For a Free, Democratic, and Constitutional China
Oct 5, 2026
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of men in Philadelphia signed a document. They declared that all men are created equal; that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable; that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that when a government’s long train of abuses reveals a design to reduce the people under despotism, it is the people’s right, and their duty, to alter or abolish that government and to provide new guards for their future security.
In 2008, Liu Xiaobo and 302 fellow citizens of China published Charter 08, making the same simple demand of their own country: let the constitution truly be a constitution. The following year he was sentenced to eleven years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” In 2010 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; at the ceremony in Oslo, an empty chair stood in his place. In 2017 he died of liver cancer while still under guard, the first Nobel Peace laureate to die in state custody since Carl von Ossietzky in 1938.
What he wrote down was nothing more than the common sense any nation ought to have. For it, he gave the rest of his life.
A Constitution for Show
Article 35 of China’s Constitution states that citizens enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration. In reality, these rights exist only on paper. In 2017, the President of the Supreme People’s Court publicly urged the courts to “firmly resist” judicial independence. In 2018, presidential term limits were abolished. No independent force can hold those in power to account. This is the reality we face today.
The Law as a Weapon Against the Weak
In 2008, melamine-tainted infant formula sickened some 300,000 babies and killed at least six. Zhao Lianhai sought justice for his own child and for other affected families; in 2010 he was sentenced to two and a half years for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” In the 2015 “709 Crackdown,” more than 300 lawyers and rights activists were detained, summoned, or called in for questioning. In 2016, a young man named Lei Yang died after being detained by police, yet the officers involved were never prosecuted, on the grounds that “the circumstances of the crime were minor.”
The Price of Telling the Truth
In late December 2019, Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan, warned his former medical school classmates in a group chat to watch out for a new disease. In early January 2020, the police reprimanded him for “making false statements.” A little over a month later, he died of the very disease he had warned about. An official investigation later conceded that the reprimand had been improper and revoked it. But the man who told the truth will never come back.
A 2022 report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that the large-scale arbitrary detention and other abuses in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity. On the night of June 3 to the early hours of June 4, 1989, soldiers opened fire on civilians in Beijing. For thirty-seven years, the mothers of the dead have never been allowed to mourn their children in public.
Who Pays the Price
During the Great Leap Forward, tens of millions of people died unnatural deaths, while grain continued to be exported. Today, the national minimum basic pension for urban and rural residents is 163 yuan a month, roughly US$23, and its 180 million recipients receive, on average, a little over 200 yuan. Retirees from government agencies and public institutions, meanwhile, receive thousands of yuan each month.
This suffering is not the work of nature, nor the fault of a few bad officials. It is what inevitably happens when power goes unchecked and unsupervised. A party that is both player and referee will never, as its own slogan promises, “put power in the cage of institutions.”
What We Want to Build
What we want is the China envisioned in Charter 08: a revised constitution, separation of powers with checks and balances, an independent judiciary, and public offices filled by election; guaranteed freedom of association, assembly, speech, and religion; a federal republic to resolve ethnic and regional tensions; and transitional justice to heal the wounds of history. To put it more plainly: you can vote a county head into office, and vote them out again; judges can decide cases without first checking with the Party’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission; you can speak the truth online without fearing a knock on the door in the middle of the night. In that China, sovereignty belongs to the people, and no one, not even those in power, is above the law.
We must also be honest: over the past few decades, life has truly improved for many Chinese people, an improvement earned by the hard work of hundreds of millions. We do not deny this. We simply believe that the people of a nation deserve more than food on the table and clothes on their backs. They deserve dignity, and the right to say “no” to power.
Our Way
As Liu Xiaobo wrote in his final statement to the court: “I have no enemies and no hatred.” What we seek to end is one-party rule, not any individual. What we pursue is justice, not revenge. Change must be peaceful, rational, and nonviolent, because answering violence with violence only produces a new tyranny.
Despotism rests on fear and lies, so we begin by refusing to lie: by remembering the truth, speaking the truth, and standing with everyone who has been punished for their words.
And to those inside the system, we say this: many of you are police officers, judges, civil servants, Party members, someone’s son or daughter, someone’s mother or father. This system silences you too, and makes you act against your conscience. History leaves each of us a choice. When conscience and orders collide, you can choose to stand with your conscience. A new China will turn away no one who is willing to respect the people and respect the law.
It Begins with You and Me
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the signers of the Declaration mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Today, let us pledge to one another our conscience: so that our children no longer grow up in fear, and so that every Chinese person can live with dignity.
A free China begins with each one of us.