Anastasia Lin (born January 1, 1990) is a Chinese-Canadian actress, model, beauty pageant titleholder and human rights advocate.

The news of her rejection from the pageant, and her subsequent attempt to enter China through Hong Kong, caused global media attention for several weeks, leading to the front page of The New York Times and op-eds and editorials in major newspapers.

[2] Most of the coverage praised what it said was Lin's bravery for "resistance to tyranny" using the novel form of a beauty pageant, and she was hailed as "an outspoken advocate for freedom of conscience.

[6] Lin's father is the CEO of a large company that supplies medical equipment, Samsung cellphones, and other products in China; he owned a chain of 50 hotpot restaurants, before selling them during the SARS crisis.

[9] She characterizes her mother as a "tiger mom" who put her through elementary school two years early and forced her to learn classical piano as a child.

The Bleeding Edge (2016), from the creators of the Peabody Award-winning film Human Harvest, is a thriller based on real-life events where she plays a victim of human-rights abuses in China.

"[19] In late November, after having not received the invitation letter from the Chinese government to support her visa request for the Miss World 2015, Lin assumed that she had been effectively denied the right to compete in the pageant.

Lin had originally hoped to benefit from Hainan province's special visa policy for Canadian nationals, and sought to transit in to Sanya from Hong Kong on a Cathay Pacific flight from Canada.

On November 26, 2015, staff at the Hong Kong airport told Lin that she would not be granted a landing visa in Sanya, confirming that she had been denied entry to China.

General Secretary Xi Jinping and his Politburo say they want market-oriented reform, but simultaneously they are tightening the screws on civil society, Internet debate, the media, independent churches or anything else that might challenge the Communist Party."

"[5] Minxin Pei said that the way that the PRC government was treating Anastasia Lin was an example of its realism as "they know that people will hold their noses and continue to kowtow to them because they have a big checkbook" and "part of a larger strategy for deterring would-be critics: the proverbial slaughter of the chicken that is killed to frighten all those monkeys.

"[24] Jeff Jacoby, writing in The Boston Globe, declared: "Totalitarian regimes scruple at nothing – not the political manipulation of international beauty contests, not the criminalizing of quiet meditation, not even the blackmail of a father to break his daughter's spirit.

"My mother showed me a lot of things that aren't shown in China, like the Tiananmen massacre, Falun Gong persecution, and the Tibetan issue," Lin said.

[25] In July 2015 Lin was invited to testify before U.S. Congress, addressing the topic of Religion With "Chinese Characteristics": Persecution and Control in Xi Jinping's China.

Her David-and-Goliath clash with the Chinese government has drawn sympathetic media attention and legions of supporters around the world, providing her an even bigger platform to speak out about the imprisonment and torture Falun Gong adherents face in China.

"[30] The Times of London observed that "Anastasia Lin is the beauty queen whose story links torture, tit tape and tiaras in a sequence of events so entertaining it is screaming out to be adapted for the big screen.

"[31] Al Jazeera called Lin "Miss International Incident": "Academics, journalists, even Hollywood celebrities who speak out against human rights abuses in China are banned.

"[32] Newsweek reported: "The irony is that in attempting to quietly bar her from the contest, China has effectively made Lin's name a household one, thanks to the Internet.

[6] Flare magazine featured her as a "Top 60 under 30," in the activist category, and Marie Claire declared her "The Badass Beauty Queen" in an interview about her work, after her appearance at an Oxford University debate.