Émigrés Free to Discuss An Alternative China
Hope is fostered in bookstores for diaspora groups.
TOKYO — On a rainy Saturday afternoon in Tokyo, about 50 Chinese people packed into a nondescript office that doubles as a bookstore. They came for a seminar about Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist poet who was beheaded more than a century ago for conspiring to overthrow the Qing dynasty.
Like them, Ms. Qiu had lived as an immigrant in Japan. The lecture’s title, “Rebuilding China in Tokyo,” said as much about the aspirations of the people in the room as it did about Ms. Qiu’s life.
Public discussions like this one used to be common in big cities in China, but under President Xi Jinping they have increasingly been stifled over the past decade. The Chinese public is discouraged from organizing and participating in civic 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’s a need for a place where people can vent, share their grievances, then think about what to do next.” Mr. Li himself moved to Tokyo from Beijing last year over safety concerns. “People like us have a mission to drive the transformation of China,” he said.
From Tokyo and Chiang Mai, Thailand, to Amsterdam and New York, members of the Chinese diaspora are building public lives that are forbidden in China and training themselves to be civic-minded citizens. They are opening Chinese bookstores, holding seminars and organizing civic groups.
These émigrés are creating an alternative China, a more hopeful society. In the process, 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 was so successful that feminists in at least four other U.S. cities, as well as London, Amsterdam and Vancouver, British Columbia, are staging similar shows. Chinese immigrants in Europe established dozens of nonprofit organizations focused on L.G.B.T.Q., protest and other issues.
Most of these events and organizations are not overtly political or aimed at trying to overthrow the Chinese government, though some participants hope they will one day return to a democratic China. But the immigrants organizing them say they believe it is important to learn to live without fear, to trust one another and pursue a life of purpose.
Far too many Chinese, even after leaving, were for years too fearful of the government to attend public events not aligned with mainstream Communist Party rhetoric.
But in 2022, protests that erupted in China to object to the country’s pandemic restrictions prompted demonstrations in other countries. People realized they were not alone.
Anne Jieping Zhang, a mainland-born journalist who worked in Hong Kong for two decades before moving to Taiwan during the pandemic, started a bookstore called Nowhere in Taipei in 2022. She opened a branch in Chiang Mai, Thailand, last December.
Ms. Zhang said she wanted to reach any Chinese person who was curious about the world.
“What matters is not what you oppose but what kind of life you desire,” she said. “If the Chinese or the Chinese diaspora cannot rebuild a society in places without top-down restrictions, even if we undergo a change of regime, we definitely won’t be able to lead better lives.”