How can China build a real civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple sat for a series of interviews with scholars and civil society actors.

When the Cultural Revolution broke out, Yang Xiaokai was a senior high school student at No. 1 Middle School in Changsha. On January 12, 1968, he published an article entitled "Where is China Going?" which systematically put forward the ideas of the "ultra-leftist" Red Guards, criticized the privileged bureaucratic class in China, and advocated for the establishment of a Chinese People's Commune based on the principles of the Paris Commune. Yang Xiaokai recalled that his parents were beaten because they sympathized with Liu Shaoqi's and Peng Dehuai's views, and that he was discriminated against at school and could not join the Red Guards. As a result, he joined the rebel faction to oppose the theory of descent. Yang Xiaokai was later sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for this article. Yang Xiaokai died in 2004. This article is a retrospective of his life.

The author Wang Ming was an early member of the Communist Party of China (CCP) and the first of the "28 and a half Bolsheviks," who lost power after the Yan'an Rectification and were gradually marginalized by Mao. After the Yan'an Rectification, the Internationalists, led by him, lost power in the party. He was gradually ostracized by Mao Zedong, who expatriated him to the Soviet Union in 1956. In his book, Wang Ming recounts his decades-long feud with Mao. It provides a fascinating insight into the early history of the CCP.

During the three years of the "zero-COVID" policy enforced by Xi Jinping's government, the daily life and freedoms of the people were severely limited. A fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, finally ignited public dissatisfaction with the measures. On November 26, 2022, when the people of Shanghai spontaneously gathered in the streets to mourn the victims of the fire, no one expected that this memorial activity would lead to nationwide protests against the pandemic policies. At the scene, Chen Pinlin and his girlfriend, Wang, filmed many protest videos at the protest site on Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai. In November 2023, on the anniversary of the White Paper Movement, Chen Pinlin uploaded the documentary to YouTube and other social media platforms, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Less than a week later, he and his girlfriend were arrested. His girlfriend was released on bail, while Chen Pinlin remained in custody. <a href=“https://tenchu.org/pocd/public/pocs/3551”>Chen Pinlin introduced the documentary as follows</a>: "I am the director Plato. In November 2022, I personally participated in the protest on the night of November 26 in Shanghai. This was my first involvement in a political event in China, and it was also the first time I expressed my political demands in China. Besides the footage I personally filmed on that day, the film also includes iconic video materials from before and after the protest. I tried to present a complete picture of how the dynamic zero-COVID policy pushed China to the boiling point and prompted people to take to the streets to protest. After the event, the Chinese government distorted the facts and maliciously smeared the protests in Shanghai and the White Paper movement, misleading many people into thinking that the protests were the work of foreign forces. But is this really the case? On the first anniversary of the Shanghai Urumqi Road protest, I created this documentary, “Urumqi Middle Road”, to record my personal experience and feelings of participating in the protest. I want to explore why, when internal contradictions appear in China, foreign forces are always blamed? Everyone knows the answer. The more the government misleads, forgets, and shields the truth, the more we must speak out, remind people, and remember. Remember the White Paper, remember November 26, remember Urumqi Middle Road, remember the Xinjiang fire, remember the Guizhou bus, remember dynamic zero-COVID, remember the 'big white' (the white-suited workers), remember Tiananmen, remember the Cultural Revolution, remember the Three Years of Great Famine. "By remembering the ugliness, we can turn our hearts toward the light. I also hope that China can soon embrace its own brighter future." At the end of this movie, Chen left this narration: Some people say, what is the point of protesting on the streets? In the end, it's still the same, suppressed, shielded and misinterpreted. But as Churchill said, ‘Courage is the most important human trait, with courage, other human traits can naturally be possessed' We lacked experience and have been cowardly and wavering, but today we have the courage to stand up and to speak out. What we lacked this time, we can do better next time. If I were to do it again, I would still choose to be there. Because a government that is afraid of even a white paper can't defeat the justice in the hearts of the people. On January 5, 2024, Chen Pinlin was formally arrested on suspicion of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" and detained at Baoshan District Detention Center in Shanghai. On January 6, 2025, Chen Pinlin’s first trial was held in the Third Court of Baoshan District Court, where he was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison. His sentence will end on May 27, 2027.

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.

Independent director Tiger Temple began shooting this film in 2010 and completed it in 2012, with subsequent revisions. The film features interviews with Lin Zhao's former lover Gan Cui as well as interviews with several independent scholars such as Qian Liqun and Cui Weiping. It is a powerful addition to Lin Zhao's memory. This film was selected as one of the top 20 finalists in the 2012 Sunshine Chinese Documentary Awards.

