This is a collection of essays by Cui Weiping, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy. The title, inspired by Hannah Arendt, covers a wide range of fields from poetry and movies to politics and ethics, and tells the stories of fascinating people, the construction of their inner world and external lives. These people include Hai Zi, Wang Xiaobo, Arendt, Woolf, Beauvoir, Tarkovsky, Kremer, Herbert, Havel, and many others. Behind these seemingly unrelated names, there are hints of these two interdependent spiritual dimensions: on the one hand, the construction of the external world in which we live; on the other hand, the construction of our own inner world, which cannot be neglected. This book, published by Renmin University of China Press in 2003, has had a significant impact on the development of civil society in China.
The author of this book, Luo Pinghan, is a native of Anhua County, Hunan Province. He graduated from the Party History Department of Renmin University of China and served as director and professor of the Party History Teaching and Research Department of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This book was published by Fujian People's Publishing House in 2003.
With Mao Zedong's affirmation, the system of people's communes was rapidly promoted across the country in 1958. At that time, the people's commune was both a production organization and a grassroots political power. Its rise and fanatical development are closely related to the subsequent Great Famine.
As a scholar within the system, the author’s view of history also belongs to orthodox ideology. Although this book is narrated from the official ideology of the CCP, it uses rich and detailed historical materials to comprehensively and systematically introduce the history of the People's Communes, giving it a reference value for a comprehensive understanding of this movement.
The years 1959-1961 were very unusual in the history of disasters in China and the world in the 20th century. Anyone who has experienced it will recall the starvation years and the days when people starved to death everywhere. However, due to official concealment and denial, the number of people who died in this disaster has never been officially announced.
The purpose of Jin Hui's article is to estimate the number of unnatural deaths during the three years of the 1959-1961 disaster in China. Based on public data released by the authoritative National Bureau of Statistics in China Jin concludes that about 40 million people died, which roughly matches studies by foreign scholars, who have estimated up to 45 million.
The Xi’an-based videographer Zhang Shihe, or Tiger Temple, has been a fixture on the independent Chinese history scene for more than twenty years. In 2010, he began a thirty-part series of short interviews with leading Chinese thinkers called “Working Toward Civil Society,” in which he explores how China can build a true civil society. Some of those interviewed have now been silenced, passed away, or moved abroad, making the series itself a work of history.
In this episode, Zhang interviews one of China’s most thoughtful public thinkers, Cui Weiping. Cui is a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, and translator of Havel into Chinese. She was a signer of Charter 08, and friend of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Although the interview is only 8 minutes long, Cui touches on some of the key problems that continue to plague China: how to break free of overwhelming government control of civic life?
Note to English speakers: this interview only has Chinese subtitles. The CUA is working to add English subtitles to all of our video offerings so check back in a few months.
On June 12, 2025, the Hong Kong–based NGO China Labour Bulletin (CLB) announced its dissolution. This marks yet another Chinese civil society organization that ceased operations following the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Founded in 1994, CLB was dedicated to promoting the Chinese labor movement and had long focused on labor rights in China. Headquartered in Hong Kong, its founder Han Dongfang was a workers’ leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Democracy Movement and one of the founders of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation.
Over the years, China Labour Bulletin published dozens of reports in Chinese and English on China’s labor movement, addressing issues related to migrant workers, food delivery couriers, women workers, child labor, coal mining, and pneumoconiosis, among others. Following the organization’s dissolution, the China Labour Bulletin website was also taken offline.
In response, the China Unofficial Archives website immediately downloaded and preserved 80 Chinese- and English-language reports from the site. The following 26 reports are studies on the labor rights protection in China published between 2004 and 2024, including titles such as “Research Report on China’s Food Delivery Industry,” “Labor Rights in the Construction Industry,” “Healthcare Workers’ Rights Report,” and “Workers’ Rights in the Manufacturing Sector,” among others.
On June 12, 2025, the Hong Kong–based NGO China Labour Bulletin (CLB) announced its dissolution. This marks yet another Chinese civil society organization that ceased operations following the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Founded in 1994, CLB was dedicated to promoting the Chinese labor movement and had long focused on labor rights in China. Headquartered in Hong Kong, its founder Han Dongfang was a workers’ leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Democracy Movement and one of the founders of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation.
Over the years, China Labour Bulletin published dozens of reports in Chinese and English on China’s labor movement, addressing issues related to migrant workers, food delivery couriers, women workers, child labor, coal mining, and pneumoconiosis, among others. Following the organization’s dissolution, the China Labour Bulletin website was also taken offline.
In response, the China Unofficial Archives website immediately downloaded and preserved 80 Chinese- and English-language reports from the site. The following 15 reports are observation reports on China's workers' movement.
On June 12, 2025, the Hong Kong–based NGO China Labour Bulletin (CLB) announced its dissolution. This marks yet another Chinese civil society organization that ceased operations following the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Founded in 1994, CLB was dedicated to promoting the Chinese labor movement and had long focused on labor rights in China. Headquartered in Hong Kong, its founder Han Dongfang was a workers’ leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Democracy Movement and one of the founders of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation.
Over the years, China Labour Bulletin published dozens of reports in Chinese and English on China’s labor movement, addressing issues related to migrant workers, food delivery couriers, women workers, child labor, coal mining, and pneumoconiosis, among others. Following the organization’s dissolution, the China Labour Bulletin website was also taken offline.
In response, the China Unofficial Archives website immediately downloaded and preserved 80 Chinese- and English-language reports from the site. The following 18 reports are studies concerning trade union reform in China.