Private education entrepreneur Xin Lijian faces political persecution

On Saturday August 22, 2015 Xin Lijian was arrested by the Guangzhou police on suspicion of the crime of destroying accounting records. His driver, accountant and secretary were also arrested along with him.

He’s presently detained in Guangzhou Municipality’s Number Three Detention Center. After meeting with his attorney once on the day after he was arrested, he has not been permitted to see his attorney since.

Over the past two years the Chinese government has carried out large-scale arrests of journalist, writers and attorneys. Since July 2015, more than 200 attorneys and rights defense activists have been arrested. Up until September 2015, investigators reported that 14 attorneys, two legal aids, one law firm staff member, and six rights defense activists remain missing. Because Xin Lijian has the past several years written well-reasoned political essays, and put up capital to support scholarly exchanges and investigations, his arrest is considered by outside observers as the Chinese Communist Party cracking down on public intellectuals.

On Sunday September 6, 2015 Attorney Chen Youxi was asked to serve as Xin Lijian’s defense attorney. Chen Youxi and another Guangzhou-based attorney went to visit him that day but were refused permission to meet him. Another lawyer met Xin Lijian once on Sunday August 23, 2015, but didn’t publicize this information.

Mr. Xin Lijian is the Xinfu Education Group founder and chairman. He concurrently serves as vice president of the Guangdong Province Humanities Association and is a Guangzhou Municipality, Baiyun District Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee (CPPCC) member.

Xin Lijian was born on January 10, 1956 in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province. His ancestral home is Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province. He worked as a farmer, served in the military, and was an educated youth sent down to the countryside during the (1966-76) Cultural Revolution. After the revival of the university entrance examination system he tested into Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, and graduated from the Chinese department in 1982.

After graduating university, he went to work in a governmental agency and then a state-owned enterprise. After this he went to study abroad. After studying in England, he returned to China in 1989 and founded the Xinfu School and devoted himself to the cause of promoting basic education. He unceasingly pioneered new fields of education and programs, creating the first state-owned and privately operated co-educational model in the country. At present, this group jointly operates more than 20 kindergartens, primary and middle schools. The schools have more than 1,000 teaching and administrative staff, and more than 10,000 students. His Xinfu Group is Southern Guangdong Province’s fastest growing, largest-attended and -staffed, and most vital private educational organization. The Xinfu group promotes education for the masses, and seeks to enable as many children as possible to attend school. For many years Xin Lijian has adopted hundreds of orphans and provided their living and school expenses.

Outside of running schools, Xin Lijian is a columnist for many media outlets, and a renowned blogger on the Chinese-language Internet. He primarily writes about private education in China. Mister Xin Lijian highly esteems and promotes the universal values of human rights, loves reading and thinking, and has mature, unique and transcendent views on reality, society and political policy. You can often see his articles in the press. In recent years he continually hires masters to come give lectures in Guangzhou. He financially subsidizes scholars and helps publish their work. He frequently assemblse outstanding representatives of various schools of thought, promoting the dissemination of culture in Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces.