If you are a Chinese national living overseas, you must assume that you if you say anything publicly against the Chinese Communist Party line and then return to the People’s Republic of China, you may be grabbed by the authorities, as college student Zhang Yadi was grabbed (Associated Press, September 26, 2025).
State security officers from the central-southern Chinese city of Changsha detained Zhang Yadi, 22, on suspicion of “inciting separatism” after she traveled to her hometown this past summer to visit her family, her friends told The Associated Press.
In recent years [and in many earlier years], China has cracked down on protest and activism, especially when it relates to border regions like Tibet and Xinjiang that Beijing fears could seek independence. If Zhang is charged with inciting separatism and convicted, she could be jailed for years….
Rei Xia, a close friend, saw Zhang off in Amsterdam on July 4 and said she dropped out of contact after July 30. Several weeks later, Xia learned that Zhang had been detained on July 31.
Human Rights Watch reports that Zhang’s support for the rights of Tibet while a student in France took the very public form of writing for “a Chinese language digital platform promoting Tibetan rights and interethnic dialogue.” LeMonde says that she did so using a pseudonym, apparently not an impenetrable one. She had also participated in a few protests.
This activity was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Did she think about the risk of returning to China?
The Independent reports that another friend, Ginger Duan, a U.S.-based activist for Tibetan rights, “had been in contact with Ms Zhang when she was in Hunan before her disappearance. ‘I asked her how are you, and she asked me to find some other friends [to go with her] to Lhasa. [Lhasa is the capital of Tibet.] I told her to take care, and nothing very special. Because she went back home, back to China, to see her parents. She basically returns to China for summer break every year. So I just treat that as usual.’ ”
This makes it sound as if Zhang and her friends were oblivious of the risk. But Le Monde reports:
“I advised her not to return,” said [Jiang Tianyong, a lawyer], who suggested she at least clean her smartphone thoroughly. Duan also warned her. But the young woman, who had returned to China every year without incident, did not want to cut herself off from her country.
Human Rights Watch observes that the Chinese government “has long persecuted those who have acted to improve the situation of ethnic minorities in China.”
These include Ilham Tohti, the Uyghur economics professor and Sakharov Prize winner, who was imprisoned for life in 2014 for “separatism,” including creating a website that aimed to “provide Uyghurs and Han Chinese with a platform for discussion and exchange.” Seven of his students and volunteers for the platform were also imprisoned. The late Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and the activist Hu Jia also repeatedly spoke out for Tibetan rights.
Concerned governments should publicly raise Zhang Yadi’s case with the Chinese government and press for her immediate and unconditional release.
Yalkun Uluyol, a researcher at HRW, proposes that the Chinese authorities “seem fearful of people building bridges across ethnic lines that deviate from the official Chinese Communist Party line.” Seem?
