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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.

Few books on recent Chinese history have caused such controversy as "The Tiananmen Papers". The book is ostensibly a collection of original documents compiled by Zhang Liang, a pseudonym for someone claiming to be a high-ranking CCP official who leaked the papers. The book’s credibility was aided by it being edited by two well-known western scholars of China, Perry Link, then of Princeton University and now of the University of California, Riverside, as well as Columbia University professor Andrew J. Nathan. An introduction was written by Orville Schell, a well-known writer on China who was then a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.  Almost immediately upon publication, the book was criticized for its unclear provenance, a point aided by Zhang Liang’s anonymity. Most scholars agreed that the papers were a mixture of previously released documents from government offices, which were uncontroversial, and accounts of meetings between senior leaders. The latter came under scrutiny, with some saying that the language appeared stilted or seemed to mix in language used in leaders’ public speeches.  This essay by the well-known Hong Kong publisher Bao Pu points out that since 2004, most people seem to feel that the issue of provenance will never be settled but that the documents are still important historically. Bao critiques this, using books published over the past two decades to update the question of authenticity. In careful language, he further questions key points of the documents, showing that they do not match new material, such as memoirs. Bao's conclusion: the Tiananmen Papers are not documents from the CCP’s archive, which is their claim, but rather works of dubious origin that cannot be used to better understand the events leading up to the massacre of civilians on the night of June 3-4, 1989. The top-secret documents, Bao writes, are a “phantom” that must not be used as building blocks for history.

2025年6月12日，位于香港的NGO组织“中国劳工通讯”发布声明解散。这是香港《国安法》落地后又一个停运的中国民间团体。中国劳工通讯（China Labour Bulletin，CLB）于1994年成立，致力于推动中国劳工运动，长期关注中国劳工权利。该机构总部位于香港，创办人韩东方是1989年天安门民主运动中的工人领袖，是当时北京工人自治联合会创始人之一。 中国劳工通讯曾出版数十份中英文报告，涉及中国的工人运动，关注农民工、外卖骑手、女工、童工、煤炭开采和尘肺病等工人权益问题。在该机构宣布解散后，“中国劳工通讯网”也随即被关闭。民间档案馆网站紧急下载了其网站上相关的49个中文报告，予以留存。以下32个报告是中国劳工通讯2004-2024年之间发布的关于中国劳工权益保障的研究报告，包括《中国外卖行业研究报告》、《建筑行业权益报告》、《医护行业权益报告》、《制造业工人权益报告》、《中国工人十年集体行动启示》等。