Human Rights Activist Xiang Li Publishes New Book, “The Years Are Not Quiet,” Revealing China’s Human Rights Situation Through Personal Experience

Human Rights Defender Xiang Li Publishes New Book, ‘The Years Are Not Quiet’

This month, rights activist Xiang Li’s new book, “The Years Are Not Quiet – Human Rights Defenders Speak Out About China,” was published in Taiwan. In this book, Xiang Li reveals the human rights violations in Chinese society through her personal experiences between 2010 and 2020.

Xiang Li graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China and is an independent curator who has worked as a university teacher and gallery manager in Beijing. She has been involved in human rights activities in China and at the United Nations for many years, and as a result has been harassed and border-controlled by the Chinese Communist authorities. This month, her new book, The Years Are Not Quiet – Human Rights Defenders Speak Out About China, was published by Taiwan-based publisher Ducheng Culture. On Jan. 20, a reporter interviewed Xiang Li to hear more details about the book, which she describes her experiences from 2010 to 2020.

She said that the book was originally titled Jasmine Blossoms, but was later changed to The Years Are Not Quiet at the suggestion of U.S.-based Writer Su Xiaokang. The book was titled “The Years Are Not Quiet” because she wanted it to show the human rights violations of the Chinese people and to counter the Chinese Communist Party‘s propaganda that portrays the Life of the Chinese people as “the years are quiet. The book is scheduled to be written between 2019 and 2020. In discussing the purpose of her book, she said, “Because a lot of people are very interested in how I became a human rights defender, I used to be an art curator and a university teacher, which is completely different from being a human rights defender. I had such a transition in the period of four to five years. So the main line of this (book) is my experience, the major human rights incidents and human rights cases in mainland China that I have experienced and followed.”

The book contains ten chapters, with a foreword by Su Xiaokang and U.S.-based scholar Xia Ming, and testimonials by Su Xiaokang and pro-democracy activists Zhou Fenglock and Chen Guangcheng.