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Xu Youyu (1947-) is a philosopher and writer. Born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, Xu was in his high school graduating class when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966. He joined one of the most influential student rebel organizations in Chengdu at that time, later became one of its key members. After the Cultural Revolution, Xu was admitted to the Mathematics Department of Sichuan Normal University in 1977. In 1979, he was admitted to the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), where he received his master's degree and worked as a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the CASS until his retirement in 2008, during which time he visited and taught at the University of Oxford, Harvard University , the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Stockholm University, the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in France, and Hokkaido University. Xu Youyu's initial field of study was the philosophy of language, but after the June 4 uprising in 1989 he switched to contemporary Western political philosophy, contemporary Chinese social thought, and the Cultural Revolution. He began publishing a number of books on these topics. Xu Youyu drafted and, along with other scholars, submitted a petition to the central government calling for the release of democracy activist Wei Jingsheng in 1988, participated in the June 4 protests in 1989, and signed Charter 08 in 2008. In June 2010, Xu participated in the release of the open letter “The Citizens’ Pledge”, and was one of the founders of what would later become the New Citizens Movement. In May 2014, Xu was detained for his participation in a conference about the June 4 uprising, released on June 5 the same year. In 2014, Xu was awarded the Swedish Olof Palme Prize for his commitment to democracy and freedom of speech. In 2015, Xu moved to the United States, where he is currently a scholar-in-residence at the New School in New York.

Yan Jiaqi (严家祺), (1942-), is a prominent Chinese intellectual, former political reformist, and a key figure in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He is also known as a Christian pastor and a prolific author. Yan's career has spanned academia, political activism, and religious leadership, with a central focus on advocating for political reform, human rights, and democratic change in China. Born in Heilongjiang Province, Yan studied at the China University of Science and Technology before moving on to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he became an expert in political science. During the 1989 Tiananmen protests, Yan was a leading figure. As the Director of the Political Science Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, he was deeply involved in the intellectual movement that called for political change and democracy. In the months leading up to the June 4th crackdown, Yan participated in several major events, such as a symposium organized by World Economic Herald and New Observer magazine, where he publicly expressed his support for the student protests, believing they represented the future of China. Yan's activism culminated in May 1989, when he helped mobilize intellectuals and students in support of the hunger strike and subsequent demonstrations. On the night of May 13, Yan, along with other scholars, posted a prominent slogan on the campus of Peking University: "We Can No Longer Remain Silent", calling on intellectuals to join the protest. On May 14, he co-signed a public declaration demanding the recognition of the protests as a patriotic and democratic movement. As a prominent voice during the protest, Yan helped form the Capital Intellectuals' Alliance, which issued multiple key declarations, such as the May 16 Declaration and May 17 Manifesto, that garnered support from numerous intellectuals across the country. After the brutal crackdown, Yan was placed on the most-wanted list by the Chinese government and, with the help of the "Yellow Sparrow Movement," fled to Hong Kong. From there, he sought asylum in France, where he became the first chairman of the Democratic China Front. In 1994, he moved to New York and became a visiting scholar at Columbia University. Yan has written extensively on Chinese politics, democracy, and human rights. His works include The Evolutionary Theory, History and Future: A Study on Authoritarianism, Constitutionalism, and Republicanism, and The Ten Years of the Cultural Revolution (co-authored with his wife, Gao Gao). He also published The Global Wealth Theory in 2020, which introduces the concept of a global currency system. More recently, Yan has remained a staunch advocate for revealing the truth behind the Tiananmen Square massacre. In a 2019 interview, he expressed hope that his former colleague, Wang Huning, who had played a significant role in Chinese political circles, would help restore the truth about the June 4th incident. Yan noted, "I hope he can contribute to restoring the truth about Tiananmen. June 4th was not a riot but a crime committed by the Communist Party against the people." Yan Jiaqi’s life and work have remained focused on advocating for political change in China, promoting human rights, and calling for the restoration of historical truths that have long been suppressed. His belief in the power of truth and justice resonates in his statement: "People do not live merely to survive; they live with dignity, hope, and joy. The very least that life should offer is hope." Today, Yan lives in Florida with his wife Gao Gao.

