Xin Lijian formally arrested

(BOXUN) According to Bowen Press (www.bowenpress.com) , China popular education group chairman Xin Lijian was recently formally arrested by the Guangzhou Municipal Procuratorate on the three criminal charges of “account destruction, tax evasion and diversion of capital.” This news service has learned from a high-ranking member of Guangzhou’s Politics and Law Committee that the police have clearly told Xin Lijian the real reason he’s being arrested is because his written pieces in the past several years have been “too aggressive” and “imperil the security of the state and present ruling regime.”

According to an unnamed source, the authorities cannot accept a person with an anti-Communist Party, anti-government ideology to engage in education work. Even if Xin Lijian is released, he will not be permitted to continue doing education work. The police have accused Xin Lijian of supporting last year’s Occupy Central democracy protests in Hong Kong and suspect him of being affiliated with Hong Kong’s democracy movement and Occupy Central organization. An informed source states that other than traveling to Hong Kong once during the Occupy Central protests, Xin Lijian has had no contact with its organizers.

Xin Lijian’s Xinfu Education Group owns 18 kindergartens, seven primary and secondary schools, a nursing home, and a charity institute comprising more than 10,000 students and more than 1,000 teaching and administrative staff. He single-handedly established the Xinfu Education Group, southern Guangdong Province’s fastest growing, largest-scope, best-attended, and most vital nongovernmental education group. The Xinfu Education Group is committed to promoting “education of the masses.” Its aim is to enable more children to attend school, and to provide affordable education to the children of migrant workers.

In addition to running schools, Xin Lijian was a columnist for many media outlets and a famous Chinese-language blogger, writing frequently on the problem of private education in China. Mr. Xin Lijian promotes universal values, loves reading and thinking, and has a mature, unique outlook on reality, society and political policy. His essays are almost always published in newspapers. In recent years he frequently invited masters to give lectures in Guangzhou, and financially aided scholars to publish their work. He has many times invited scholars from different schools to speak in Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces, in an effort to promote the dissemination of culture.