Benli got his start as a newspaperman in 1944, working at a string of newspapers in Chongqing and elsewhere in China, before moving to Shanghai to continue that vocation.
[2] The Herald was launched as an "unofficial newspaper" in 1980 by Benli, with the backing of high-level party officials who wished to encourage economic and (within limits) political reforms.
[2] On April 3, 1989, the Herald called for more open government, elections, freedom of speech and regulations that officials make public their salaries.
[4] Qin Benli, and his newspaper's links to the reformist faction in the Communist Party, in particular Zhao Ziyang, were widely known in political circles at the time.
After the Tiananmen massacre, Chen Xitong, the mayor of Beijing, claimed that there was a "conspiracy" between the Herald, the protesting students, and Zhao Ziyang.
The ire of local authorities, specifically Jiang Zemin, had been drawn by the publication of six pages of reminiscences and discussion after the death, on April 15, of Hu Yaobang, the former Communist leader who had been ousted by party hardliners.