Jiang Pinchao

Jiang Pinchao (Chinese: 蒋品超; Pinyin: Jiǎng Pǐnchāo; born 1967) is a Chinese poet. He is the director of June Fourth Heritage & Culture Association, chief editor of Collection of June Fourth Poems and Collection of Human Right Poems, oversea democratic personnel, and the first author to be blocked by Google. He was sentenced for four years due to his active participation in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China.

Jiang graduated from the Department of Language Art of Huazhong Normal University in China. He was appointed to work as a teacher in the News Department of Wuhan University in July 1989.

Due to his participation in the organization of the student democratic movement, he was arrested and jailed for four years, deprived of political rights for two years in the First Jail of the Hubei Province in China. In 1992, along with other political prisoners, he resisted the abuse, but was tortured and confined. Once released, Jiang Pinchao married American Marline Bun in April 1994. He immigrated to the United States on a spouse status visa, but divorced his wife in October 1994.

Since 2001, Jiang has initiated controversy on the internet. He initiated the "re-ponder the history, be concerned about the politics, commiserate with the public" mindset and proposed the theory of "thoughts of public" and "thoughts of imagination". His topics involved the June Fourth Democratic Movement, the public view of politics in China, and many other sensitive questions in Chinese society. He was one of the first to propose such touchy questions in strictly thought-controlled, but changing, China. A large number of Chinese poets taken an active part in this controversy but because of his strong and growing influence, Jiang was blocked from Internet usage by Chinese government officials in 2004.

On September 16, 2004, American Dynamic Internet issued a research report focusing on Jiang, and revealed that Pinchao Jiang was blocked by the Google search engine. The same day, Yisha and Shaojun Li, two authors who had argued with Jiang, were presented an annual prize in the Chinese "New Poetry" sub-culture.

Because Google broke the promise of "Do no evil", the matter attracted international attention. The United States Congress and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, have held hearings on the subject. On April 14, 2005, Jiang Pinchao was nominated for "The President Culture Prize" in Taiwan.

Jiang testified and supported the American congress hearing conference to the internet blockage behavior of Google, Yahoo, Cisco, and Microsoft on February 15, 2006. He accepted interviews with over 10 news outlets, such as the Associated Press, Yomiuri Shimbun, and the Central News Agency of Taiwan. The following morning, he was arrested by local police on behalf of the Chinese general embassy, but was released on the same day for lack of a proper basis for his arrest.

On March 5, 2006, Jiang, along with Jinsheng Wei, Hongbing Yuan, Xue Sheng, and others, launched an international fast, which included ten thousand people, to express support for individuals persecuted by the Chinese government. Jiang also organized and presided over another Chinese protest in Los Angeles for similar reasons.