Yang Jisheng (1940–) was born in Xishui County, Hubei Province, and is one of China’s most important independent historians, writing internationally acclaimed books on the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. He also served as a h senior reporter for Xinhua News Agency, a professor, and has long been engaged in political economy, history, and social commentary. His career, spanning half a century, has profoundly influenced social thought and political discourse in post-reform China. In 1960, Yang was admitted to Tsinghua University to study tractor engineering in the Department of Power Engineering. He graduated in 1966, a time when the Cultural Revolution broke out. In 1968, Yang joined the Tianjin branch of Xinhua News Agency as a reporter. In the 1970s, he wrote articles reflecting social realities, such as <i>The Large-Scale Occupation of Civilian Housing by the Military in Tianjin Seriously Affects Civil-Military Relations and Investigation of Labor Productivity</i> in Tianjin, revealing his keen attention to China's social reforms. Over several decades at Xinhua, Yang accumulated extensive experience in political, economic, and cultural reporting. He served in several important roles, including editorial board member and director of the Theory Department at <i>Economic Reference Daily</i>, director of the News Publishing Center, and director of the News Investigation Department. Additionally, he was the editor-in-chief of China Market magazine in Hong Kong. In 1984, Yang was named one of the first National Outstanding Journalists, and in 1992, he was awarded the State Council's Special Government Subsidy for Distinguished Experts. After retiring, Yang continued to be active in commentary and academia, contributing to magazines such as <i>China Reform, China Entrepreneur</i>, and <i>Method</i>. In early 2003, he became the deputy editor-in-chief of <i>Yanhuang Chunqiu</i> magazine. Yang’s academic and commentary works cover a wide range of topics, including modern Chinese politics, social change, and historical memory. One of his representative works is <i>The Political Struggles in the Era of Chinese Reform</i>, which was published in Hong Kong at the end of 2004. This book contained his firsthand interview materials from 1976, the year of Mao Zedong's death, to the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. It also includes three interviews he conducted with then-General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who at the time was under house arrest after the 1989 protests. Because Zhao had promised not to release these interviews during his lifetime, they were only published after his death. This book provides a deep reflection on the Reform Era and reveals many of the power struggles of the time. Through his portrayal of Zhao Ziyang, Yang not only showcases the political stance of this reformist leader but also presents the intense political battles during China’s transition. Yang came to international attention through his 2008 book <i>Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine</i>. This book meticulously records the famine, revealing the catastrophic disaster caused by Mao Zedong’s policies. Using a large number of archival materials and testimonies from survivors, Yang describes the tragic deaths of approximately 36 million Chinese people due to famine and violent policies. Although the book was banned in mainland China, it was widely distributed internationally and won several prestigious awards, including the Hayek Book Prize from the Manhattan Institute. In addition to Tombstone, Yang’s other internationally known work is his 2016 work The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In this extremely long and detailed work, Yang describes the events between 1966 and 1976, also using archival material and first-person interviews. He is also the author of <i>The Deng Xiaoping Era: A Chronicle of China's Reform and Opening-up</i>, which explains the political and economic structural changes during the reform period. This book reviews the process of China’s reform and opening-up, focusing on Deng Xiaoping’s leadership in economic reforms and political adjustments. Yang evaluates the successes of China's economic development and the challenges encountered in political system reforms. When discussing the future direction of China's reforms, Yang stated, “Power does not belong to the majority. There is a significant difference and unfairness between those who have power and those who do not. After thirty years of reform, the "cake" has grown very large, but its distribution is highly unfair. Those with power have received a large and favorable portion, while those without power have received very little. The system formed over more than thirty years of reform and opening up is called the ‘power-market economy system.’ Although it is a market economy, it is a market economy controlled by power. Power manipulates the market economy. Under the control of power, the market is distorted and imperfect. The fundamental problem is inequality. The gap between those with power and those without has created significant conflict and disparity, leading to social disharmony. This is why the idea of ‘building a harmonious society’ and the need for stability maintenance were proposed — all due to the social disharmony and inequality caused by the system.” Additional resource: <a href=”https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/finding-facts-about-maos-victims”>interview with Yang Jisheng by Ian Johnson</a>

Yang Xianhui (1946—), writer. Yang was born in Lanzhou, Gansu Province. In 1965, during high school, Yang went to work in the countryside as a sent-down youth. In 1971, he was admitted to the Department of Mathematics of Gansu Normal University as a worker-peasant-soldier student. After graduation, he worked as a middle school teacher in Gansu, and later in Hebei as a party committee secretary and a communication officer at a local salt farm. In 1988 he joined the Tianjin Writers' Association to work full-time as a writer. His historical novels such as <i>Chronicle of Jiabiangou</i> and <i>Chronicle of the Dingxi Orphanage</i> portray life during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Great Famine, and are constructed from interviews with a great number of survivors and recollections of his own time as a sent-down youth. The two books have drawn comparisons to Solzhenitsyn's <i>Gulag Archipelago</i>, which chronicled Soviet labor camps.

