Barging into your home, threatening your family, or making you disappear: Here's what China does to people who speak out against them
EnginKorkmaz/iStock, Etienne Oliveau/Getty Images, Samantha Lee/Business Insider
The Chinese Communist Party has long sought to suppress ideas that could undermine the sweeping authority it has over its 1.4 billion citizens — and the state can go to extreme lengths to maintain its grip.
In just the past few years, the government has attempted to muzzle critics by making them disappear without a trace, ordering people to physically barge into their houses, or locking up those close to critics as a kind of blackmail.
Even leaving China isn't always enough. The state has continued to clamp down on dissent by harassing and threatening family members who remain in the country.
Scroll down to see what China can do to people who criticize it.
1. Make you disappear.
Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Wang Quanzhang, a human rights lawyer who defended political activists in the past, has not been seen since he was taken into detention three years ago.
He was taken away in August 2015 alongside more than 200 lawyers, legal assistants, and activists for government questioning. Three years later, he remains the only person in that cohort who still isn't free.
Nobody has heard from him since. His lawyers, friends, and family have all tried contacting him, but have consistently been denied access, Radio Free Asia reported.
The lawyer's friends and family, and other lawyers, have tried visiting him, but to no avail. His wife, Li Wenzu, has been routinely harassed by Chinese police for protesting Wang's detention, according to the BBC.
His wife recently received a message from a friend saying that Wang was alive and "in reasonable mental and physical health," but was denied further information when she contacted authorities.
2. Physically drag you away so you can't speak to the media.
Becky Davis/Twitter
A woman was dragged away by men in plainclothes after she tried to share footage of an explosion outside the US embassy in Beijing with journalists on the ground in July.
As the woman was trying to share images of the scene with journalists, a group of men took her across, claiming it was a "family matter," according to Agence France-Presse reporter Becky Davis who witnessed it.
The woman claimed she didn't know any of the men. You can watch the whole scene unfold in this video.
China was likely trying to cover up news of the explosion. Weibo, a popular microblogging platform, reportedly wiped all posts about it in the hours following the incident, before allowing some media coverage of it later on.
While it remains unclear who the men were and why they took the woman, Davis said it is common for plainclothes police to act as family members and take people away.
3. Put your family under house arrest, even if they haven't been accused of a crime.
Vincent Yu/AP
China has kept family members of prominent activists under house arrest to prevent them from traveling abroad and publicly protesting the regime.
In 2010 Liu Xia tried to travel to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her husband, Liu Xiaobo, a human rights activist who at the time was imprisoned for "inciting subversion" with his protests.
She wasn't allowed to go and was placed under house arrest with 24-hour surveillance. She had no access to a cell phone or computer, even though she hadn't been charged with a crime.
She was allowed to leave the house in 2017 to attend the sea burial of her husband after his death from liver cancer, before being sent to the other side of the country by authorities so she wouldn't see memorials held by supporters in Beijing.
Liu Xia was detained in her house for eight years in total. She was released to Berlin in July after a sustained lobbying effort from the German government for Liu's release.
Still, she is not completely free: Xia is effectively prevented from appearing in public or speaking to media for fear of reprisal from Beijing. She fears that if she does, the government will punish her brother, who remains in Beijing, her friend Tienchi Martin-Liao told The Guardian.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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