Xu Zhiyong Is Missing

Xu Zhiyong went missing sometime in the morning on July 29, 2009. At the time, Xu was the prominent head of the Open Constitution Initiative (gongmeng), a research and advocacy group dedicated to promoting the rule of law in China. Heightened media attention brought about Xu's release about four weeks later, but only after his organization was charged with tax evasion and saddled with 1.4 million RMB in fines and back taxes (Canavas 2009).

Six years before, Xu was emerging as a star in the people's congress system. In 2003, he was elected as an independent candidate to a lowerlevel people's congress in Haidian, a district of Beijing. Xu quickly earned a reputation as an activist deputy eager to address the needs of the people. In 2004, he worked with deputies at the national level to propose an amendment – which was subsequently adopted – to include the words “human rights” in the country's constitution. Other motions aimed to improve education for children of migrant workers and to ensure fair compensation for displaced residents.

Xu's activism made him something of a cult hero among proponents of democratic reform.One TIME reporter described Xu as “probably the person most committed to public service that I've met in China, and possibly inmy whole life” (Osnos 2009). In 2009, themagazine Mr. Fashion – China's version of Esquire – ran a feature that asked sixty prominent individuals to explain their vision of a “Chinese Dream.” Xu Zhiyong was featured on the cover.

At the time of his first detention in 2009, Xu had started pushing the boundaries a little too far. In 2009, his Open Constitution Initiative issued reports condemning oppression of minorities in Tibet and advocating greater transparency in government expenditures. Xu also personally worked to provide legal assistance to citizens illegally detained in black jails,which sadly probably contributed to his own detention months later.

Shortly after the charges of tax evasion – a common pretense for political purges – Xu's organization and its website were banned. Xu himself was prohibited from teaching law, which he had been doing at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications for many years. He lost his deputy seat in Haidian in the following election.

Supported, Concerned, Submitted, Best Wishes

Lei Chuang looks the part of an activist. When we met, he was 26 years old and enrolled in an engineering graduate program at Shanghai Jiaotong University. He wore long hair and thin-framed glasses. He spoke about Chinese politics and society without reservation.

Lei's issue was discrimination, specifically discrimination against carriers ofHepatitis B. The virus is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids and can cause cirrhosis of the liver and other life-threatening conditions. In China, vaccination programs remain underdeveloped, and recent estimates suggest the country may have as many as 130 million carriers (Niu 2011). The disease is particularly widespread in rural areas, where doctors have a tendency to reuse syringes, and citizens are less aware of the risk of transmission.

Hepatitis B carriers in China are a stigmatized group, both socially and professionally. Most citizens lack basic knowledge about how the virus is spread, and many wrongly believe that sharing food or chopsticks with carriers brings risk of infection. A 2005 survey by the Chinese Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control (CFHPC) shows that 37.5% of respondents from Sichuan and Guangzhou said they would not want to work or eat at a table with carriers of the virus (Lu 2006). Employers are not legally permitted to inquire about a prospective employee's carrier status, but many do so anyway. Carriers are routinely denied employment once traces of the virus are discovered in their blood samples during mandatory physicals. Another survey found that 35% of state-owned enterprises publicly stated that they would not employ Hepatitis B carriers. Over 60% screen their employees for the virus, paying a trivial fine for doing so (“Hepatitis B Carriers” 2012).

Lei is a Hepatitis B carrier himself and has some personal experience with discrimination. In 2007, his brother signed an employment contract with a company in Wuhan, but was later refused employment because of his condition. In August of that year, Lei began his first of many awareness campaigns, walking around city streets holding a sign reading, “I am a Hepatitis B carrier” (Zheng and Sun 2012). In 2011, he started writing letters to Premier Wen Jiabao – one new letter every day – asking him to dinner as a representative of the Hepatitis B community.The dinner would publicly demonstrate that there is no risk of infection from sharing ameal.

320 Bribes

Property tycoon Huang Yubiao had long wanted to be a deputy in the National People's Congress. After failing to win a seat in the Hunan delegation in 2008, Huang set his sights slightly lower the next time around, targeting a spot in the Hunan Provincial People's Congress (HPPC). Huang had heard from friends in the Shaoyang municipal congress that paying bribes would help his election chances, so he neatly packed 1,000 RMB into 320 envelopes and distributed them to sitting members (Zhang 2013).

On election day, January 2, 2013, Huang emerged disappointed once again. His 320 bribes yielded only 241 votes, well shy of the 267 needed for election. He lost despite being nominated by the Shaoyang municipal government, which engineered the election of 76 of its 97 nominated candidates.

Disgruntled and slighted, Huang approached his co-conspirators and demanded that the bribes be returned, all the while secretly filming and recording the transactions. Weeks later, he went public with his story, posting the details on numerous blogs and websites.He even mailedmaterials directly to Hunan provincial authorities and called for the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC), the Party's corruption watchdog organization, to intervene.

In an interview, Huang described his motivations for coming clean:

Huang cited altruistic reasons for seeking a seat, stating that he wanted to be a deputy in order a make a social contribution (Zhao 2013). He also believes his acts merited affirmation from the authorities and is confident that he will not face criminal charges for his attempted bribery (Zhang 2013).

Regardless of whether we believe Huang's stated motivations, his story suggests that seats may be worth something, and likely more than the proffered 320,000 RMB. Indeed, many netizens joke that Huang would have been more successful if he had properly valued the position (Li 2013). “One has to spend millions of yuan to be elected as a village head,” one lawyer commented on his microblog. “Now this person wants to spend only hundreds of thousands to become a provincial-level congress deputy.