Yang Xiaokai (October 6, 1948 - July 7, 2004), also known as Yang Xiguang, was an economist. Yang was born in Dunhua, Jilin Province and grew up in Changsha, Hunan Province. Yang's father was a senior CCP cadre in Hunan, who was labeled a Rightist Opportunist for his support of Peng Dehuai, the defense minister, who was dismissed for pointing out the failures of the Great Leap Forward. Yang was rehabilitated in 1962. When the Cultural Revolution broke out, Yang's parents were labeled Counterrevolutionaries, and Yang, who was in high school, became a child of one of the "Five Black Categories," which formed what was essentially a permanent underclass in Mao's China (the others were landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, and bad elements). Yang then joined the Rebel Faction of Red Guards. In 1968, Yang wrote a Dazibao (big-character poster) entitled "*Where is China Going?* ", where he criticized China's privileged bureaucratic class, and advocated the establishment of a Paris Commune-style government. As a result, Yang was detained in a detention center for more than a year, and was then sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for counterrevolutionary crimes in 1969, and was exiled to work in a labor camp in Hunan province until he was released in early 1978. Yang later wrote a book about his experiences during these ten years entitled *Captive Spirits: Prisoners of the Cultural Revolution*. Inspired by Marx’s *Capital*, which Yang read in the detention center, he decided to become an economist and taught himself economics in prison. After his release in 1978, he was admitted to the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and received a master's degree in econometrics. In 1982, he was employed as a lecturer at Wuhan University. In 1983, the High People’s Court of Hunan Province announced that the counterrevolutionary conviction of Yang had been annulled. In the same year, Yang went to Princeton University and received his Ph.D. in economics in 1988. In 1990, Yang was appointed as a tenured professor at Monash University in Australia. In 1993, he was elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. He died on July 7, 2004, at his home in Melbourne, Australia, due to illness. Yang's achievements in economics include the development of inframarginal economics and the new classical economics, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics twice, in 2002 and 2003.

Yao Jianfu (October 9, 1932—) was born in Nanjing. His father was a Kuomintang officer who participated in a coup against the KMT during the Huaihai Campaign; his mother was an elementary school teacher. Yao graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology in 1957 and was assigned to the China Academy of Agricultural Mechanization Science as an engineer. During the Great Famine, Yao was sent to work in a rural commune in Shanxi Province for one year, where he witnessed firsthand the conditions of the peasants. During the Cultural Revolution, Yao's family was targeted; Yao's mother was beaten to death by Red Guards and his father hanged himself. Yao himself was labeled a counter-revolutionary for having made disrespectful remarks about Jiang Qing (the fourth wife of Mao Zedong and deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group in 1966), and was sent down to a labor camp in Hunan province. He was rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution.  In 1982, Yao was assigned to the CCP Rural Policy Research Office and the Rural Development Research Center of the State Council as a researcher; in 1992, he became a researcher at the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, a position he held until he retired. In 2003, he was a coordinate researcher at the Yenching Institute of Harvard University.  Yao is concerned with public affairs and is a frequent commentator on history and politics in China. He has interviewed Zhao Ziyang, a reformist leader during the 80s and purged after the 1989 student movement; he has also interviewed Chen Xitong, the then Party Secretary of Beijing during the 1989 democracy movement who was considered one of the main suppressors of the movement, and published a transcript of that interview in 2012, *Chen Xitong’s Personal Accounts*. In April 2014, journalist Gao Yu was arrested by authorities for exposing a CCP document containing policies against media freedom and democracy. Yao was arrested in the same case and released on bail pending trial, but has never been fully freed. Yao was reportedly living in a nursing home but under close surveillance.

