During her years at the Chinese Communist Party's top training center and think tank, the outspoken professor had surprised many with her liberal ideas and support for democratic reform. But her decades-long career as a Communist Party scholar and adviser has given her criticism a special weight -- and dealt an embarrassing blow to the Party. But it was from the inside that Cai watched the Communist Party, which is the sole governing party within mainland China, taking a harder stance on internal debates and dissent. Cai Xia, an insider-turned critic, has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party. "They told me: 'you're first a Communist Party member, and your identity as a citizen comes later.'"

Source: CNN August 23, 2020 00:00 UTC