Chen Xiaoya (1955- ), a native of Changsha, Hunan Province, graduated from the Department of History at Hunan Normal University in 1982, worked as an editor and reporter, and then joined the Institute of Political Science of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as an associate researcher. In 1996, she published History of the 1989 Democracy Movement: A Panoramic Record and Contextual Analysis of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident in Taiwan, for which she was then dismissed from her job. However, she insisted on continuing her research, collecting information, conducting interviews, and expanded the original book to three volumes totaling more than 1.36 million words. In January 2019, Chen Xiaoya planned to travel abroad, but was stopped at the border and restricted from leaving the country on the grounds that she might jeopardize national security.