Yin Hongbiao (1951-), earned his bachelor’s degree from the Department of History of Jilin University, and a master's degree from the Department of International Politics of Peking University, where he majored in the relationship between the Communist International and the Chinese Revolution. He stayed at the university after graduation to teach, and obtained a doctoral degree. He later served as a professor at the School of International Studies of Peking University, and is now retired.  Yin's teaching and academic research areas include the history of the Chinese Communist Party and the history of the People's Republic of China, especially the history of the Cultural Revolution. His doctoral dissertation was on the Cultural Revolution, which was later expanded into a monograph Footprints of the Missing: Trends of Youth Thought During the Cultural Revolution. He has also published academic papers such as "The Main Factions of the Red Guard Movement" and "Social Contradictions in the Cultural Revolution."

Yu Luoke (1942-1970) was a worker and writer. His parents were both labeled Rightists during the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, which made him a child of one of the "Five Black Categories," which formed what was essentially a permanent underclass in Mao's China (the others were landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, and bad elements). For Yu, that meant he was not admitted to the university even though he scored well in the college entrance exams several times. Instead, he worked as a farmer, a substitute teacher and other part-time jobs before being assigned to the Beijing People's Machine Factory as an apprentice. After the Cultural Revolution began, in July 1966, Yu Luoke wrote an article entitled "The Theory of Origin" to refute the then-dominant theory that held that family origin determines the development of an individual. Yu argued that origin has very little influence on the performance of an individual, and criticized the persecution of young people from “bad” families, pointing out that this was a serious violation of human rights. The article was later published in January 1967 in the first issue of the Middle School Cultural Revolution Newspaper, which was founded by his brother Yu Luowen, and scholar Mou Zhijing. Yu Luoke later published several articles on the issue of origin in the newspaper under the pseudonym "Study Group on Family Origin." The newspaper was widely distributed and had a great impact. The article was later labeled "a great poisonous weed." On January 5, 1968, Yu Luoke was arrested, and on March 5, 1970, he was sentenced to death at the Workers' Stadium in Beijing, at the age of 27, and was immediately executed. On November 21, 1979, the Beijing Intermediate People's Court acquitted him. To commemorate him, his friends and family, as well as Chinese and foreign scholars and human rights activists, erected a statue of him in 2009 at the Songzhuang Art Gallery in Tongzhou, Beijing, which was later dismantled after more and more people were visiting the statute to pay their respects with flowers. Other activities to commemorate him have also often been obstructed by the authorities.

Zhang Boli (born 1957), originally from Wangkui County, Heilongjiang Province, China, is a Christian pastor and a student leader of the 1989 Democracy Movement. He was once a student in the Writer’s Class at Peking University and played an important role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement. Zhang Boli attended primary and secondary school in Wangkui County, Heilongjiang Province. He later studied at Suihua Teachers College and Suzhou Railway Teachers College and worked as a journalist for the Railway Engineering Newspaper, where he wrote several reportorial literary works, such as The Success Story, Ha Mu Ha Mu, and The Road to the Sea. In 1988, he was admitted to Peking University’s Chinese Department Writer’s Class, where he studied under Cao Wenxuan and Qian Liqun. On April 15, 1989, he posted his first poem mourning Hu Yaobang, Longing for You: Rainy Night to Bid Farewell to Yaobang, on a bulletin board in the university’s triangle area. He, along with Wang Dan and others, organized the first student memorial march for Hu Yaobang at Peking University and participated in drafting the Seven Petition Clauses. During the hunger strike at Tiananmen Square, Zhang Boli served as the deputy commander and the head of publicity for the Tiananmen student hunger strike group. One hour before the martial law declaration, he announced the end of the hunger strike and called for a sit-in protest. During the later stages of the Tiananmen protests, Zhang Boli served as the deputy commander of the temporary Tiananmen Command Center and the head of Tiananmen Democracy University. After the June 4th crackdown, he was listed as a wanted fugitive and escaped to the Sino-Soviet border in Heilongjiang Province, where he was sheltered by a local Christian. Later, he attempted to escape to the Soviet Union but was refused and sent back to China. He again hid in the wilderness of Heilongjiang, during which time his wife left him. Zhang Boli was the only June 4th wanted fugitive to successfully remain hidden within China for two years without being captured by the government. In June 1991, Zhang Boli secretly escaped to Hong Kong and applied for political asylum at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong. His application was approved, and he was granted asylum in the United States. In July 1991, he was invited to Princeton University’s East Asian Department as a visiting scholar and became a researcher at the Princeton Chinese Studies Society. Due to kidney failure, he received treatment in the U.S. and later transferred to Taiwan’s Veterans General Hospital. During this period, he converted to Christianity and published his memoir <i>The Fugitive</i>, which has been translated into multiple languages. The English version, <i>Escape From China</i>, won the Washington Post’s Best Book Award. In 1993, Zhang Boli participated in the overseas democracy movement conference in Washington, D.C., where he was elected as vice president of the Democratic China United Front and served as the editor-in-chief of China Spring magazine. In 1995, he began studying theology at Wheaton College, having decided to dedicate his life to the ministry. In 1997, he enrolled at Logos Evangelical Seminary in Los Angeles, where he earned a Master of Divinity degree and became a researcher at the China Evangelical Association, studying under Dr. Zhao Tian'en. In 2001, Zhang Boli was ordained as a Christian pastor and in 2002, he founded and pastored the Harvest China Christian Church in the Washington, D.C., area. He later expanded the church to Singapore, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Sydney. In 2018, he earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from Lincoln Christian University in the United States. Zhang Boli also founded the China Evangelism Mission and the China Evangelical Seminary, which has produced over 300 graduates serving churches around the world. He is currently the senior pastor of the Harvest China Christian Church in the United States, the president of the North American China Evangelism Mission, and the dean of the China Evangelical Seminary in the U.S.

