Chinese anti-corruption campaigner who came in from the cold
Huang Qi says there is still repression, but also more tolerance of his work since the central government launched a massive anti-graft campaign
He spent years in jail for running one of China’s few websites dedicated to reporting human rights abuses. But now the authorities appreciate his coverage, Huang Qi said, as his smartphone buzzed with fresh news of injustice.
His website, “64 Tianwang”, named in part after the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protestors, runs headlines such as “Village Officials Stab Campaigner”, “Gangsters Detain Protestor”, rarely seen in state-run media.
The stories the dissident has collected over nearly two decades chronicle injustices during the largest urbanisation in human history, which has transformed China from a largely rural country to the world’s second-largest economy.
The process has made fortunes for some, but seen tens of millions of farmers deprived of land their families worked for generations.
Huang has faced government reprisals for recording their efforts to resist, but now believes he is protected by the authorities, partly because of a much-publicised anti-corruption drive under President Xi Jinping.
His apartment in a quiet quarter of Chengdu in the southwest bursts with beeps from his phone and laptop, heralding the arrival of information from a network of contacts in villages and cities nationwide.