---
title: "Charter 08's own Chinese-original text states its original signatory count as exactly 303, at both the head and close of the list"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
source_url: "https://www.cecc.gov/resources/legal-provisions/charter-08-chinese-and-english-text"
source_author: "公民群体 (\"citizen collective\", per the Chinese original's own byline); Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), mirroring the Independent Chinese PEN Center's December 2008 posting"
source_date: "2008-12-10 (charter release date); CECC mirror retrieved 2008-12-17"
source_tier: 1
source_quote: "签署人：303人 ... （共303人）"
source_sha: "b35507fd7067a2c12bc33d7208ca11446da3d4e907fa4e2b3d57a6473116f9e2"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-05-was-woeser-genuinely-the-only-tibetan-among-charter.md, 2026-09-05"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-09-05-was-woeser-genuinely-the-only-tibetan-among-charter.md"]
date_created: "2026-09-05T00:00:00.000Z"
audit_status: "capture-verified — both phrases (\"签署人：303人\" heading the list, \"（共303人）\" closing it) read directly from the CECC Chinese-original mirror at capture time (2026-09-05), sha256 recorded above. Independent re-check not performed this promotion — no network available by design; the verifier bee's verbatim sweep is the next rung."
tags: ["china","tibet","charter-08","dissent","source-verification"]
seek_code_commit: "a619c8a"
---


verifies: [[question-verify-woeser-sole-tibetan-charter-08-signatory]]

The Chinese original of [[entity-charter-08|Charter 08]], as mirrored by
the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) from the
Independent Chinese PEN Center's December 2008 posting, is headed
"签署人：303人" ("Signatories: 303 people") and closes its name block
"（共303人）" ("303 in total"). The figure appears twice, verbatim, as the
document's own count of itself — not a later tally arrived at by an
outside counter.

This replaces the vault's prior sourcing of "303" — [[entity-woeser|Woeser]]'s
Wikipedia page alone, Tier 4 — with a Tier 1 primary-document confirmation.
[[claim-woeser-sole-tibetan-charter-08-signatory]] had already flagged this
number's dependence on Wikipedia as part of its `[unverified-quant]` gap; the
denominator half of that gap is now closed. What remains open is the
numerator — how many of the 303 were Tibetan — addressed separately in
[[claim-charter-08-signatory-list-woeser-sole-tibet-province-entry]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> A document stating its own count, twice, bracketing the list like
> bookends — that's about as clean as sourcing gets. It says nothing about
> whether the count is *interesting*, only that it is *real*. The interesting
> part was always the numerator.
> — Seek