Lawsuit over politically motivated censorship and surveillance on WeChat filed in California
Citizen Power Initiatives for China (“CPIFC”) filed a lawsuit today in the Superior Court for the State of California, Santa Clara County, alleging that the censorship and surveillance practices and policies of WeChat, the dominant social media and payments application in the Chinese-speaking world, violates numerous aspects of California law. Joining the lawsuit are six California WeChat users who have suffered significant financial, emotional, and psychological harm as a result of those practices and policies. The lawsuit asks the court to declare that the challenged practices and policies are unlawful under California law, issue an injunction against them, and to order that defendants pay damages for the harms they caused. The defendants are Tencent America LLC and Tencent International Service. Ltd. [Read More]
For Us, the Living:
A Journey to Shine Light on Truth
CPIFC president Dr. Yang Jianli’s selected collection of 138 speeches (2000-2020), For Us, the Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth, is now available for purchase. Published by Redwood Publishing, the 619-page book is forwarded by the Dalai Lama and Natan Sharansky.
Examining China’s Response to the Covid-19 Outbreak
This is a comprehensive report on how the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has already killed over half-a-million people, including 134,000 Americans, could have been avoided had the Chinese Communist Party acted in an honest and responsible manner. This book, currently available in Chinese, analyzes how the Chinese Communist Party responded to the virus, especially in the critical month between December 26, 2019 and January 25, 2020.
Based on meticulous analysis of data, much of it directly from sources in China, the report establishes a day-by-day, objective record documenting how Chinese authorities, from the top leadership to local governments, from biomedical institutions to public health administrations, from official media to foreign affairs functionaries, responded to the epidemic.
Class Action Lawsuit Against Wechat
We believe that Tencent has become the technology shackle for the CCP to restrict the freedom of the people. What Tencent has been doing domestically and overseas constitutes a serious violation to human rights and violates Chinese, American laws as well as the international law. We must start a battle for the freedom of speech, taking a stand against WeChat. By doing so, we can open space for the freedom of speech in China. This is why Citizen Power Initiatives for China officially is starting a class action lawsuit against WeChat (Tencent) in the United States, a project we have been planning and preparing.
Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region
Our team led by Dr. Han Lianchao published a report, Cotton: The Fabric Full of Lies, on forced and prison labor in Xinjiang in August 2019. One of the key conclusions is that there is presence of forced labor at many steps of the cotton supply chain and some of these products have entered into international commerce, including the U.S. and European markets. Recently the U.S. State Department, Dept. of Treasury, Dept. of Commerce, and Dept. of Homeland Seucirty issued a joint advisory which cited the report on its findings.
Latest Articles
The Hill: In Beijing, Blinken should appeal for the freedom of ‘blank page’ protesters
By Jianli Yang - Jan 30, 2023 As Antony Blinken prepares to embark on his first trip to China as Secretary of State, activists around the world are urging him to place human rights at the top of his agenda. For Blinken to do so would certainly be in keeping with...
National Review: How China’s Dictatorship Terrorizes Students in America
The Chinese Communist Party uses spies and technology to silence dissent—even abroad. Western institutions need to fight back. By Evan Osborne & Jianli Yang - Jan 23, 2023 The world watched in admiration, and even awe, as university students in China risked the...
National Review: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 Cannot Stop
By Jianli Yang & Austin Lin - Jan 22, 2023 The Covid-19 pandemic recently marked its third year. Life has seemingly returned to normal for people in many countries. But Covid itself lingers. Milder variants with significantly higher lethality rates than the...
The Hill: Worse than 2020? China’s COVID decisions may ensure another wave
By Jianli Yang & Bradley A. Thayer - Dec 29, 2022 China’s dramatic change in its COVID policies could have deleterious consequences for the world’s population: We may face the prospect of a new wave of the virus that will have an enormous impact on public health,...
Yibao.net : he metamorphosis of public health policy into dead-end politics: From the calamity of multi-year “Zero Covid” to overnight “Covid Coexistence” shares one root cause – Xi Jinping
By Jianli Yang, Austin Lin & Bradley A. Thayer - Dec 21, 2022 The recent “Blank Paper” movement forced the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to adjust their Covid prevention policy, from adhering to the “dynamic zero” policy to not mentioning “zero Covid” all...
WashTimes: Congress must pass Cornyn-Schumer NDAA microchip amendment
America's national security depends on it By: Jianli Yang - Dec 12, 2022 While the COVID-19 pandemic opened the American public’s eyes to many aspects of governmental policy, perhaps the most striking was the realization that the nation has become too dependent on...
WUHAN MEMO – Timeline
CPIFC Team has put together a comprehensive timeline that documented the most crucial days of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Such report contains the daily record for epidemic development and global countermeasure strategies. We sincerely hope it provides a panoramic index and guide for analyzing the development of the epidemic.
Other Initiatives
Citizen Power Awards
Citizen Press Publications
Tankman Statue
Yibao Magazine
Interethnic Interfaith Leadershp Conferences
Dr. Jianli Yang gave a keynote talk “The Chinese Communist Party: Savior of Culprit?” at Covid Con on April 13, a virtual Oslo Freedom Forum event hosted by the Human Rights Foundation. The virtual conference focused on how tyranny sparked and is exploiting the novel coronavirus pandemic to crack down on civil liberties.
CPIFC at the UN
We have collaborated with UN Watch to bring China’s records on human rights abuses to United Nations’ Human Rights Commission.
Our Voice at the United Nations