Xu received his Bachelor of Law degree from
Lanzhou University in 1994 and Doctor of Law degree from
Peking University in 2002.
The Gongmeng era In 2003, he was elected to the
Haidian District People's Congress as an
independent. He won the re-election in 2006. In the 2011 election, Xu was excluded from the official candidate list due to government pressure and he lost to
Fang Binxing ("''Father of China's Great Firewall''"), but he still gathered more than 3,500 votes out of 22,000 voters in his district as a
write-in candidate. Xu helped found the public interest group Gongmeng, also known as the
Open Constitution Initiative. Unlike other human rights activists, Xu firmly and carefully pushed his calls for political change and social justice in existing laws, and his group has been regarded as relatively cautious and conservative. In his recent interview before his arrest, he described his dream as follows: {{blockquote|quote=I wish our country could be a free and happy one. Every citizen need not go against their conscience and can find their own place by their virtue and talents; a simple and happy society, where the goodness of humanity is expanded to the maximum, and the evilness of humanity is constrained to the minimum; honesty, trust, kindness, and helping each other are everyday occurrences in life; there is not so much anger and anxiety, a pure smile on everyone's face.
The 2009 Gongmeng incident On July 29, 2009, he was arrested at his home, and detained by Chinese authorities on charges of tax evasion. The Open Constitution Initiative was fined 1.46 million
RMB on July 14, 2009, for 'dodging taxes' and was shut down by the authorities by declaring it "illegal". Xu Zhiyong was released on bail on August 23, 2009. The Australian newspaper
The Age reported that the release of Xu, Zhuang and another Chinese dissident,
Ilham Tohti, was in part due to pressure on Beijing from the administration of American President
Barack Obama. His trial started on January 22, 2014. Xu and his lawyer Zhang Qingfang remained silent throughout the trial (except for his closing statement) to protest the violation of basic legal procedure. Xu's closing statement was cut short by the judge, but the text was circulated on the internet and raised tremendous support. On January 26, Xu was sentenced to four years in prison for "gathering crowds to disrupt public order". He was released in 2017.
2020 arrest Xu and other human rights activists were wanted by police for their participation in a meeting in
Xiamen on December 13, 2019 where "democratic transition in China" was discussed. He was arrested in Guangzhou on February 15, 2020, according to two fellow activists. In November 2021, Liang Xiaojun, the lawyer of Xu, had his license cancelled by authorities, with the notification letter citing his online support for
Falun Gong and "vilifying" the Chinese constitution and laws. Liang said he had spoken a day earlier via video chat with Xu, who according to Liang was in good health and unshaken in his dissident convictions. On June 13, 2022, the Intermediate People's Court of Linyi issued a notice of a pretrial meeting scheduled for June 17. Lawyers and a rights group said on June 17 that Xu would stand trial for "subversion" on June 22. He had been indicted on that charge in August 2021, and there had been no information about him since. On April 10, 2023, Xu was sentenced after a closed trial to 14 years in prison; fellow human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi was sentenced to 12 years on the same charge. Ding and Xu's convictions were upheld in November 2023.
Imprisonment On October 4, 2024, Xu started a hunger strike to protest mistreatment in prison, including surveillance by other prisoners and lack of contact with Xu's family members. Then U.S. ambassador to China has called for Xu's release. ==Prominent writings and speeches==