Chinese writer Cao Baoyin detained by police after alternative school closure

Cao Baoyin, a well-known Chinese writer and columnist, was detained by police in Nanjing on Tuesday, according to two family friends.

The family friends spoke to the South China Morning Post on condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the matter.

Cao was detained on Tuesday, Zhou Ze, a rights lawyer, confirmed in a Weibo post on Wednesday evening. The post has since been deleted. He did not say whether charges have been put forward.

According to Zhou, Cao called his wife from Nanjing on Tuesday, telling her that he had been detained by police. Zhou and another family friend said police in Beijing’s Fengtai district searched Cao’s home there. A seizure notice by Fengtai police showed that two boxes of books, one laptop and 26 CDs were seized.

It was unclear whether Cao had only been summoned for questioning or whether charges had been pressed. Under Chinese law, police can criminally detain suspects for up to 24 hours without informing the family and up 30 days before formalising an arrest, except in extraordinary circumstances. 

Zhou could not be reached on Wednesday. Cao’s wife confirmed the detention but declined to comment further on Wednesday.

Family friends have suggested the writer’s detention could be tied to the closure of a controversial alternative school project in the capital’s southern district.

Cao was a strong advocate of the “new education” model of alternative schooling, which the primary school affiliated with the Fengtai No.2 Middle School in his home district had adopted two years ago.

Under the alternative model, schools are free to choose their own teaching material. It also tries to involve parents in the teaching process and adapt teaching progress more to children’s individual needs.

Cao’s advocacy of school reform had already cost him his job earlier this year as an executive with The Beijing News, a leading newspaper in the capital, according to people familiar with the matter.

Advocates of the programme, including Cao, had over the last months clashed with Fengtai’s educational department over the degree of the experimental primary school’s autonomy.

The school had been forced to abandon its alternative teaching model for the current school year that started earlier this month, news website Caixin said two days ago, citing “pressure from above”.

Reacting to the return to traditional schooling, more than half of the families with children at the school refused to send their children to classes, according to the report, which has since been deleted. Wei Zhiyuan, an educator who led the schools’ reform efforts, called the decision a “disaster for the community”.

In an open letter on Monday, the school condemned “a small number of parents” for keeping the children from school and said the district government would investigate the matter and maintain “social stability”.