In China, Crossing the Line Into Activism

By: The Washington Post, November 12, 2005 SANSHAN, China -- When Chen Weiying rode up on the back of a sputtering motorbike that chaotic morning, what she saw changed her life. Dozens of women were crying and shouting as uniformed policemen carried them away, Chen recalled, and three elderly farmers lay in the fields to block a squad of front-end loaders and dump trucks poised to attack the fertile earth. Chen decided on the spot -- without planning, she said, and without thinking it through -- that she could not stand on the fringes.

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East Asia land rights activist Washington Post China