**Campaign companion paper — FCM-PR-2026-10-02-01**
The Free China campaign is a standing public appeal with three demands: an end to one-party rule on the mainland, the release of prisoners of conscience, and a future constitution in which the people — not a ruling group — are sovereign.
The campaign’s case rests on a contrast anyone can verify by reading two constitutions.
The Republic of China’s Constitution, Article 1: a democratic republic of the people, to be governed by the people and for the people. On Taiwan, that text describes reality. Parties compete, the press is free, courts are independent, and governments change at the ballot box. Power can be taken from the ruling party by vote. That is government of the people, by the people, for the people.
The People’s Republic of China’s Constitution, Article 1: a socialist state under a people’s democratic dictatorship, in which leadership by the Communist Party is “the defining feature” of the system. Eight small “democratic parties” exist under that leadership; they do not replace it. There is no lawful path for the people to retire the ruling group. Courts, media, and the army answer to the Party. “Whole-process people’s democracy” is the Party’s name for a system in which the Party never faces the people in a real election.
One holiday marks a republic the people can correct. The other marks a ruling group the people cannot remove. Double Tenth is the campaign’s chosen moment to say this out loud because the calendar itself tells the story: October 10, the birthday of a republic founded for the people; October 1, the birthday of a party-state.
Reunion worth wanting is not the absorption of a free people into a party-state. It is the reunion of Chinese people with the right to choose their government — on the mainland as on Taiwan. That is what “free China” means, and it is unfinished business, not a closed chapter.
## A fight carried forward
This campaign does not claim to start something new. It continues the fight of the pioneers and fighters for a free China who came before — Dr. Wang Bingzhang, serving a life sentence on the mainland for founding the overseas Chinese democracy movement; Hu Shi, the liberal scholar who argued that China could be both modern and free; Lei Zhen, who published the Free China journal in Taiwan and spent ten years in prison for calling for an opposition party — and the many others whose names are less known. Their fight is the campaign’s inheritance.
## What the campaign asks
– Raise the Republic of China flag at homes, associations, campuses, and places of worship before and on October 10, and share the photographs.
– Host a Double Tenth gathering that reads Article 1 of the Republic of China Constitution beside Article 1 of the PRC Constitution, and lets the text speak.
– Tell the story straight: 1911 ended the empire; 1949 did not fulfill the republic; the party that took the mainland kept the state for itself.
– Join the standing appeal: end one-party rule, free the prisoners of conscience, and write a future constitution with the people sovereign.
## Sources
– Constitution of the Republic of China, Article 1: https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0000001
– Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Article 1 (including the 2018 amendment on Party leadership): https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20/content_WS5ed8856ec6d0b3f0e9499913.html
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*Publication author: Free China Movement. Companion to press release FCM-PR-2026-10-02-01.*