Ma Xiaoming 马晓明

Status: Canonical people profile; source enrichment continues.

Ma Xiaoming (马晓明) is a former Shaanxi Television journalist/editor, a participant in the 1989 democracy movement, and a Xi’an dissident, rights activist and independent journalist. FreeChina’s controlled research baseline documents political punishment and detention after 1989, a 1999 arrest while reporting on a farmer tax protest, a roughly eleven-hour detention in 2000, and recurring police controls around politically sensitive anniversaries, including house arrest in 2014.

Public role

Journalist/editor; democracy dissident; rights activist; former detainee.

Custody record

The documented custody episodes are treated as separate events. FreeChina does not infer a continuous prison term or current custody from these historical episodes. No current custody was established in the controlled baseline.

Evidence status

The baseline draws on U.S. State Department reporting, Committee to Protect Journalists material, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Radio Free Asia, a first-person interview and Beijing Spring archival chronology. Original 1989 personnel/disciplinary records, 1998 police interrogation records, 1999 detention records and later police records remain enrichment targets.

Last controlled research verification: September 9, 2026. This profile will be expanded as additional primary records are recovered.