Xiao Qiang is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times

China Digital Times

China Digital Times is a bilingual "collaborative news website covering China’s social and political transition and its emerging role in the world," according to the site's About page...

, a bi-lingual China news website, and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Counter-Power Lab, an interdisciplinary faculty-student research group focusing on the intersection of social media

Social media

The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...

, informational politics and Internet freedom, based in the School of Information, UC Berkeley. 

Xiao teaches classes Participatory Media/Collective Action and Blogging China at both the School of Information and the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley. In Fall 2003, Xiao launched China Digital Times to explore how to apply cutting edge technologies to aggregate, organize, and recommend online information from and about China. In 2006, Xiao helped initiate and facilitate the Open Net Consensus forum - which started the process of developing global principles on freedom of expression and privacy and included Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other global internet companies, as well as several universities and human rights and civil rights organizations and investors. This process led to the launch of the Global Network Initiative in October 2008. 

Xiao's current research focuses on mapping the state censorship and control, political discourse and collective resistance, as well as building an automated aggregator of the marginalized, censored or blocked content in Chinese blogoshere. The Counter-Power Lab also sponsors research and development of innovative technologies and social practices which can break through such control.

A theoretical physicist by training, Xiao Qiang studied at the University of Science and Technology of China

University of Science and Technology of China

The University of Science and Technology of China is a national research university in Hefei, People's Republic of China. It is a member of the C9 League formed by nine top universities in China...

 and entered the PhD program (1986–1989) in Astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame. He became a full time human rights activist after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Xiao was the Executive Director of the New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

-based NGO Human Rights in China from 1991 to 2002 and vice-chairman of the steering committee of the World Movement for Democracy. He is also a weekly commentator for Radio Free Asia

Radio Free Asia

Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation that operates a radio station and Internet news service. RFA was founded by an act of the US Congress and is operated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors . The RFA is supported in part by grants from the federal government of the United States...

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Xiao is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2001, and is profiled in the book  Soul Purpose: 40 People Who Are Changing the World for the Better, (Melcher Media, 2003). He was also a visiting fellow of the Santa Fe Institute in Spring, 2002.

External links

• China Digital Times
• The 'blog' revolution sweeps across China by Xiao Qiang
• C-Span: Xiao Qiang at UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day, 2011
• PBS: FRONTLINE TheTankMan: Interview Xiao Qiang
• BBC: Carrie Gracie's Interview with Xiao Qiang
• Rock-n-Go, Xiao's personal blog
• PBS NewsHour: In China, a Struggle for Rights, but Hope for Future
• MacArthur Fellow Biography, see Xiao Qiang
• Champion of Democracy
• Human Rights in China
• University of Science and Technology of China