SOCIAL JUSTICE

In early summer 2018, Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily published a series of reports, of which three are translated below, exposing faulty construction along the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) line linking ShaTin to Central. The investigation demonstrated that structural walls and platforms at three MTR stations had construction defects that could lead to potential collapse. … 2018: Exposing faulty construction of a major metro line in Hong Kong

From 2009 onwards, Chinese media started reporting on a string of suicides at the Taiwanese-owned iPhone maker Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen. In 2010 alone, 14 young workers had committed suicide by jumping to their deaths from Foxconn buildings. All of the workers were in their late teens or early twenties. In early 2010, Southern Weekly … 2010: How an undercover reporter exposed suicides and extreme working conditions at China’s Foxconn factories

In 2018, police officers took unconscious Sun Renze to the hospital in Yining City, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and claimed he had choked on water while in custody. Sun died 43 days later. An autopsy, carried out after repeated requests from his mother, revealed multiple organ failure likely caused by external injuries as a result … 2024: A mother’s pursuit of justice for her son beaten to death by police

From 2002 to 2005, Shaoyang City (Hunan province) experienced what is referred to by locals as the “wave of baby snatching,” during which the local family planning department forcibly took 13 infants from their families. Several were later found to have been sold to adoption agencies in Western countries for a price of 3,000 USD each … 2011: How Caixin exposed government-sanctioned child trafficking

In Autumn 2010, several newsrooms started to report on China’s “black prisons” — secret, unlawful detention centres employed by the authorities where detainees are subject to intimidation, abuse and torture. Most of the reports focused on the private security firm An Yuan Ding, a company that operated multiple “black prisons” and primarily targeted citizens who … 2010: Southern Metropolis Daily investigates China’s notorious “black prisons”

In August 2002, plainclothes police in Yan’an (Shaanxi Province) entered the home of a married couple after receiving a tipoff that they had been watching porn. The husband, surnamed Zhang, was taken in custody and beaten up, requesting hospitalisation. Two months later, the police arrested him again on account of the previous incident under the … 2002: How a “China Business News” investigation sparkled debate on police brutality

In 2010, years before China’s #MeToo movement reached its full stride, Southern Metropolis Daily published the first investigation on sexual assault in the workplace in China. The piece discusses the case of Sunmoon Group, one of China’s largest cram school chains spanning over 300 locations across China and abroad, and its CEO Song Shanmu, who had … 2010: Years before #MeToo, a Chinese daily helped bring down a CEO’s predatory empire

This story is about a group of friends in China experiencing the stringent lockdowns and restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The oppressive measures, including enforced citywide quarantines and mass testing, have led to feelings of frustration and despair, provoking the white paper revolution. Central to the narrative are personal stories of friends Yan Liu, a committed journalist, Li Yuanjing, an apolitical young woman arrested for administering a Telegram group, and Cao Zhixin, whose freedom was curtailed after posting a video online. The story culminates with the reopening of their favourite hangout, the “No Second Bar,” highlighting the absence of their imprisoned friends and a poem on a blackboard, symbolising their resilience and hope amidst oppression.

Since there are no trade unions, Chinese delivery workers cannot fight against the time allotted by the platform’s algorithms, and have to resort to dangerous practices to ensure on-time delivery, which causes traffic accidents, some fatal.

In 2017, China Youth Daily revealed that, between 2015 and 2017,  dozens of elderly homeowners in Beijing were being scammed — and some evicted — after signing “reverse mortgage” agreements with private lenders. The scheme was meant to grant homeowners access to loans based on their home’s value. After the report was published, nearly a hundred victims came forward to tell their own stories with China Youth Daily.

“The Death of Detainee Sun Zhigang,” published in 2003, marked a pivotal moment in Chinese journalism, whose impact in China is comparable with the Watergate scandal in the USA. This article tells the story of a young economic migrant working for a clothing company in Guangzhou, who was arrested for failing to show police a local residency permit and died in a migrant worker detention facility after having been severely beaten and abused.

The investigations that followed this story uncovered widespread abuse and acts of slavery at migrant detention centres, leading the government to shut down all 800 centres across the country and revoke a law that allowed police to detain those who did not present identity documents. A total of 12 related were sentenced to death or prison, but no police officers were found guilty. Three top editors of Southern Metropolis Daily paid a heavy price for the story: in 2004, they were arrested on corruption charges and received prison sentences one as long as 12 years, though these were later reduced.