Still waiting on China to honor its pledges

I recently learned that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton dedicated an entire chapter of her new book , “ Hard Choices ,” to the story of how she and her staff at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing gave me refuge and negotiated my safe travel to the United States after I escaped from illegal house arrest. I’m grateful for her decision to allow me to take sanctuary in the embassy. But I fear that my safe arrival in the United States has given the mistaken impression, as Clinton wrote, that Chinese authorities were “scrupulous” in living up to their agreement with the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jewish solar entrepreneur wins coveted $100K Bronfman Prize

Sam Goldman feted for bringing light to developing nations, work introducing affordable solar light to remote communities in Africa and Asia.

The Ordeal of China’s Liu Xia

With the death in custody on March 14 of Chinese dissident Cao Shunli after extended denial of medical care, the world needs to turn its attention to Liu Xia—the wife of Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo—who is at serious risk of suffering the same fate.

Demanding Justice for Gao Zhisheng

Gao Zhisheng, one of China’s most prominent and courageous human-rights lawyers and prisoners of conscience, has again disappeared into the bowels of the Chinese state’s security system. For more than a year, his family has desperately tried to access him in Shaya prison in Xinjiang, a remote province in western China. But all these efforts have been rebuffed and no one has seen or heard from him since January 2013.

Service Can Save Us

Here’s an update on my cover story, “Can Service Save Us?” from last summer.

I’ve spent the past two weekends with The Mission Continues, the excellent national service program for returning veterans I wrote about in July. You may recall that TMC gives fellowships to veterans who come up with six-month service missions, approved by a local host organization; it also requires the veterans to complete a personal development curriculum, with monthly reading assignments and essays. It is very selective: only 10% of those who applied were accepted for fellowships this year.

Where Mental Asylums Live On

Donald Roldas, a baby-faced man in his late 20s with paranoid schizophrenia, arrived at Guatemala’s only public psychiatric hospital last year after being charged with murdering his parents. He says he often wanders freely through the sprawling facility of dilapidated one-story buildings and wooded courtyards, where detainees charged with crimes mingle with ordinary patients and the developmentally disabled.

The U.S. Needs a New Strategy in Addressing China’s Human Rights

In recent decades, China’s economy has grown about 10 percent a year, lifting more than 500 million people out of poverty, generating wealth for the middle class and expanding global trade. But as the world’s most populous nation has become an increasingly important player on the international stage, it has also brazenly refused to respect fundamental human rights at home. Nowhere is this more evident than the continued persecution of high-profile rights activists and their families.