Ruan Xiaohuan (; born 10 June 1977) is a Chinese dissident, blogger, and InfoSec specialist. In 2009, Ruan started an anonymous blog named ProgramThink () on Blogger, covering various topics from network security, methods to bypass the internet blockade in mainland China, to his own political commentaries (including criticism of the Chinese Communist Party) and book recommendations.
Ruan was captured on 10 May 2021 by the Shanghai police for his aforementioned blog. On 10 February 2023, he was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" by the Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court, and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment with two years of deprivation of political rights and a confiscation of property of 20,000 Chinese yuan.
Early life and work
Ruan was born on 10 June 1977, in Quanzhou, Fujian, to Zhuang Xiuzhu and Ruan Wenling. Ruan Xiaohuan's mother, Zhuang Xiuzhu (), is a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (RCCK) and worked at the Quanzhou Flour Mill. Ruan's father, Ruan Wenling (), is a Chinese literature Professor at Huaqiao University and a member of the China Democratic League (CDL).
Ruan's maternal grandparents migrated to Taipei in 1949 along with the mainland exodus and the relocation of the central government of the Republic of China to Taiwan, leaving Ruan's mother, Zhuang Xiuzhu, who was only eight months old at the time, under the care of her maternal grandmother in Quanzhou. Ruan's maternal grandmother, Chuang Yen-ching (), later established a company in Taipei and engaged in the indoor and women’s accessories business. In 1988, as the cross-strait relations continued to thaw, Ruan's mother, Zhuang Xiuzhu, travelled to Taipei with her husband (Ruan's father) to briefly reunite with her mother (Ruan's maternal grandmother), whom she had not seen for almost 40 years, and to pay tribute to her late father.
Ruan first discovered his passion for information technology in 1990 at the age of 13, when he was in secondary school. He joined a computer enthusiasts group at that time and became fascinated with DOS viruses. In order to understand the mechanism behind DOS viruses, Ruan taught himself assembly language and C in his school's computer room.
Ruan went on to study chemical engineering at the East China University of Science and Technology in 1996 but continued to be infatuated with computer science and used most of his time to further his studies in the field, which resulted in his failure to pass exams of his major courses and the College English Test level 4, and led to his later decision to drop out in the fourth year and pursue his career in IT industries. A decision he made much to the dismay of his parents, particularly to his father, who held a professorship. At university, Ruan met his future wife, Bei Zhenying (), his then classmate.
At work, Ruan practised in various information security industries, including managing intrusion detection systems and security operations centres and engaging in information security audits. He served as a chief engineer for the information security system used in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In 2012, Ruan resigned from his job to be fully committed to open-source software development.
Blog ‘ProgramThink’ and Project ‘zhao’
The blog
On 15 January 2009, Ruan created his blog ProgramThink on Blogger. For the first few months, the blog only focused on computer technology and software development. Later, a massive wave of internet censorship was enforced in mainland China around the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, which led Ruan to turn his blog to focus on sharing methods to bypass the block.
Several social incidents in 2010 and 2011, such as the death of Qian Yunhui and the 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests, inspired Ruan to write more about subjects beyond just technology. Ruan gradually expanded the content of his blog from purely technical articles to a wide range of topics, including more overt political commentaries, historical reviews, book recommendations, etc. These aspects later formed the main contents of his blog.