In 2000, Watson Meng started something unique – a Chinese-language news website that relied on citizen journalism from inside China for its reporting. Named Boxun.com, much of its coverage focused on human rights, corruption and dissent within the country. Meng had been born in the Chinese province of Hebei, gotten a bachelor’s degree in engineering at the Hebei Institute of Technology, and left China in 1996 to work in the United States, earning a master’s in business administration at Duke University by 2005. 

The North Carolina-based operation regularly broke stories no one else did. For instance, Boxun published a series of pieces on the downfall of Chinese government powerbroker Bo Xilai in 2012 that raised its profile, with media outlets running stories on Meng himself. Xilai, a high-ranking Chinese official, was removed from his post in 2012, convicted in 2013 of bribery, corruption, and abuse of power, and sentenced to life in prison.  

“Boxun is well known to be open. We receive many anonymous contributions and publish many [Chinese citizen] complaints and opinions,” says Meng.

Meng says that starting in 2000 he also provided hosting services for several Chinese human rights NGOs through a nonprofit that he set up called China Free Press. The nonprofit got small grants from 2005 to 2012 from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy, which itself gets funding from the U.S. government.