾关闭许在2003年参与创立的公共利益组织(中国人权2009年8月8日)公盟。

For All the Corruption-Campaign Fanfare, Efforts to Get More Insight Into Officials’ Assets Appear to Suffer a Backlash

Despite China’s campaign against corruption, President Xi Jinping’s administration is defending a fundamental entitlement of Chinese public service: concealed wealth.

By James T. Areddy

SHANGHAI—Chinese President Xi Jinping stripped away some traditional privileges of government service when he took office. But even as his administration frowns on banqueting and fancy cars, it is defending a fundamental entitlement of Chinese public service: concealed wealth.

Almost no Chinese official tallies his investments and net worth in ways that make the information accessible to the public. Now, there are indications that Mr. Xi’s government is stepping up efforts to keep it that way. In addition to the apparent resealing of once-available data, Chinese authorities also appear to be cracking down on transparency advocates as political dissidents.

In mid-July, lawyer Xu Zhiyong—a 40-year-old lawyer and justice and transparency advocate—was detained, accused of disturbing public order. Including Mr. Xu, police are holding more than a dozen supporters of official transparency, rights groups say. The alleged detentions come despite statements from the Communist Party’s own corruption watchdog that asset declarations could be an effective check on officials.

“It reinforces my pessimism about the possibility of broad political reform that involves real institutional accountability,” said Donald Clarke, a specialist in Chinese law at George Washington University Law School.

Mr. Xu is still being held and couldn’t be reached. His longtime lawyer is also unavailable amid reports from human-rights groups that he also faced police pressure in July. A number of government bureaus declined to answer questions about the asset-disclosure policies or signs of a crackdown on dissenters.

Human-rights groups in news releases have called for action on the cases during the annual U.S.-China Human Rights Dialogue, a two-day meeting that ended Wednesday in the southern Chinese city Kunming. Last week, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman called for Mr. Xu’s release.

Amid China’s once-a-decade leadership change that concluded this spring, a handful of officials said they would make public disclosures of their assets. The pledges, spurred by extensive coverage in state-run media, fostered belief among some academics and others that Mr. Xi would increase government transparency and accountability. White-collar workers hope asset disclosures will ensure officials pay their fair share of taxes.

But a Wall Street Journal examination of the modest asset-declaration programs announced in four provinces indicates details that may once have been available are again hidden.

In mid-July, more than 450 supporters of Mr. Xu and others who have been imprisoned published an open letter calling the incarcerations “repression of civil society” and accusing Mr. Xi of abandoning his inaugural pledge to uphold the country’s constitution since he assumed the presidency in March. Rights groups say the supporters are moderates whose dissent manifests itself in wearing T-shirts with slogans and holding dinners with like-minded people.

“These are not the conventional activists” who call for overthrow of the state or the introduction of democracy, said Gao Wenqian, a senior policy adviser in New York for advocacy group Human Rights in China.

Though authorities in the past have detained Mr. Xu, the lawyer’s positions are so moderate he has faced criticism from more-radical activists. “He has always pushed for change within the system,” said Mr. Gao.

No rules compel Chinese officials to release wealth or income figures publicly. Neither the country’s media nor private wealth-tracking services that tally the nation’s billionaires make attempts to peel back numbers.

When the Chinese government provides hints of officials’ personal wealth, they often strike many as low compared with numbers published in foreign media reports. Though corruption, for instance, is a central plank in the government’s allegations against former high-flier Bo Xilai, his indictment last week tallied ill-gotten gains of only $4 million, according to a person who has seen a document describing the charges. Weeks earlier, the country’s former railways minister was jailed for graft worth $10 million, a fraction of the amounts suggested in state media reports when he was initially detained.

President Xi has made clear he sees official corruption as a major threat to the party’s hold on power. In a Pew Research Center study last year, 85% of Chinese surveyed said official malfeasance is a big problem.

In an unusual step signaling a growing awareness of the clamor to address the assets of officials and their families, lawyers for the family of former Premier Wen Jiabao last year denied allegations in a foreign media report that Mr. Wen’s family members had amassed a fortune of $2.7 billion in the past two decades.

Ahead of Mr. Xi’s choreographed ascension to the head of the party last November and the presidency in March, government-run media profiled him as a corruption fighter impatient with lavishness. In July, Chinese media hyped photographs of the president holding his own umbrella and standing in the rain with his pants rolled up, down-to-earth images rarely associated with senior Chinese government officials.

Last week, Beijing announced a five-year moratorium on the construction of government buildings. The party says it has sanctioned nearly 2,300 of its members for violating rules on extravagance put in place in December, including one Hunan province official who dispatched police cars to his son’s wedding and accepted cash gifts of $22,800, according to authorities. The official’s response wasn’t known.

In this atmosphere, whistle blowers are getting bolder about officials living beyond their apparent means.

In one of a growing number of similar incidents, a reporter used Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblog service to blast a top Beijing planning-agency official as corrupt. Another reporter used his Weibo account to accuse a senior executive at a state-run company’s Hong Kong division of personally benefiting from a merger. Both accusations sparked official government inquiries; neither of the accused has made public statements.

Similarly, a low-level official in Sichuan province was fired after a video spread on the Internet said to be of him having sex with a woman alleged to be a prostitute. Photos of fancy watches and bragging about gambling got other officials ousted.

Tipsters in these cases faced limited reprisals, unlike activists who call for systematic transparency, like asset declaration. “To talk about particular corrupt individuals doesn’t imply any failings of the system as a whole,” said Mr. Clarke.

In Asia, China is behind the times on asset declaration. In recent years, governments from South Korea to the Philippines and India now require national politicians to publicly disclose their net worth.

Last year, Chinese media highlighted Fan Songqing, a deputy secretary for the Guangzhou division of the Communist Party advisory group Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, after he ticked off his personal assets—a simple walk-up apartment was the biggest—and suggested others in government and at state-owned enterprises should likewise go public.

Today, there is little sign of follow-through. Mr. Fan couldn’t be reached.

Government bureaus in three Guangdong province localities that had previously announced asset-declaration plans—Shixing county and Nansha district in the city of Guangzhou and the city of Zhuhai’s Hengqin district— declined to disclose data on officials’ assets when contacted by the Journal.

The Journal also checked declaration policies unveiled in 2009 in individual counties in Xinjiang, Hunan and Zhejiang provinces. Information on the policies are no longer available in any of the counties.

Also, a handful of websites designed to allow Chinese citizens to report bribe-paying or to let officials make asset declarations can no longer be accessed. One of them,522phone.com, became a gambling site before it recently went offline.

–Li Shangjing and Olivia Geng in Beijing contributed to this article.

Write to James T. Areddy at james.areddy@wsj.com