On this page, you will find:
To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our China LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in China, visit our China Legal Assistance page.
COI Experts
Email: andrew.lillis@gmail.com
Tel: +86 15 01 01 77 85 55
Andew Lills is a lawyer practicing in Beijing. He has experience representing refugees with UNHCR. He is prepared to be contacted regarding pro bono asylum cases and may be able to assist with Country of Origin Information.
Email: angus.francis@qut.edu.au
Angus Francis is a practising migration agent and academic in Australia who has experience representing asylum claimants from China. He can assist in locating China Country of Origin Information.
Email: elena.consiglio@unipa.it
Elena Consiglio holds a PhD in Law from the University of Palermo. She knows about Chinese legal history and tradition, modernization and reform, and current legal practice. She has lived in China for over one year (2009-2010) and reads and speaks Mandarin. She is prepared to be contacted for expert reports in asylum cases.
Email: r.turaeva@gmail.com
- Authentication documents originating from countries of expertise
- Country reports on the indicated countries of expertise
- Minority groups, religious groups
- Political, social and cultural groups: LGBT
- Organised crime and mafia, state crime
- Extremist and violent groups, including religious groups
- Human rights violations
- Women issues: honour killing
- Human trafficking
- Psychiatry and prison conditions
- Disadvantaged groups e.g. children, minorities, mentally ill, disabled, terminally ill
- Availability of medical services
- State structure, military and security services
- Drug dealing and trafficking
Email: jkurlant@hotmail.com
Joshua Kurlantzick is Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he studies Asian politics, rights, and economics. He also has done extensive work on asylum cases for nationals from Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand, China, Indonesia, and other Northeast, Southeast and South Asian nations. His work has included analyses of the political environment, judiciary, and state of political and civil rights in many South, Southeast, and Northeast Asian countries, as well as assessments of criminal syndicates and trafficking in these states. He has worked with more than ten U.K. firms and multiple U.S. firms on nearly thirty asylum cases. He is the author of five books on Southeast Asian politics, institutions, rights, and economics. Kurlantzick also has been a Visiting Scholar in the China program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Columnist for Time, a Special Correspondent for The New Republic, an Asian Correspondent for The Economist, and a Contributing Writer for Mother Jones, among other positions. He has twenty years of experience covering events in Asia, and writing about rights issues in Asia, for a range of periodicals including The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, the London Review of Books, The Washington Monthly, The Washington Quarterly, and Foreign Policy, among others.
Email: lili.song20@gmail.com
Dr Lili Song studied law in China and New Zealand: LLB (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics), LLM (East China University of Political Science and Law), PhD in Law (Victoria University of Wellington). She is qualified to practice law in China and worked as a lawyer/in-house lawyer for more than three years in Shanghai. She is currently working as a Lecturer in Law at the University of the South Pacific. Her current research areas include Chinese refugee law and policy, Chinese immigration law, and human rights issues in China. She has a particular interest in asylum cases involving trafficked Chinese women. She is willing to assist with China Country of Origin Information.
Email: sg380@le.ac.uk
Ms Gordon’s expertise on China spreads over legal, political and anthropological fields, with particular attention to human rights abuses. In particular, her research focuses on denial of the household registration (hukou). In this context Ms Gordon has researched a broad range of areas regarding human rights abuses in China. This includes, but is not limited to: the family planning policy; hukou denial to children; gangs; infertility; property rights; North Koreans in China; and religious persecution. As a fluent Mandarin speaker, Ms Gordon researches from English and Chinese sources, and has lived in China for over three years.
COI Resources
The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.
This country of origin information report describes the situation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) insofar as this is important for the assessment of asylum applications from persons originating from China, and for decision-making regarding
the repatriation of rejected Chinese asylum seekers. This country of origin information report is an update of the country of origin information report for China of February 2018. The reporting period covers the period from March 2018 through
June 2020. Relevant developments up to the publication date have been incorporated in the report. This report is a factual, neutral and objective account of the findings during the period under investigation and does not offer any policy
recommendations.
This Country Information Report has been prepared by the Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade (DFAT) for protection status determination purposes only. It provides DFAT’s best judgement and
assessment at time of writing and is distinct from Australian Government policy with respect to the
People’s Republic of China.
The report provides a general, rather than an exhaustive, country overview. It has been prepared
with regard to the current caseload for decision makers in Australia without reference to individual
applications for protection visas. The report does not contain policy guidance for decision makers.
‘China conducts the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world. Efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to pressure and control the overseas population of Chinese and members of minority communities are marked by three distinctive characteristics. First, the campaign targets many groups, including multiple ethnic and religious minorities, political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, and former insiders accused of corruption. Second, it spans the full spectrum of tactics: from direct attacks like renditions, to co-opting other countries to detain and render exiles, to mobility controls, to threats from a distance like digital threats, spyware, and coercion by proxy. Third, the sheer breadth and global scale of the campaign is unparalleled. Freedom House’s conservative catalogue of direct, physical attacks since 2014 covers 214 cases originating from China, far more than any other country.’
China Legal Assistance
Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in China.
China LGBTQI+ Resources
Find organisations working for refugee LGBTQI+ rights in China.
We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant experts, or you are aware of organisations and/or resources to include in our directories, please get in touch.
Last updated June 2023