[6][7] Song Yongyi was born in Shanghai, China in December 1949.

[1][8] During the Cultural Revolution, Song became a Red Guard who followed Mao Zedong, but was jailed when he was 17 for several years because he was part of the "counter-revolutionary clique" that challenged Zhang Chunqiao.

[2][3][8] After the Cultural Revolution, he was accepted into the Shanghai Normal University in 1977, when the National College Entrance Examination was resumed by Deng Xiaoping.

[8][9][10] In the summer of 1999, Song went back to China to collect documents related to the Cultural Revolution, but was arrested by the Chinese government for "stealing state secrets".

[8][12] United States senator Arlen Specter and U.S. Representative Matt Salmon intervened in the case and negotiated with Jiang Zemin, then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese President.