Minkan (民刊): Chinese Samizdat

The FMSH is pleased to host the conference "Minkan (民刊): Chinese-style samizdat. Resistance through unofficial publishing in China before the Internet (1957–1997)", presented by Professor Shao Jiang, Doctor of Political Science (University of Oxford), and organised by the international research network “Modernity, Transition and Reform in China”.

Minkan (民刊) — unofficial publications in the People’s Republic of China — remain a largely unknown phenomenon in the West, unlike samizdat in the former USSR. The speaker offers the first in-depth study of this movement, from the 1950s to the advent of the Internet. By analysing these unauthorised journals as forms of social, political and historical expression, he revives voices and practices that the state sought to erase.

Rooted in China’s long print culture tradition, minkan played a key role in the emergence of an independent civil society, distinct from the state elite. Whether in the form of wall posters, copied manuscripts or small printed publications, minkan acted as alternative media, civic spaces and acts of resistance. They bear witness to popular creativity and to the determination of dissidents striving for freedom within an authoritarian regime to reclaim the public voice.

Shao Jiang holds a PhD in Political Science and has conducted research in several academic centres at British universities. He is currently a Research Associate at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. His work focuses on politics and social movements, democratisation and human rights, with a particular interest in the media and unofficial publications in China since the establishment of the Communist regime.

He has been a visiting researcher at Academia Sinica, National Taiwan University and Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. The author of numerous academic articles, he also published Citizen Publications in China before the Internet (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and contributes regularly to several international media outlets.

One of the main student leaders of the Tiananmen movement in 1989, he was imprisoned three times in China during the 1990s for his involvement — first as a movement leader and later for his continued activism. A former political prisoner, he now lives in London.

The lecture, organised by Lun Zhang, will be delivered in English.