At around 12:30 a.m. on January 10, 2022, Zhang Qing — wife of Chinese rights activist Yang Maodong (pen name Guo Feixiong) and herself living in exile in the United States — suffered another sudden worsening of her condition, with unbearable abdominal pain. Her family urgently called an ambulance and rushed her to nearby Germantown Hospital. No one could recall whether this was the third or fifth time recently that her condition had worsened badly enough to require hospitalization; what was different this time was that by the time she left home, she could no longer speak clearly. Her children said that they sensed right away this time was different from before, and that their mother might not be coming home...

A little after 1 a.m., her two children arrived at the hospital to find Zhang Qing already unconscious. Doctors said a scan had revealed that a tumor in her abdomen had ruptured, perforating her intestine; her blood ammonia levels had spiked, sending her into a coma, and surgery was no longer an option. Over the next several hours, the two children wept in grief without stopping. Having stayed awake all night and finally cried themselves dry, as they were preparing to go home to rest, a doctor called out from behind them: 'Zhang Qing isn't going to make it.'

Before dawn broke, Zhang Qing — the long-suffering, resilient wife of a man who refused to be enslaved — passed away, carrying with her the helplessness and grief of having lived apart from her husband for more than fifteen years and never getting to see him even as she lay dying. It had been almost a year since her husband, Yang Maodong, having completed all the legal paperwork to come to the United States on January 28, 2021, to care for her in her terminal illness, was forcibly stopped by the wicked CCP at Shanghai Pudong Airport and then abducted and disappeared. Zhang Qing was only 54 years old...

It is said that CCP agents had told Yang Maodong that once Zhang Qing's condition became critical, the Party would allow him to come to the United States to see his wife. Yet now, several days after Zhang Qing's death, Yang Maodong's sister, Yang Maoping, issued a statement saying that '...Zhang Qing has only her two children with her, who are unable to handle the funeral arrangements on their own; all funeral matters must be decided and personally handled by Yang Maodong.' Soon after the statement was released, the CCP shut down Yang Maoping's WeChat account.

This response by the CCP shows that the evil Party had been closely tracking Zhang Qing's condition all along and knew that it had recently taken a turn for the worse — and yet it still kept Yang Maodong locked away in a secret prison, refusing to let go of him even after Zhang Qing's death. This episode has once again let the world see clearly the true nature of the CCP's dictatorial tyranny: utterly conscienceless, evil carried through to the very end.

Poor Zhang Qing — she died without ever knowing where her husband Yang Maodong was. And it is quite possible that, to this day, Yang Maodong still does not know that his beloved wife has left this world, carrying with her boundless helplessness and grief and fury toward the Communist dictatorship's tyranny. Being unable to accompany his wife on the final stretch of her life's journey will remain a permanent wound for Yang Maodong.

On the 10th, a friend called me in tears and said: 'Was everything human rights defenders do really worth it? Zhang Qing is just gone like that. The time she and her husband spent together was shorter than the time they spent apart...!' It's true — human rights defenders and their families face hardships and challenges that ordinary people can hardly imagine or comprehend. We had spoken before, and Zhang Qing understood well: a society's progress is impossible without the sacrifices, even the ultimate sacrifices, made by those who go first.

Everything that happened around Zhang Qing's death makes us realize once again: the CCP, which concentrates within itself all the evils of dictatorial tyranny found anywhere in the world, is unmatched in the sheer evil of its oppression.

Just as this article was being finished and about to be published, word arrived that 'Yang Maodong has been arrested.' Police disclosed that 'Yang Maodong has been on a hunger strike for a month and there is no possibility of him leaving the country.'

There is no limit to how far Communist dictatorial tyranny will go in acting against reason and decency. Its very existence is the highest, most concentrated expression of evil carried through to the end in human society. Evil is both a product of Communist despotic tyranny and the soil in which such tyranny takes root, and carrying evil through to its extreme is the process by which the two continually feed off each other. In other words, as long as despotism is not eliminated, evil will not cease; and as evil continues to accumulate and ferment, it in turn strengthens the despotic tyranny...

Therefore, striking against evil will simultaneously curb the growth and expansion of despotic tyranny. By the same logic, effectively striking against despotic tyranny will reduce the occurrence and spread of evil. To prevent tragedies like that of Zhang Qing and Yang Maodong from happening again, we must join forces to eliminate the CCP's tyranny.

In the face of such evil conduct by the CCP, if the international community and democratic nations turn a blind eye, continuing to focus only on trade with the CCP and on attending the Beijing Winter Olympics, that is no different from aiding a tyrant in his wrongdoing. We will have no choice but to subject them to the harshest moral condemnation and criticism.