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 The Fugitive, which has been translated into multiple languages. The English version, Escape From China, 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.
