Xiao Shichang (肖世昌) is a Wuhan democracy activist associated with China Democracy Party organizing and a former political prisoner. Human Rights Watch’s case database records his birth year as 1955 and identifies him as a branch manager of the CDP Hubei branch and an employee of the Wuhan Iron and Steel Plant.
Detention and sentence
Human Rights Watch reports that Xiao Shichang and Chen Zhonghe, leaders of the Hubei branch, were detained on February 13, 1999 amid efforts to organize a national CDP congress in Wuhan.
On July 7, 2000, Human Rights Watch reported that Xiao and Chen were sentenced on subversion charges. Xiao received five and a half years in prison; Chen received seven years. HRW’s case database also records Xiao’s Wuhan residence, branch-manager role and employment at the Wuhan Iron and Steel Plant.
Later evidence
An August 31, 2005 open letter by overseas democracy-movement scholars and activists listed Xiao among CDP prisoners who remained in Chinese prisons at that time. That letter contains inaccurate sentence figures for Xiao and Chen, so its custody-status reference is used only with that reliability caveat.
Status and evidence limits
No sourced release record has been recovered. Xiao’s exact release date and later or current status remain unresolved and are not inferred from sentence arithmetic. The HRW narrative and case database also differ on the detention date; this profile uses the February 13, 1999 date from HRW’s narrative report and preserves the database discrepancy in the Media archive.
Media Profile & Archive: Xiao Shichang / 肖世昌 — Media Profile & Archive.