In 1960, a group of faculty and students from Lanzhou University, who had been labeled Rightists and sent down to rural areas in Tianshui, Gansu, personally experienced the Great Famine. They self-published <i>Spark</i> magazine to expose and criticize the totalitarian rule that led to this catastrophe.<i>Spark</i> only published one issue before its participants were arrested and labeled as a counterrevolutionary group. Many were sentenced to long prison terms, and some were even executed. <a href=“http://108.160.154.72/s/china-unofficial/item/1759#lg=1&slide=0”>The first issue of <i>Spark</i> and more information about the "Spark Case" can be read here</a>. <i>Return from Purgatory: A Survivor’s Memoir of the ‘Spark Case’ in the Great Famine Years (1957–1981)</i> is the autobiography of Xiang Chengjian, a key participant in <i>Spark</i> magazine. At the time, he and another student were responsible for printing the first issue, and he contributed six articles to <i>Spark</i>. Due to his involvement, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the Spark case and was not rehabilitated until the early 1980s. This memoir is divided into three sections, with a total of thirteen chapters spanning over 350,000 characters. It documents Xiang’s journey from being labeled a Rightist and sent to perform forced labor, to his arrest and 19-year imprisonment for his involvement in <i>Spark</i>, and finally to his struggle for rehabilitation and efforts to rebuild his life after release. In the book’s preface, scholar Ai Xiaoming offers the following assessment: "Xiang Chengjian’s memoir holds significant value for the study of the intellectual history of contemporary China. First, it serves as another important testimony of the “Spark Case”, following Tan Chanxue’s memoir <i><a href=“”>Sparks: A Chronicle of the Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Group at Lanzhou University</a></i>, making it a crucial historical document on this act of resistance. The author reconstructs the social context before and after the case and describes how the young intellectuals behind <i>Spark</i> bravely challenged totalitarian rule. Second, the book provides a detailed account of labor camps in western China, with the author documenting his 18 years of forced labor in Gansu and Qinghai, unveiling a western chapter of China’s Gulag system. Third, it is a deeply personal intellectual history of a resister, showing the immense suffering, trials of life and death, and personal resilience under the crushing force of state violence." The book’s appendix includes Xiang Chengjian’s six articles for <i>Spark</i>, an in-depth investigative report on him by journalist Jiang Xue, and a chronological record of the Spark Case compiled by Ai Xiaoming. <i>Return from Purgatory</i> is published by Borden Press in New York and is the first book in the “People’s Archives Series”, published by the China Unofficial Archives. The author, Xiang Chengjian, has generously authorized the archive to share the book’s digital edition. Readers are encouraged to purchase the book to support the author and publisher.

How can China build a real civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple sat for a series of interviews with scholars and civil society actors.

Chinese human rights activist Dr. Xu Zhiyong, twice imprisoned for his longstanding advocacy of civil society in China, was sentenced to 14 years in prison by the Chinese government in April 2023. The documentary by independent director Lao Hu Miao was filmed over a four-year period, beginning with the seizure of the Public League Legal Research Center, which Xu Zhiyong helped found in 2009, and ending with Xu's first prison sentence in 2014.

How can China build a real civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple sat for a series of interviews with scholars and civil society actors.

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.

South side Street near Tiananmen Square in Beijing has long been a gathering place for some homeless people as well as petitioners. The director became involved in the homeless relief charity in 2007, and continued to follow the film, which the director finished editing eight years later. The film was selected for the 12th China Independent Film Festival Documentary Competition.

In 1959, in the desolate Lingyuan area in the western part of Liaoning Province, a group of intellectual rightists from the Shenyang University arrived. There, they were to labor and be reformed alongside criminal prisoners in the prison, while digging mines to build railroads. How did the Communist Party reform the intellectuals? What kind of encounters did these rightist intellectuals go through? Hu Jie's camera restores this history.

How can China build a real civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple sat for a series of interviews with scholars and civil society actors.

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.

In the spring of 2022, a wave of COVID-19 exploded in Shanghai. Under the policy of “Zero COVID,” 24 million residents were put under forced lockdown. Filmmakers and reporters used their phones, televisions, the internet, and other materials to capture scenes of lockdown and disputes between officials and civilians in Shanghai. Producers of this short film titled <i>The Memo</i> believe that it is necessary to record this historic episode in order to prevent our memories from fading away. The production team, which was founded in 2020, strives to create works about the lower classes of Chinese society. <i>The Memo</i> was nominated for the Clermont-Féron Short Film Festival.