Rise and fall of a loyalist
It has been a bad few months for Professor Zhao Xinshu. He lost his job as dean after releasing results of a survey on candidates for chief executive early, and a poll he worked on in Macau was criticised for having leading questions.
Zhao (pictured), 57, was a professor at the University of North Carolina in the United States before he became Baptist University's dean of communications in 2007. He was also an honorary professor at China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, and an honorary fellow at Fudan University, Shanghai, where he got his first degree.
Zhao is considered a Beijing-loyalist, though Baptist University's president, Professor Albert Chan Sun-chi, said politics was disregarded when hiring, 'whether his background is red, green or blue'.
Born in Shanghai, Zhao's grandfather was a landlord, making Zhao a victim of the Cultural Revolution.
He was a journalist at People's Daily and Xinhua. He furthered his studies in the United States.
After becoming dean at Baptist University, he joined e-Research & Solutions, based in Macau, which was recently commissioned by the Macau government to do a public opinion survey on amendments to the city's publishing and broadcasting laws. Zhao was a researcher.
Randomly selected members of the public and journalists were to be involved in the survey. But it was criticised as biased by some journalists, who boycotted it. And because too few journalists - 29 - took part, the data had to be discarded.
