About Us

Leadership

CEO

Dean Baxendale, Toronto

Treasurer

John Dotson, Washington

Board members

Joyeeta Basu, Editor, The Sunday Guardian in New Delhi, India

Dr. Teng Biao, Pozen Visiting Scholar, University of Chicago

Charles Parton OBE, China analyst and ex-UK diplomat, London

Tony Zielinski, Attorney, Former Milwaukee Common Council Member

Michael Polak, Barrister church court chambers, director at Justice abroad

Advisory board member

Benedict Rogers, Hong Kong Activist, London

The CEO and treasurer are also board members. All members of the board have joined in a personal capacity. Their board membership does not reflect the views of the other organizations in which they are members.

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Joyeeta Basu is Editor of The Sunday Guardian in New Delhi, India.

Joyeeta Basu is an editor, reporter, writer and television panelist, reporting, writing and commenting on matters related to policy, politics and geopolitics. She is Editor of the newspaper, The Sunday Guardian, published from New Delhi, India. The newspaper has been in the forefront of Indian media organisations in its coverage and policy analysis of China. She is also editor of the daily e-paper, The Daily Guardian. She regularly appears on national television to comment on matters related to geopolitics and has her own Youtube program called “Straight Talk with Joyeeta Basu” for NewsX, a national television channel. She is a member of the New Delhi-based Global Counter-Terrorism Council. She is a member of the board in her personal capacity.

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Dean Baxendale is President of Optimum Publishing International in Toronto, Canada.

Dean Baxendale is a CEO of the China Democracy Foundation and Optimum Publishing International. His interest in civic engagement and politics started in his teens. His interest in public policy has been a life long passion and has worked on Health Care, Indigenous, technology and industrial infrastructure policy for both Liberal and Conservative party’s of Canada.

Mr. Baxendale has spent his career in both corporate and small business enterprises. An entrepreneur,  writer, educator and communications specialist he graduated from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Marketing Management in 1980 and studied economics at Simon Fraser University in B.C., Canada. 

In 2017, Dean relaunched the forty-five year old publishing house Optimum Publishing International after it’s founder Michael Baxendale passed away. Optimum focuses on public policy, global affairs, transnational organized crime and geo-politics.  He has published five books on the CCP’s human rights record, and influence operations in the West over the past three years.

Since 2021, Baxendale has written articles, papers & spoken extensively on The CCP’s Human Rights record, Influence operations and links between transnational organized crime and the CCP’s Hybrid Warfare operations in the free world.”

He has partnered with international organisations such as Hong Kong Watch, IPAC, the MacDonal Laurier Institute and others on human rights conferences and other China-related initiatives.

Teng Biao is Pozen Visiting Scholar at .

Dr. Teng Biao is an academic lawyer and human rights activist. He was formerly a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law and has been a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, New York University, Hunter College, and Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights. His research focuses on constitutionalism, legal theory, democratic theory, criminal justice, human rights, social movements, and transitional justice in China.

Teng has defended cases involving freedom of expression, religious freedom, the death penalty, Tibetans, and Uyghurs. He has also provided counsel in numerous other human rights cases, including those of rural rights advocate Chen Guangcheng, rights defender Hu Jia, and the religious freedom case of Falungong. He co-founded two human rights NGOs while in Beijing: the Open Constitution Initiative and China Against the Death Penalty, in 2003 and 2010, respectively. He is one of the earliest promoters of the Rights Defense Movement in China and the manifesto Charter 08, for which Dr. Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Teng has received various international human rights awards including the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic (2007) and NED’s Democracy Award (2008). He is completing a book on the human rights movement and political transition in China.

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John Dotson is Editor of China Brief in Wash, DC.

Mr. Dotson assumed responsibilities as the editor of China Brief in 2019. He is a former officer in the U.S. Navy, whose assignments included positions at sea, in Japan, in Africa, and in the Pentagon. His service also included four years as an instructor on the faculty of the National Intelligence University, where he taught coursework on military strategy, intelligence analysis, and national security policy. Mr. Dotson also served for six years on the staff of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he coordinated staff research on a range of trade and national-security issues on behalf of the U.S. Congress. He has performed extensive writing and research on a host of topics related to China, to include Chinese propaganda and influence efforts, and elite-level politics within the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Dotson holds an M.A. in National Security Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, and a Master of International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins-SAIS.

Tony Zielinski is an attorney, alderman and politicial in Milwaukee

Fourteenth District Alderman Tony Zielinski was first elected supervisor of Milwaukee County's 12th District in 1988 and was re-elected in 1992, 1996, and 2000. He served as chair of the Judiciary, Safety and General Services Committee and as a member of the Personnel Committee. He was elected to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Common Council as Alderman of the 14th District in April 2004, and served until 2020. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, a master of business administration degree from Cardinal Stritch University, and a juris doctor degree from Marquette University Law School.

Michael Polak is a barrister and the director of Justice abroad

Michael Polak is a barrister at the Bar of England & Wales practicing from Chambers in London. As well as defending in trials for serious criminal offences in the domestic courts Michael also carries out private prosecutions, a unique specialism which allows those who have been the victim of crimes to hold those responsible to account when the authorities fail to act. Michael’s international practice focusses on international legal assistance, the assistance of foreign nationals and lawyers who get into trouble around the world. In this area Michael has represented clients in Belarus, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and the Middle East. His expertise includes negotiating with client’s foreign ministries to garner support for them, briefing the media to create interest around a client’s cases, providing advices on the fairness of proceedings and whether clients have had trials which respected due process to be used to lobby for release, making applications to United Nation’s human rights bodies, and submitting applications for clemency and legal submissions. Michael’s international practice also contains public international law where he represents marginalized groups who have had their human rights infringed upon. He also has experience making applications to remove INTERPOL Red Notices and has written for Westlaw on the law in this area.

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Charles Parton OBE is a China analyst in London.

Mr. Parton spent 22 years of his 37 year diplomatic career working in or on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In his final posting he was seconded to the EU Delegation in Beijing, where, as First Counsellor until late 2016, he focused on Chinese politics and internal developments, and advised the EU and Member States on how China’s politics might affect their interests. He has also worked in Afghanistan, Cyprus, Libya and Mali. In 2017 he set up his own consultancy, China Ink, and was chosen as the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Special Adviser on China; he returned to Beijing for 4 months as Adviser to the British Embassy to cover the Communist Party’s 19th Congress. He is an Associate Fellow of the London-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute; he joins the board in a personal capacity.

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Benedict Rogers is the founder of Hong Kong Watch in London.

Mr. Rogers is a Human Rights Activist and writer based in London. He is the author of six books, including Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads. He is also a former parliamentary candidate and co-founder and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission in the UK. Ben lived in Hong Kong from 1997-2002 and travels regularly to the region. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch.

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