Su Xiaokang

In 2003, Su returned to China for his father's funeral under three conditions imposed by the Chinese government:

Su wrote his memoir, titled A Memoir of Misfortune, published in 1997 in Chinese and in 2001 in English. The memoir documents the hardship he and his family endured after his exile and a tragic automobile accident in the Buffalo City that paralyzed his wife. After A Memoir of Misfortune, Su wrote another book, The Loneliness of Delaware Bay, telling of the struggles and the challenges he faced since moving to the United States. In 2013, Su published The Era of Slaying the Dragon, tackling subjects from Mao's Great Leap Forward and other atrocities occurring under the Chinese Communist Party's rule.

Su Xiaokang was highly praised by scholars and intellectuals in the 1980s, seen as one of the most iconic and popular liberal writers. Su wrote the script for the controversial and thought-provoking documentary River Elegy, a six-part documentary that narrated the decline of Chinese civilization and culture, highlighted the differences between the "transparency" of democracy and the "opacity" of an autocracy, and subtly critiqued the political system under Communist Party rule. The documentary was inspirational to numerous university students and became instrumental to the beginning of the Tiananmen Square protests.

Su Xiaokang (Chinese: 苏晓康; born 1949) is an intellectual, writer, journalist, political activist and in 1989 was named one of China's seven most-wanted dissident intellectuals. His most notable work River Elegy paved the way to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and his participation in the protest also forced him into the exile in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Su currently resides in Delaware, in the United States.