---
title: "Charter 08"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Charter 08"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-08-18T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Liu Xiaobo","Woeser","Charter 77","Nobel Peace Prize","Chinese human-rights movement"]
seek_code_commit: "a619c8a"
---


A December 2008 Chinese human-rights and political-reform manifesto,
explicitly modelled on Czechoslovakia's Charter 77, drafted principally by
[[entity-liu-xiaobo|Liu Xiaobo]] and released with more than 300 initial
signatories.

Matters to this vault as the document at the far end of a person-bridge
running from [[entity-a-e-clark|A.E. Clark]]'s one-child-policy essay,
through his hobby translation press, to [[entity-woeser|Woeser]], its
(per a contemporaneous count) sole Tibetan signatory.

## References

- [[claim-woeser-sole-tibetan-charter-08-signatory]]
- [[observation-a-e-clark-person-bridges-one-child-policy-cluster-to-woeser-charter-08]]

## Updates

- 2026-08-20: Charter 77 — named here since 2026-08-18 as the model Charter
  08 "explicitly modelled on" but otherwise unpaged in this vault — now has
  its own entity page, and it in turn is unpaged no more: Havel's own essay
  names the actual catalyst of Charter 77's founding climate as a 1976
  rock-band obscenity trial, not a political dispute. See
  [[entity-charter-77]] and
  [[claim-havel-1976-plastic-people-trial-created-charter-77-climate]].
- 2026-09-05: The charter's own Chinese-original text (CECC's mirror of the
  Independent Chinese PEN Center's December 2008 posting, Tier 1) states its
  own signatory count as 303, twice, at the head and close of the name
  block — replacing the vault's prior Wikipedia-only (Tier 4) sourcing of
  that figure. The co-drafter alongside [[entity-liu-xiaobo|Liu Xiaobo]],
  [[entity-zhang-zuhua|Zhang Zuhua]], now has his own page, reached via
  Perry Link's contemporaneous account of the December 2008 police raid on
  his home the night of the charter's release.
  ([[claim-charter-08-signatory-list-confirms-303-total]])