A collection of personal narratives and essays by Chinese journalists, intellectuals, lawyers, and activists, on topics including life of peasants and migrants, crime and punishment, prostitution, media censorship, and social and economic inequalities. Incudes two essays by Liu Xiaobo. “Those who want to know what life is really like inside China must read this essential book,” Ian Buruma

This report describes and examines China's state secrets system and shows how it allows and even promotes human rights violations by undermining the rights to freedom of expression and information and by maintaining a culture of secrecy that has a chilling effect on efforts to develop the rule of law and an independent civil society.

In addition to an extensive compilation of laws, regulations, and official documents, many in English translation for the first time, this report includes concrete recommendations relating to governance, legislative amendments, and promoting China’s compliance with and implementation of its international human rights obligations.

The focus of this report is the legal status of internal migrants in four of China's major cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. It describes the discriminatory laws and policies that make internal migrants second class citizens, essentially leaving 10 to 20 percent of the poorest residents of these cities virtually without rights. Since the poorest and most vulnerable among the rural-to-urban migrants are least able to circumvent the mechanisms of control, due to their lack of money and influence, and are most likely to be subject to official and popular discrimination, their experience is the report's principal subject matter.