An open letter claiming to come from students at multiple Chinese universities appeared at about 3 p.m. on October 26 on a website called “Siyuan Lake BBS,” according to Radio Free Asia. The letter calls for restoring term limits for China’s president, pursuing democratic constitutional reform, and protecting space for citizens to discuss national affairs.
Titled “A Joint Appeal from a Group of University Students of the Republic,” the letter is addressed to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, and members of the 20th Central Committee’s Fifth Plenary Session. It invokes Sun Yat-sen, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on democracy and checks on power, and questions the 2018 constitutional change that removed the two-term limit on the presidency. It makes three requests: abolishing indefinite presidential tenure, launching democratic constitutional revision, and safeguarding citizens’ ability to discuss state affairs. The authors say they do not intend confrontation.
The letter lists 14 signatory universities, including Peking University, Renmin University of China and Xiamen University, but provides no individual names or proof of endorsement. By midnight Beijing time on October 27, it had 656 views and one “like.” The author, “Lin Ziyi,” is a Level 1 account whose first post this was.
Radio Free Asia could not confirm the author’s identity, whether the signatories are students, or whether the listed schools were involved. Its checks found that the site’s registration data lists South Korea, with a mailing address in Singapore, while the administrator’s email is hosted on Tencent servers and the contact phone and WeChat are Chinese numbers. The site describes itself as an unofficial forum and uses a “.com” domain. Whether it operates inside China remains unclear.
Source: Radio Free Asia, October 26, 2026
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/podcasts/yataibaodao/2026/10/26/student-protest-xi-bbs/