One of the distinctive features of the alternative public sphere of independent Chinese documentary is a concern with the individual rights of citizens. As noted in earlier chapters, both Jia Zhangke and Ou Ning regard China's independent filmmaking and viewing culture itself as a reassertion of rights related to indi¬vidual choice and expression after the micromanagement of daily life that char¬acterised communist China up until the 1980s. Many of the independent films produced in this realm, such as Ou Ning's Meishi Street, also feature on-screen subjects engaged in struggles to claim various legal rights. Others such as Hu Jie's historical documentaries feature Chinese citizens expressing a desire for justice related to atrocities of the Maoist period. Thus the implicit values that both underlie and are expressed through independent Chinese documentaries in the digital era overlap significantly with the aims and philosophy of China's Rights Defence Movement (Weiquan yundong), a grassroots effort involving lawyers and citizens who have attempted to exploit civil rights ostensibly guaranteed in China's 1982 constitution to limit the power of the party-state through the courts. The movement has also used judicial means to try to carve a space for further legal and political reform.

The commonalities between the unsanctioned cultures of independent docu¬mentary and rights defence (weiquan) have resulted in a degree of convergence in terms of ideas, actions and personnel. The work of Chinese academic Ai Xiaoming is a prime example of this convergence, although points of contact are evident in all the socially engaged documentaries discussed in this book.

Initially inspired by Hu Jie's Lin Zhao documentary on the one hand and the online reaction to Sun Zhigang's 2003 death in custody on the other, Ai Xiaoming took up a camera in the mid-2000s because she wished to help publicise other unreported instances of injustice she saw taking place around her. Specifically, in her work she critiques the widely publicised claims of CCP leaders that the Chinese state promotes the rule of law. This connects her filmmaking directly with the Rights Defence Movement and the attempts of those in the movement to enforce legal accountability in China.