Near the end of 1973, the then teenager Gong Xiaoxia (龚小夏) got herself involved with a little group of young rebellions in Guangzhou, China. The group had been publishing a series of "Big Posters" criticizing the politics of the day under a collective pen name Li Yizhe (李一哲). It was not until 1977, after the fall of "Gang of Four", when the group got into serious trouble with all its members detained.
But the young Gong Xiaoxia regained her freedom quickly in a rapidly changing China at the time. In fact, she passed the national college exam reinstated by Deng Xiaoping and was admitted into Peking University. There, she became a close friend and confidant to a younger Wang Juntao and helped guiding him through the excited time of "election campaign" of 1980.
Gong Xiaoxia eventually left China and went on to Harvard University for her study in sociology. She settled down near Washington DC and became active in local politics there. She writes a blog in Chinese on her adventures to help educating her audience on the operations of American democracy.
Today, Gong Xiaoxia announced in her blog that she has decided to run for Virginia State legislature herself and will continue to report on her campaign via her blog. She has not yet spelled out her platform but it appears that she will be running as a moderate Republican with a strong appeal to local Chinese community.
While many Chinese-Americans have participated and gained tremendous achievements in American politics, Gong Xiaoxia might be the very first with a mainland China background and from the post-Cultural Revolution generation.
Her campaign web site is here.
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