Human rights: can China build a better world for all?

CHINA'S leader, Xi Jinping, has been busy travelling the world to deliver the message that China is a responsible power, ready for world leadership. The official Xinhua news agency said of his visit to Hamburg for the G-20 gathering: "Chinese President Xi Jinping has demonstrated China's readiness to join the rest of the world in building a better world for everyone."

Within China, however, not everyone would agree that a better world was being built for them. Sunday marked the second anniversary of the "709 crackdown" against human rights defenders, which began on July 9, 2015. According to China Change, an organisation that works with Chinese democracy advocates, more than 300 human rights lawyers and activists have disappeared, been detained, temporarily rounded up and interrogated.

To mark the second anniversary, the China Human Rights Lawyers Group, founded in 2013, issued a statement in which it recalled the first arrests, those of Beijing-based lawyer Wang Yu, her husband Bao Longjun and their son Bao Zhuoxuan.