The well-known activist is free from jail—but not from harassment.
by Meng Yaoting
On October 29, 2024, Beijing Christian activist Zhu Bin was released on bail but told he will be kept under surveillance for one year.
Zhu Bin, a Christian activist and dissident, co-founded Beijing Special Children School. He was detained by the Haidian Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau on September 29, 2024, for “inciting disturbances” and taken to the Haidian District Detention Center.
Zhu was born in Fu’an, Fujian Province, on February 24, 1973. His school, founded in 2017 and independent of the Three Self Church, has faced harassment and raids repeatedly.
Zhu Bin has been a staunch supporter of social justice and engaged in welfare activities. Following the COVID-19 outbreak in late 2019, he has raised funds for patients and disaster victims, making significant contributions to charitable causes.
As a well-known poet, Zhu Bin has authored collections such as “Breathing of Ants” and “Watching a Tree Grow Up.”
During the 2019 Hong Kong protests, he expressed his support on social media, dedicating the poem “The Light is a Sin” to the students who were arrested. In response to the 2021 arrest of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who went to Wuhan to investigate and reveal the authorities’ mishandling of the COVID crisis, he composed “Zhang Zhan, Please Live.”
In 2022, when the “Chained Mother of Eight” scandal surfaced in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, Zhu Bin advocated for an investigation by gathering signatures and sending a petition to the National People’s Congress.
The scandal involved a man that was initially presented by the media as a model CCP activist, until it came out that he had bought from human traffickers a woman who gave him eight children and kept her chained for years. The petition about the incident brought Zhu Bin national attention and triggered the events that led to his detention.
