In a 2007 article in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, “Let a Hundred Flowers Be Crushed,” the Chinese lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, told of being followed by security agents every year around the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 massacre of democracy protesters. Pu responded by ushering the agents to a conference room at his law firm and screening The Lives of Others, the 2006 Oscar winning film about an East German Stasi agent who protects the playwright he is spying on.  “We need to face the secret police,” Pu told William Dobson, in Dobson’s book, The Dictator’s Leaning Curve.  “Why not try to change them, if you have the chance to do that?”

Pu may have changed a few minds, but not enough to keep him from being arrested on June 13 and charged with “creating a disturbance” and “illegally obtaining citizens’ personal information.”