It’s a Friday morning in early January when Adrian Zenz gets up from the desk in the corner of his bedroom to turn up the heat. It’s 17 degrees below zero outside, and his quiet neighborhood in Minnesota’s Twin Cities has been blanketed in a thin layer of snow.
Dressed in a button-down shirt with rectangular glasses and cupping a warm mug of coffee, Zenz doesn’t look like much of a rabble rouser. A German evangelical Christian, his plans for the weekend include taking his "pandemic-puppy," a Shih Tzu named Rosie, for a hike by a nearby river and eating dinner with his family.
But thanks to Google and his desktop computer, the 47-year-old researcher has uncovered information about human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in China's northwest region of Xinjiang, which in turn has made him a frequent target of China’s ire. Last year, for instance, he was sanctioned by the Chinese government and sued in a Xinjiang court for "fabricating 'forced labor' rumors."
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At first glance, the recent raid on Capvision, a Shanghai consultancy, looks similar to the raids on foreign firms Mintz Group and Bain & Company. But there are reasons to separate Beijing's crackdown on Capvision. For starters, Capvision is Chinese and its shareholders and investors include a network of remarkably high profile and state-connected individuals and companies.
