Category Archives: Tienchi Martin-Liao

Tienchi Martin-Liao has been the president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center in 2009-2013 and since February 2016. Previously she worked at the Institute for Asian Affairs in Hamburg, Germany, and lectured at the Ruhr-University Bochum from 1985 to 1991. She became head of the Richard-Wilhelm Research Center for Translation in 1991 until she took a job in 2001 as director of the Laogai Research Foundation (LRF) to work on human rights issues. She was at LRF until 2009. Martin-Liao has served as deputy director of the affiliated China Information Center and was responsible for updating the Laogai Handbook and working on the Black Series, autobiographies of Chinese political prisoners and other human rights books.

Tienchi Martin-Liao: Yu Jie and the Leviathan State

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Author Yu Jie. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Chinese writer-in-exile Yu Jie attempts to reconcile his past life in China and his present life in the United States.

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Tienchi Martin-Liao : Harry Wu: An Amazing Survivor

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Harry Wu on Human Rights Day. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Tienchi Martin-Liao pens a different obituary for a former colleague and recently deceased legendary Chinese defender of human rights.

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Tienchi Martin-Liao: Horsetrading With Abduction

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From left to right: Chang Ping, Tienchi Martin-Liao, writer Ye Fu, and a friend, in Amsterdam in 2012. Image courtesy of the author.

 

China stretches out its hand to control the international media over the authorities’ abduction of a journalist’s family.

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Tienchi Martin-Liao: “Global Citizen” or “Dissident Writer”?: An Impolite Question to Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian

Chinese writer and Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

For a writer in exile, the past informs a present role that is essential to preserving history.

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Tienchi Martin-Liao: “I am very, very sorry… I am proud to be Chinese.”

Observers of the recent elections in Taiwan

Observers of the recent elections in Taiwan. Image provided by the author.

Reflections on Taiwan’s recent groundbreaking election.

It was an amazing experience to be an observer to the Taiwan election. Together with a small group of writers and politicians from Europe and Japan, we had the chance to witness the peaceful and passionate election in Taiwan in mid-January. The landslide victory of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was already prognosticated by several poll institutes weeks ago. Tsai Ing-wen became the first female president, meeting all expectations, yet the results in the parliament election were still quite astonishing. The ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) has lost almost 50 percent from its original 64 seats down to 35 seats, giving the DPP to get a comfortable 68 of 113 majority. More stunning is the newly founded (as of January 25, 2015) so called third forces. Some of the young leaders of the New Power Party are coming from the Sunflower Movement. They have won 5 seats and became the third political force in parliament. Continue reading

A Look at “Mr. Six”

Guan Hu

Guan Hu, director of “Mr. Six.” Image via Youtube user: Yitiao Video 一条视频,

Guan Hu’s newest movie resonates with the Cultural Revolution generation, but the film has one fatal flaw. Continue reading

Tienchi Martin-Liao: The Communist Party of China’s “Mother Beats Child” Syndrome

Fu Lei

Chinese intellectual Fu Lei. Image via: Wikimedia Commons.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals committed suicide in defiance of Mao Zedong’s policies, which would take the lives of millions more. Continue reading

Tienchi Martin-Liao: China’s “State Terrorism” Against Dissent

Gui Minghai’s books are widely distributed in Hong Kong

Gui Minghai’s books are widely distributed in Hong Kong. Image via: Wikimedia Commons.

A controversial author and publisher has been abducted by Chinese authorities in an act of state-sponsored terrorism intended to intimidate dissenting voices. Continue reading