[3] In 1987 after graduating from law school, Dong began working for the Guangming Daily, a Chinese Communist Party newspaper[2][1][4] He participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and served a year of hard labor, after which he resumed work at the paper.
[2][4] In the period preceding his acceptance of the fellowship, he was aware he was under state surveillance, according to his family.
[2][4] At the time of his arrest he was deputy head of Guangming Daily's editorial department.
[1] Dong has never been a Communist member, and his writing was generally considered to advocate progressive reform in China.
[5] In February 2022, Dong was detained by Chinese authorities while lunching with a Japanese diplomat at the Novotel Xin Qiao hotel in downtown Beijing.