Teng Biao Talks to the NY Review of Books About Criminal & Rights Litigation in China Under Xi

Why would anyone want to become a criminal lawyer under these circumstances? 

I got started because of the Sun Zhigang case, when we were shocked about how this man could be beaten to death just for having the wrong papers. The weiquan movement has also been helped greatly by the Internet because you can find other like-minded people. You see, in the past, the government pushed ideas like class struggle. But then, in the 1990s, it started to argue for “rule of law.” People began to realize that we can use this vocabulary to fight for civil rights.
And our numbers are growing. In 2003 or 2004, there were just twenty or thirty weiquan lawyers. But now It’s hard to define who’s a human rights lawyer. We find that when we take a sensitive case, more lawyers are interested in helping. Some are very active, like Gao Zhisheng or Pu Zhiqiang or Xu Zhiyong. For the active ones, I’d say there are two hundred. There are hundreds of others willing to take a human rights case. So all in all, maybe six or seven hundred. 

Are these lawyers active throughout China or only in Beijing? 

In 2004, 80 percent or 90 percent were in Beijing. In China there are 240,000 lawyers and one third are in Beijing. But especially since 2009, there have are now many in other cities, such as Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, or Changsha.

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