It’s a story of courage under oppression and a warning about why every American should be concerned about communism and the Chinese Communist Party.
Bill Saunders — a scholar of religious liberty and human rights at the Catholic University of America — spoke with Liz Collin on her podcast about the story of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught lawyer known as the “Barefoot Lawyer.”
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Guangcheng was born in a remote Chinese village and was the only member in his family to earn a college degree. He used his legal skills to help others and fight back against the one-child policy in China. Guangcheng’s activism helped expose China’s forced abortions and the sterilization of women — and he was sentenced to prison for it.
“The Barefoot Lawyer was the subject of an international campaign in 2010 and 2011 to get him released from China and he came to the U.S. in 2012. So, he’s been here since then, and he’s at the Catholic University of America in our Center for Human Rights,” Saunders explained.
Saunders said that Guangcheng “always stood up for the poor and the handicapped and marginalized people. I mean, in a communist society, all this rigmarole about equality is complete fraud and it’s a very oppressive system. And China’s the worst maybe in the world … and Guangcheng saw that it was.”
“He really got in trouble when he stood up for the unborn in China,” Saunders added. “As a result of that policy, if a woman got pregnant with a second child, they would forcibly abort them and in the most gruesome way.”
Saunders said that Guangcheng found that in his province, “there’d been 90,000 of these forced abortions” and spoke about how Guangcheng was “tried on trumped up charges, put in jail.”
Since coming to America and being a part of the Center for Human Rights, Saunders said that “one of the main themes that Guangcheng speaks about is the Chinese communist influence in the United States.”
“Some Americans might think human rights are bad in China, but that’s China, it’s not here. But it’s directly relevant to every American because the Communist Party is working all the time to stifle voices that criticize it, including harassing people like Guangcheng,” Saunders said.
Saunders also pointed out how the Chinese Communist Party “spends a lot of money in the United States, millions and millions of dollars to influence everything you can think about, from Hollywood to Wall Street.”
“So the fact is, if Americans want to preserve their democracy, their freedom of speech, their human rights, and the rule of law, they’ve got to find ways to stand up to the Communist Party,” Saunders said.
Chen Guangcheng and Bill Saunders will be speaking at the Life Legal Benefit Dinner on Oct. 3, 2026. Ticket information for the dinner and registration for the afternoon training session are available at Life Legal Minnesota.
Liz Collin
Liz Collin is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer who cares about Minnesota. She is the producer of The Fall of Minneapolis and Minnesota v We the People documentary films, and author of the Amazon best-selling book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Her work has prompted important state laws. Yet perhaps most of all, Liz has been giving a voice to the truth—and helping others tell their stories—for more than 20 years.
Dr. JC Chaix
Dr. JC Chaix is an editor, educator, and an expert in media studies. He wrote and directed the Alpha News documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis" and "Minnesota v We the People."
