Senior Researcher & Strategist at Tibet Action Institute / Lecturer at Columbia University

New York, NY
Joined February 2009
China, stop treating the world like your own censored territory. Before Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit, Falun Gong protesters in Toronto say CCP-linked individuals targeted them.
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“The (PRC) Ethnic Unity Law is now in effect, I could shoot you!” When did a Toronto sidewalk become CCP territory? On September 22, a man wearing a PRC flag on his jacket tore down Falun Gong banners outside the Chinese Consulate, shoved practitioners, and screamed that he would kill them and shoot them. He told a woman standing on Canadian pavement that the ground itself belonged to Beijing. That woman, Lina Li, has now spoken out for the first time in the attached video. She described protecting the banners when her chin was cut. Only afterward did she feel the blood. Fellow practitioner Nora Geng, kicked while filming, said the attacker showed no fear of police and used language about “separatism” that does not sound like a random passerby. Toronto Police are investigating. They should finish the job. This is not a neighborhood quarrel. It is the latest export of a 27-year campaign. Since July 1999 the Chinese Communist Party has tried to erase Falun Gong, a spiritual practice grounded in Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. Inside China that campaign has meant prisons, torture, and the well-documented harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience. Outside China it has become transnational repression: family members threatened back home, practitioners followed, banners slashed, and hoax bomb threats used to cancel Shen Yun performances, including in Toronto this year. The method is consistent. A foreign statute is invoked on a free street as if it had force of law. A public sidewalk is declared “Chinese territory.” Death threats are delivered in daylight, then the suspect flees. The message is not subtle: even in Canada, even under the Charter, even in front of cameras, you can be punished for believing what Beijing forbids. Canada has already seen the pattern. Elderly practitioners assaulted. Displays vandalized. Relatives in China used as leverage. Diplomatic missions and United Front networks have long treated diaspora communities as extensions of Party discipline. When a man can claim the right to execute people on a Toronto sidewalk and walk away, the problem is no longer “awareness.” It is enforcement. Toronto Police should preserve every frame and every second of audio, identify the speaker, and test the words against the Criminal Code on uttering threats, assault, and mischief. The Ontario Attorney General and federal public-safety officials should treat this as more than a noisy dispute between “community groups.” If the attacker is linked to consular direction or United Front work, that belongs in an RCMP and CSIS file. A democracy is not judged by how loudly it lectures Beijing. It is judged by whether “I will kill you” remains a crime when the victim practices a faith the Party hates. Charge the suspect. Give the practitioners a public accounting. Make clear that Chinese law ends at China’s border, and that Canadian law still begins on a Toronto sidewalk. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights @TorontoPolice @TPSOperations @ONAttorneyGen @Safety_Canada @rcmpgrcpolice @csiscanada
🚨 “I’m going to shoot all of you!” Canada Must Treat a Death Threat on a Toronto Sidewalk as a Crime A free country is judged by what it allows on an ordinary street. Circulating video from Toronto shows a man wearing a People’s Republic of China flag patch confronting Falun Gong practitioners at a public display, grabbing banners that read “Stop Persecution of Falun Gong” and “Stop CCP Transnational Repression,” and leaving poles and signs on the ground. On the original audio, he can be heard saying: “The Ethnic Unity Law is now in effect. I’m going to shoot all of you.” That is not political argument. It is an alleged death threat, delivered in Canada, against people exercising a Charter right to worship and to protest. A Chinese statute has no force on a Toronto sidewalk. A man invoking Beijing’s law as a license to execute believers in Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance is importing a police-state slogan onto Canadian soil. Toronto Police Service should preserve every second of the original audio, identify the speaker, and determine whether the words meet the Criminal Code test for uttering threats, alongside possible assault and mischief. The Ontario Attorney General and federal public-safety officials should not treat this as a noisy quarrel between “community groups.” If the speaker is linked to United Front work or consular direction, that belongs in an RCMP and CSIS file. Canada already knows the pattern: harassment of Falun Gong practitioners, pressure on families, and hoax bomb threats that disrupted Shen Yun in Toronto this year. A filmed threat to have people shot is the moment when “awareness” must become enforcement. Investigate the video. Transcribe the audio. Charge whoever broke the law. Give the targeted practitioners a public accounting. A democracy does not prove its values by lecturing Beijing. It proves them by making clear that “I’m going to shoot all of you” is a crime in Canada, not a talking point from another country’s statute book.
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EXCLUSIVE: Dual rallies in Flushing, NY today as anti-Xi Jinping protesters and pro-CCP supporters faced off at the same time. A pro-Beijing man suddenly attacked a democracy activist, kicking him and snatching his banner, before police arrested the assailant on the spot.
