From Chinese Dissident to Living Famously in America | Dissident at the Doorstep Ep 5

Following a tense negotiation between the US and China, Guangcheng arrives in the United States. He is greeted with a hero’s welcome. He gives speeches. He wins awards. And he tries to adjust to life in New York, hosted by NYU. But quickly cracks start to emerge beneath the glamorous facade.

What happens when someone becomes a human-rights icon – but then turns out to stand for something else entirely? Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng was locked up for fighting against China’s One Child Policy and suffered years of unlawful imprisonment. In 2012, following a daring midnight escape, he landed in the United States a hero. But that’s only the beginning of his story. Just a few years later, he would re-enter the spotlight as an avid Trump supporter and a “Stop the Steal” rally-goer. How did this happen? Alison Klayman, Colin Jones, and Yangyang Cheng set out on a journey to find out – did Guangcheng change, or was he totally misunderstood from the beginning? From Crooked Media, This is Dissident At The Doorstep.

Host Bios:

Alison Klayman (she/her): Alison Klayman tells timely, intimate stories with larger-than-life figures. Her first feature AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (Sundance 2012, Special Jury Prize) followed the renowned Chinese artist and activist through a turning point in his life. It was nominated for two Emmys and shortlisted for the Academy Award. Her other films include THE BRINK (Sundance 2019), Emmy and BAFTA-nominated TAKE YOUR PILLS (SXSW 2018), JAGGED (TIFF 2021) about Alanis Morissette's groundbreaking album Jagged Little Pill on HBO, and WHITE HOT (Netflix 2022) about the rise and fall of Abercrombie & Fitch.

Colin Jones (he/him): Colin Jones is a historian of East Asia and a film producer, whose credits include AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY and an upcoming Netflix documentary feature. He was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt, Harvard's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Fulbright Scholar in Japan from 2013-2015, and he took his doctorate from Columbia University in 2017. Before graduate school, he worked in Beijing as a reporter and editor at Caijing Magazine. His writing has appeared in Dissent, The Nation, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Yangyang Cheng (she/her): Yangyang Cheng is a Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center, where her work focuses on the history of science in China, Chinese politics, and US-China relations. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic and many other publications, and won awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Born and raised in China, Cheng received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago and her Bachelor's in Science from the University of Science and Technology of China's School for the Gifted Young. She is working on a book about science and the Chinese state.

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