Xu Xinghu

Early Life and Education

Xu Xinghu was born on 26 March 1968 in Danyang, Jiangsu Province. He graduated in July 1990 from the Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages (now Beijing Foreign Studies University) with a degree in Serbo-Croatian, after which he joined the international desk of Guangming Daily as an editor. From September 1996 to July 1997 he undertook further study at the University of Belgrade.

Journalism Career

In July 1998, Guangming Daily posted Xu Xinghu to Belgrade as its chief correspondent in Yugoslavia, covering the Kosovo crisis and the wider Balkan conflict. After NATO began its air campaign against Yugoslavia in March 1999, he continued reporting from under bombardment, publishing a series of battlefield diaries and dispatches under the column 'Living Through the Bombs.' His wife, Zhu Ying, an art editor in Guangming Daily's advertising department, accompanied him to Belgrade in 1998, assisting with reporting and photography.

On the night of 7 May 1999 (local time) — 8 May in Beijing time, the same moment — a US bomber struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia. The room in the embassy where Xu Xinghu and Zhu Ying were staying was struck directly, killing them both instantly; also killed in the same strike was Xinhua correspondent Shao Yunhuan. Xu was 31 years old.

Posthumous Commemoration

Xu Xinghu and Zhu Ying were posthumously honoured as "outstanding journalists of the people." The US government later paid a combined US$4.5 million in humanitarian compensation to the families of the three journalists killed in the strike. Their home village of Gaodian, in Danyang, was later renamed "Xinghu Village" in their memory, and a memorial hall to Xu and Zhu was built there. On 7 May 2009, the Belgrade city government erected a memorial at the site of the former embassy, now home to a Chinese cultural centre; in June 2016, President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan laid flowers at the memorial during a state visit to Serbia.