In the previous issue of Sampan, we presented the first half of a two part interview with NPR reporter and author Emily Feng, who recently published her book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China. The book explores who we are as reflected by our political surroundings and as defined by our cultural baggage in its collection of stories about people in China. In the first half, we discussed “Document Nine,” an initiative set forth by Pres. Xi Jinping, whose goal was to take control of culture, identity, and thought, as well as the nation’s strive toward “sinification” — to “sinify” ethnic groups – and comparisons of authoritarianism in China and Russia to the U.S.

Here is the second half of the interview, edited for brevity and clarity (the entire interview can be viewed at Sampan.org).

Sampan: Xi’s 709 crackdown against Chinese lawyers and human rights activists will mark 10 years in July. How is its legacy today? How much were you at risk when meeting with Zhang Xiaohui and others in the world of Chinese business? You continued to be at risk when reporting on poverty alleviation efforts. Was this common for reporters like yourself and even more so for female Asian reporters?

Feng: The round up and detentions of hundreds of human rights lawyers in 2015 was a watershed moment. It signaled a willingness of the Communist Party under Xi to take a harder political line. It also marked the end of what had been an incredibly influential constitutional reform movement in China that notched real legal wins that were slowly but surely working within China’s political system to liberalize the same system and create real protections for civil liberties in China.

After the 705 crackdown, with many of the most effective lawyers in prison or disbarred from practicing, Chinese civil society experienced more blows it was unable to defend itself again – more cases of censorship, arrests and detentions over political charges including the all-too-common “picking quarrels and provoking troubles”

This political clampdown affected foreigners, in particular journalists like myself, working in mainland China, and yes, it was especially concentrated on Asian female journalists like myself. For years, I was in denial that the pressures and harassment I experienced in China were related to my ethnicity – I prided myself on speaking Mandarin well and loving Chinese culture and brushed off accusations of being a “race traitor” – but looking back I think my gender and ethnicity played a big role.

Sampan: “The Chained Woman” is a particularly resonant, haunting story in this book. She is, as advertised, a chained woman, abused and humiliated for TikTok clicks in 2022. She became emblematic of the thousands of women trafficked over the decades and her identity remains unknown. Who was she? You refer to the online internet sleuths, the “human flesh search machine” and their numerous theories as to the woman’s identity. Was she Yang Qingxia? Was she Xiaohuamei? Do you know her status now?

Feng: Her story haunts me because we still do not know who she is, or how she is doing. She had been discovered in the dead of winter, chained by her neck in an outdoor shed, and for many Chinese people, in her anonymity, she came to represent the collective trauma people had suffered under the One Child Policy, from human trafficking in and around China exacerbated by these state controls, and now from the current pro-natalist policies of the state.

Sampan: Your chapter on the Uyghur people, “The Detained,” refers to controls put on that population, and not the ethnic Han Chinese.” I felt guilty each time bored security guards let me through at the many checkpoints when fellow Uyghur people were stopped and hassled.” The plight of the Uyghur certainly seems to have slipped under the radar over the past few years. What’s happening with them now?

Feng: The chapter you’re referring to has been one of the stories that has stayed with me the most over the years, regarding a Uyghur family forcibly separated by the Chinese state in the region of Xinjiang. After much perseverance from the father and grandmother of this family, they were partially reunited – though each member of the family bears deep emotional scars from the experience. Sadly, the father died this year of cancer, and his children have never been able to see their mother again, as she remains imprisoned in Xinjiang. The last I saw them, the two Uyghur children were doing well in Istanbul and have a good support structure around them. However, the degree of suffering they have had to endure is unimaginable.

Sampan: You write eloquently about Taiwan: “For many Chinese dissidents living in political exile…the island was proof that the dream of Chinese democracy…was already a reality for 23 million people.” Hong Kong has a “one country, two systems” structure that’s set to dissolve in 2047. Taiwan remains a disputed entity, for some an appendage of mainland China and or others an independent nation. Is there fear that Xi will do to Taiwan what Putin did to Ukraine?Your final scene about Weiming Chen’s CCP VIRUS 2 sculpture brings together a collection of dissidents for the June 4th. 2022 opening, including pro-Taiwan independence advocates, Hong Kong exiles, and dissidents from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Where do you see this freedom movement going in the future? Where do you want to go in the future as a reporter still fighting the good fight?

Feng: Taiwan and Ukraine are incomparable in the political legacies which they inhabit and present very different challenges militarily and logistically in the event of invasion. Yet in principle, Taiwan certainly has drawn a direct comparison between itself and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and largely as a result, Taiwan has initiated some of its most significant military reforms. It also has noticed and been extremely alarmed by the Trump administration’s Russia-friendly rhetoric and recent criticism of Ukraine. China surely has taken note as well of the U.S.’ foreign policy about-face and will take American deterrence much less seriously in the future – another reminder that nothing the U.S. does on the world stage occurs in a vacuum and instead has stark consequences for other democratic societies.