[ Margin Notes ] As the saying goes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a duck. No matter how he is packaged, Xi Jinping remains the party boss of the evil Chinese Communist Party. He is not the leader of a normal country. Not a single word he says can be trusted. Do not be fooled by him. — Aric
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China’s infrastructure obsession helped turn a Himalayan hazard into a catastrophe for Nepal. China has spent years carving highways and tunnels through one of Earth’s most fragile mountain systems. That means blasting rock, cutting slopes, removing vegetation and redirecting drainage, all activities known to increase landslide risk when poorly managed. So when a colossal mass of ice, rock and mud suddenly collapses near an intensively developed Chinese border corridor, asking whether Chinese construction contributed to this tragedy is elementary risk analysis. The glacial collapse may have been the immediate trigger. But China cannot claim every successful project as proof of Communist Party greatness, then blame Heaven whenever the mountain falls down. Nepal deserves an independent investigation into Chinese blasting, slope modification, drainage disruption and environmental oversight. China exported its infrastructure model across the Himalayas, and in the meantime have exported the deadly consequences to neighboring nations like Nepal.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The video in this post includes footage from the 2021 Atami landslide in Japan, unrelated to the recent Nepal-China border disaster. open.online/2026/08/27/ree… blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/… theguardian.com/world/video/20…
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Read @jleibold and @tendor on Xi’s efforts to “remake the inner life” of China’s non-Han citizens—and how Beijing’s new ethnic unity law could backfire in the long run. foreignaffairs.com/china/nex…
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Read @jleibold and @tendor on the stakes of China’s new ethnic unity law, which “makes Mandarin Chinese the basic language of education and official life.” foreignaffairs.com/china/nex…
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New in @ForeignAffairs: @tendor and I argue that China’s new ethnic-unity law does not abolish minority autonomy on paper. It does something more insidious: it gives statutory force to assimilation while hollowing autonomy out in practice. foreignaffairs.com/china/nex…?
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“For the foreseeable future, Beijing has closed the door on peaceful coexistence, locking itself instead into a more hostile and zero-sum relationship with the minority groups whose cultures and languages it once accommodated,” write @jleibold and @tendor. bit.ly/4bRimOq
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In a review of “Political Trust in China” by Lianjiang Li and “Institutional Genes” by Chenggang Xu, Andrew Nathan argues that China is less stable than it seems. foreignaffairs.com/reviews/c…
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🚨 FAKE ALERT 🚨 Drepung Loseling Monastery and the Central Tibetan Administration strongly deny issuing any letters cancelling the March 10 commemoration of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising. Two circulating press releases claiming there will be no public gatherings or remembrance events are fabricated. ⚠️ Do not be misled by disinformation. ✊ March 10 will be remembered. Tibet’s voice will not be silenced. #FreeTibet #March10 #TibetUprising #StandWithTibet
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"This Losar concludes the Year of the Wood Snake, a period considered so inauspicious that some couples postponed weddings, and ushers in the Year of the Fire Horse, a more hopeful era of energy and transformation." cooking.nytimes.com/article/…
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Zhang Yadi has studied and lived in France. "It is important for the French government also to protect the rights and freedom of expression of its residents in France and press the Chinese government to release her", @wang_maya @hrw. @francediplo
Zhang Yadi's arrest is "a case of transnational repression. The fear is that students’ activism abroad is being closely watched. The impact is to make everyone very worried about everything they say and do, including outside of China." - HRW @wang_maya rfa.org/english/china/2025/0…
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⛰️ What are Beijing’s interests in Tibet and how has Xi Jinping pursued them since coming to power? What is likely to occur after the Dalai Lama’s passing? 🎧 In latest episode of the China Global, @BonnieGlaser discusses these questions @tendor: buff.ly/2eXIGjN
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🌏 “For centuries, there was this idea: whoever controls #Tibet will dominate Asia. China is now acting on that hypothesis.” 🎧 Listen to our #ChinaGlobalPodcast episode with @BonnieGlaser and @tendor for a deep dive into Tibet’s strategic role: youtube.com/watch?v=M647x3ta…
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I had the pleasure of speaking on the #ChinaGlobalPodcast with @BonnieGlaser on the internal and external factors that drive Beijing's quest for total domination in Tibet & its plans to interfere in the @DalaiLama succession process. @tibetaction @SFTHQ
🚨 NEW #ChinaGlobalPodcast episode out now! What happens after the #DalaiLama passes? @BonnieGlaser & @Tendor unpack Beijing’s succession strategy and its geopolitical implications. 🎧Listen on your fav. podcast apps or watch here: youtube.com/watch?v=M647x3ta… #Tibet #China
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Read @tendor and @jltib88 on China’s efforts to control the Dalai Lama’s succession—and how Beijing’s strategy could provoke “the very instability that Chinese leaders hope to avoid.” foreignaffairs.com/china/bei…
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