Zhang Chunyuan (1932-1970), a native of Shangcai, Henan Province, was a writer, editor, and political prisoner. Zhang grew up in an impoverished family. His mother died when he was 7 and he told friends that his stepmother mistreated him. He ran away from home at age 13 and worked as an apprentice car mechanic before joining the People’s Liberation Army in 1948 as a 16-year-old. He volunteered for the Korean war in 1950 and served as a car driver and technician in the Fourth Field Army’s 50th Army Logistics Department. He went abroad to fight in the Korean War in 1950 and was wounded in 1953 on the battlefield while rescuing a vehicle. He was discharged in 1954, returned to China in 1955 and worked in the Department of Agriculture of Hubei Province. In 1956, he was admitted to Lanzhou University. That began his disillusionment with how the Communists were running China. He thought a university would have a magnificent library but found that most books were under lock and key. Lanzhou University didn’t even possess a complete set of the Confucian classics—the basic texts used over the centuries by all literate people—let alone cutting-edge journals. Teaching was worse, with one lecturer for 100 students. When the Hundred Flowers Campaign began, Zhang criticized the lack of books and poor teaching. For that, he was labeled a Rightist in 1958 and exiled to Tianshui, Gansu Province for re-education through labor. There, he and others students from Lanzhou University, including his girlfriend Tan Chanxue, Xiang Chengjian, Miao Qingjiu, and Gu Yan witnessed the Great Famine first-hand, including cannibalism. Inspired by the poet Lin Zhao, they decided to publish a magazine. Zhang traveled to Suzhou to meet Lin, and convinced her to let them published “Seagull” and “A Day in the Life of Prometheus.” Back in Tianshui, he and the other exiled students obtained a mimeograph machine, carved their own wax plates, and published the magazine Spark, which explored the reasons for the Great Famine and commented on current affairs. Zhang was widely regarded by the students as one of the leaders of the magazine and also wrote several key articles. He was arrested on September 30, 1960, along with other students and dozens of local farmers who knew and supported them. In order to escape, Zhang refused to eat and was sent to a hospital for prisoners in July 1961. On August 10 he managed to escape but was arrested again on September 6 and sentenced to life imprisonment in January 1965 for “organizing a counter-revolutionary group”. In March 1970, Zhang Chunyuan was again sentenced for engaging in counter-revolutionary activities by exchanging letters with another prisoner, Du Yinghua, a local party leader who had sympathized with the students. The two were sentenced during a mass rally at Qilihe Stadium and executed at Willow Gulley in Donggang Township on March 22. For the three days before his execution, Zhang recounted his life story to a fellow prisoner named Wang Zhongyi and made him promise to find Tan Chanxue and tell her two sentences: <i>First, I have a clear conscience toward the party, the country, and the people, and I’m sorry because I can’t accompany her to finish the road of life. Second, she must live well; the future is bright and boundless!</i> Zhang was rehabilitated in 1981.