The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of repressing dissent, perhaps most brutally during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Since Xi Jinping took power in 2013, the regime’s hostility to religious freedom and human rights has reached new levels.
I have experienced this firsthand. In 1989 I led students from my college in Shandong province to Tiananmen Square to advocate peacefully for democratic reform. Luckily, a member of our group became ill, forcing us to head home three days before the government sent in tanks and killed thousands. In the days following, I was forced to surrender to the police as a student leader, barred from attending classes, and put under investigation for six months.
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