On a rainy Saturday afternoon in central Tokyo, about 50 Chinese gathered in a gray, nondescript office that doubles as a bookstore. They came for a seminar about Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist poet and revolutionary who was beheaded more than a century ago for plotting to overthrow the Qing dynasty.
Like them, Ms. Qiu had lived as an immigrant in Japan. The title of the lecture, “Rebuilding China in Tokyo,” spoke as much about the aspirations of the people in the room as it did about Ms. Qiu’s life.
Public debates like this used to be common in China’s big cities, but have been increasingly stifled over the past decade. The Chinese public is discouraged from organizing and participating in political activities.
In the past year, a new type of Chinese public life has emerged — outside China’s borders in places like Japan.
“With so many Chinese relocating to Japan,” said Li Jinxing, a human rights lawyer who organized the event in January, “there is a need for a place where people can express themselves, share their grievances, and then think about what to do. they do afterwards.” Mr Li himself moved to Tokyo from Beijing last September due to concerns about his safety. “People like us are on a mission to lead China’s transformation,” he said.
From Tokyo and Chiang Mai, Thailand to Amsterdam and New York, members of the Chinese diaspora are building public lives forbidden in China and training themselves to be civic-minded citizens – the kind of Chinese people don’t want them to be the Communist Party to be. They open Chinese bookstores, hold seminars and organize citizen groups.
These immigrants are creating an alternative China, a more hopeful society. Along the way, they are redefining what it means to be Chinese.
Four Chinese bookstores opened in Tokyo last year. A monthly feminist open mic comedy show that started in New York in 2022 has been so successful that feminists in at least four other US cities, as well as London, Amsterdam and Vancouver, British Columbia, are organizing similar shows. Chinese immigrants in Europe have founded dozens of non-profit organizations focused on LGBTQ, protest and other issues.
Most of these events and organizations are not overtly political or aimed at trying to overthrow the Chinese government, although some participants hope to one day be able to return to a democratic China. But the immigrants who organize them say they believe it’s important to learn to live without fear, trust each other and pursue a life of purpose.
Too many Chinese, even after they left, were for years too intimidated by the government to attend public events that do not align with dominant Communist Party rhetoric.
But in 2022, the White Paper protests that broke out in China to oppose the country’s pandemic restrictions sparked demonstrations in other countries. People realized they were not alone and started looking for like-minded people.
Yilimai, a young professional who has lived in Japan for a decade, said that since the 2022 protests, he has been organizing and participating in demonstrations and seminars in Tokyo.
Last June, he came to a talk I did for my Chinese-language podcast, “I Don’t Understand,” and was surprised to find he was among about 300 people. (I was surprised, too. Who wants to hear a journalist talk about her podcast?) He said he had met and stayed connected with about a dozen people at the event.
“Engagement in public life is a virtue in itself,” said Yilimai, who used his online pseudonym for fear of government reprisals. It means “a grain of wheat”, a biblical reference to the resurrection.
China once had, in the 2000s and early 2010s, what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas called a public sphere. The authorities left room for lively, if censored, public conversation alongside state-sanctioned cultural and social life.
In the bookstores of major Chinese cities, Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” and Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” were best sellers. A book club in Beijing started by Ren Zhiqiang, a real estate tycoon, has attracted China’s top businessmen, intellectuals and officials. Shanghai Pride, an annual celebration of LGBTQ rights, attracted thousands of participants. Feminist activists organized movements such as “occupy the men’s toilets” and the official news media covered them as progressive forces. Independent films, documentaries, and underground magazines explored subjects the Communist Party disliked but tolerated: history, sexuality, and inequality.
In the decade since Xi Jinping took the country’s leadership in late 2012, all these initiatives have been crushed. Investigative journalists lost their jobs, human rights lawyers were jailed or fired, and bookstores were forced to close their doors. Ren Zhiqiang, the property tycoon who started the book club, is serving 18 years in prison for criticizing Mr Xi. NGO organizers and LGBTQ and feminist activists were harassed, silenced or forced into exile.
In turn, a growing number of Chinese have left their homeland, their government, and their propaganda for places that allowed them freedom. Now they can connect with each other and give platforms to Chinese people inside and outside the country to communicate and imagine a different future.
Anne Jieping Zhang, a mainland-born journalist who worked in Hong Kong for two decades before moving to Taiwan during the pandemic, is launching a bookstore in Taipei in 2022. She opened a branch in Chiang Mai, Thailand, last December and plans to open in Tokyo and Amsterdam this year.
“I want my bookstore to be a place where Chinese people all over the world can come and exchange ideas,” Ms. Zhang said.
Her bookstore, called Nowhere, issues Republic of Nowhere passports to its valued customers, called citizens rather than members.
Nowhere’s Taipei branch held 138 events last year. The Chiang Mai branch held about 20 events in its first six weeks. The topics were wide-ranging: war, feminism, Hong Kong protests and cities and relationships. I spoke to both branches about my podcast.
Ms. Zhang said she did not want her bookstores to be just for dissidents and young revolutionaries, but for every Chinese person who was curious about the world.
“What matters is not what you oppose, but what kind of life you desire,” he said. “If the Chinese or the Chinese diaspora cannot rebuild a society in places without top-down restrictions, even if we undergo regime change, we will certainly not be able to live a better life.”
Ms Zhang and Mr Li, the human rights lawyer better known by his pen name Wu Lei, said Chinese immigrants were very different from their predecessors in the 1980s, who were mostly economic migrants . New immigrants are better educated. They care about their financial well-being as well as a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves.
Both Ms. Zhang and Mr. Li started their businesses with their own money. The monthly rent for Mr. Lee’s roughly 700-square-foot space, which he uses mostly for events, is about $1,300. He said he could afford it.
Ms. Zhang, currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, is subsidizing the Chiang Mai branch with her savings. The Taipei branch made a profit last year. A growing source of her income is sending books to Chinese people around the world.
On the same Saturday in January as the seminar at Mr. Li’s bookstore in Tokyo, eight young Chinese sat around a dining table in the home of a Japanese professor to discuss the previous weekend’s election in Taiwan. They have been meeting at public and private events since last year.
“We are preparing for the democratization of China,” said Umi, a graduate student who moved to Japan in 2022 and participated in the White Paper protests. “We have to ask ourselves,” he said, “If the Chinese Communist Party collapses tomorrow, are we prepared to be good citizens?”
