We picture China as a place where no one dares speak out, but the reality is quite different. In 2025, despite one of the most sophisticated censorship machines on earth, workers protested over unpaid wages, homebuyers demanded stalled apartments, and rural communities pushed back against land dispossession.

In this episode, hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso sit down with Kevin Slaten, who leads Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor, the only public database tracking protests across China, from its office in Taipei. Slaten’s team recorded about 40 to 50 percent more dissent in 2025 than the year before, including the largest pre-Lunar New Year labor protest peak the project has ever recorded.

The twist: US budget cuts had recently knocked the project offl ...