Bao, a former magazine editor and a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was arrested in June 1989 and charged with making counter-revolutionary propaganda. He was sentenced to five years in prison and two years’ subsequent deprivation of political rights. He was one of a group, including Wang Juntao and Cheng Ziming, that published Xinwen Kuaixun (News Flash) during martial rule in Beijing the spring of 1989.