Nov. 6, 2013 1:14 p.m. ET
BEIJING—A new crop of grass-roots activists is vexing China’s authoritarian government by organizing around a simple event: dinner.
On the last weekend of every month, government critics gather for unassuming meals in as many as 20 cities across the country to discuss issues from failures in the legal system to unequal access to education. The gatherings are intentionally low-key, organizers say, but their overall goal—to lay the groundwork for democratizing China—isn’t.
“It’s not illegal to eat dinner together,” says Zhang Kun, a 26-year-old former employee of an advertising company who started helping to organize the meals after meeting other activists online. “That’s our motto: Change China by eating.”
As the power elite gather in Beijing for a Communist Party conclave this weekend, the loosely organized civic group known as the New Citizens Movement presents the country’s leaders with a new challenge. Led by a Yale-trained lawyer and backed by a prominent venture capitalist, the group draws from the ranks of China’s business elite and swelling middle class—a departure from previous reform movements, which were largely made up of dissidents and the dispossessed.
Their meetings have evolved beyond talk shops: The dinners have been used to organize petitions and demonstrations against corruption, inequality and abuse of police powers.
