Zhao Xin / 赵昕 — 1989 student leader, former Qincheng detainee, China Democracy Party organizer, human-rights defender, former Executive Director of the Empowerment and Rights Institute, and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center. This archive preserves the media and documentary record on Zhao Xin in chronological order, with source provenance, conflicts, and evidentiary limits stated explicitly. It is not a biography; for the consolidated profile, see the canonical person page.
Canonical person profile: Zhao Xin / 赵昕
1992 — Amnesty International: reported arrests connected to the 1989 movement
Amnesty International, CHIRAN 01/92, January 31, 1992 (“People’s Republic of China: Recent trials and arrests connected to the 1989 pro-democracy movement”): in a roundup of recent trials and arrests, Amnesty reported that “Wang Guoqi, Zhang Qianjin, Zhao Xin, Li Xiang, Chen Wei and Wang Tao, all students” were among those reported arrested, alongside writer Bao Mi and Bao Tong. The document grades its own sourcing as unofficial reports.
Amnesty International, ASA 17/08/92: five students — Wang Guoqi, Zhang Qianjin, Zhao Xin, Li Xiang and Chen Wei — were reportedly arrested on December 27, 1991 at the funeral of fellow student Wen Jie. Mourners laid a wreath of four red and six black roses, representing June 4. A sixth person, Wang Tao, was missing and may also have been arrested. Amnesty reported that Wang Guoqi and Zhang Qianjin were released on December 28, with no further news at the time on Zhao Xin, Li Xiang, Chen Wei or Wang Tao.
2005 — Amnesty International Urgent Action: fear for safety
Amnesty International, UA 298/05, ASA 17/041/2005, November 25, 2005 (“China: Fear for safety: Zhao Xin”): reports the November 17, 2005 beating in Maoxin, Sichuan, by seven men armed with steel pipes and knives, 11 stitches, a shattered kneecap, and Sichuan police refusal to investigate. Amnesty also describes an early-2005 charge of “assembling crowds to disrupt public order” over internet articles, a six-week sentence, and probation, and identifies him as a former chief organizer of the China Democracy Party who wrote under the pen name Zhao Zixian. The surveillance-car account is Zhao’s own, as reported by Amnesty.
2006 — Press: hunger-strike crackdown arrests
In These Times, “China Dissidents Disappeared” (March 2006): named “Zhao Xin, a human rights activist with the Beijing-based Empowerment and Human Rights Institute” among dissidents arrested around the February–March 2006 hunger-strike relay. The article renders the institute’s name with “Human Rights” inserted; Amnesty and the CECC give “Empowerment and Rights Institute.”
Conflicts and required caveats
- The early-2005 episode is reported two ways: Amnesty’s six-week sentence and probation, and the CECC’s January 21–March 24, 2005 detention for a Zhao Ziyang march application. Both attributions are kept; they are not merged into one narrative.
- Qincheng duration is approximately eleven months to one year. No exact release date is published. The “four months at Qincheng” figure belongs to Zhao Changqing, not Zhao Xin.
- The 1997 Nanzheng candidacy and 1997–2001 sentence are Zhao Changqing’s record, not Zhao Xin’s.
- No custody, activity, or status record after March 2006 was located. None is inferred.
- Chinese characters for the pen name Zhao Zixian are not supplied and are not invented.