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
RFA: Lessons from testing AI on the truth of Tiananmen
American and Chinese AI models give starkly different responses, showing that a model can only be as effective at establishing and recognizing truth as its creator. By Jianli Yang and Deyu Wang 2025.06.09 Last week marked the 36th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen...
Foreignpolicy.com: Why China Hasn’t Seen Another Tiananmen Movement
Online culture and censorship have broken the ties that once spurred protesters. BY: JIANLI YANG Today, June 4, marks the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre—a moment of both tragedy and hope. It was the bloody end to a nationwide democracy movement that...
The Diplomat: China’s Sex Industry and the Human Trafficking Crisis – A Deepening Human Rights Emergency
BY: JIANLI YANG AND JEANETTE TONG China’s sex industry, which is booming despite official prohibitions, reveals deep structural and human rights issues at the intersection of economic hardship, systemic gender imbalance, and weak law enforcement. The rise in...
National Review: China Is Enabling Pakistan’s Proxy Terror Against India
Beijing’s diplomatic protection of terrorist organizations is aimed at weakening India in South Asia. BY: JIANLI YANG For more than a decade, the Communist Party of China has positioned itself as a vocal opponent of terrorism in global fora, invoking the language of...
Yibao.net: It’s Credibility that Is on the Line
Editor’s note: On March 13, the Italian magazine IL Foglio published this article by Dr. Jianli Yang. We are privileged to share it with you with its English translation. In 2002, I was arrested by the Chinese government as one of the leaders of the Chinese democracy...
Yibao.net: What Decrypted Soviet Archives Have to Say About the CCP and Sun Yat-Sen’s Ties to the USSR
China has had a rough go of things over the past century. If today's democrats ignore the values of the Republic of China because of the so-called “Dark Sun Yat-sen” trend secretly started by the Chinese Communist Party, their enemies will be happy and their friends...
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