Wei Jingsheng: China's extraordinary revolutionary

"I certainly plan to go back -- in fact, I never intended to leave." So says leading Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng as he gives his first press conference in exile, after four days in a Detroit hospital, following his release from a 14-year prison term, and being sent into exile on medical parole by the Chinese authorities. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin gives a brief profile of an extra-ordinary product of China's communist revolution.

HONG KONG (JP): Wei Jingsheng is a rarity -- a Chinese citizen who really believes in the rights bestowed by the constitution, who insists upon their implementation and writes letters to Chinese leaders about it, who refuses to be silenced in the face of injustice, and who, despite lengthy imprisonment, remains anxious to promote his vision of freedom and democracy.

In China, such a concept of individual citizenship is extremely rare. Most Chinese would turn aside from any thought of verbally jousting with their communist rulers. Very few Chinese have studied the constitution, fewer still believe it means what it says.

Even many of those Chinese whom the outside world describes as "dissidents" believe they have no choice but to be silent in the face of oppression. They hope that the oppressors will somehow one day bestow greater freedom of expression. They fear to demand or agitate for it.

On Nov. 16, as Wei Jingsheng went on his first journey by jet aircraft on his very first trip outside the Middle Kingdom, it's a safe bet that he was worrying about how he would be able to reach the people within China from a temporary refuge in the United States. As the jet took him to the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Wei was in many ways the antithesis of the millions of Overseas Chinese who have left home to seek greater personal freedom and fortune.

This was made very clear as Wei spoke at a press conference in New York Public Library five days after his release: "I have waited decades for this chance to exercise my right to free speech, but the Chinese people have been waiting for centuries. Those (people) who already enjoy democracy, liberty and human rights, in particular, should not allow their own personal happiness to numb them into forgetting the many others who are still struggling against tyranny, slavery and poverty. . . . . The future prospect of the Chinese democracy movement is excellent. After a low tide, there is always a high tide for democracy".

Ever since Deng Xiaoping briefly permitted a brief flowering of free expression in Beijing in 1978-1979 --- not because he believed in it but because he wanted to emerge on top in the intense factional and succession struggle at that time within the Chinese Communist Party -- Wei has sought to make that flowering more permanent.

As then British diplomat Roger Garside described Wei in his book on that period in Chinese politics Coming Alive! -- "In his writing Wei displayed a spirit that was bold but not theatrical, skeptical but yet not cynical. Under pressure he was prone to act rashly, doing things he sorely regretted later. His boldness, his skepticism and impetuosity were evident in his assertion that the Chinese people had at last found their real leader, 'the banner of democracy' even as they were in danger of falling prey to a new 'political swindler' "(Deng).

"I know that democracy is the future of China" Wei told Garside, "if I speak out now, there is a possibility that I can hasten the day when the Chinese people will enjoy democracy".

Sixteen years later, at the conclusion of his second trial for subversion, Wei still exuded the same faith as he concluded his defense by asserting that "Actions to promote human rights and democracy and to expose and fight against the enemies of democracy and human rights do not constitute a crime". Now, after further incarceration, he still refuses to change, or to give up the struggle upon which he has embarked.

This man who so passionately exudes a democratic faith is essentially a child of the Chinese communist revolution. He was born a year after the communists swept into power. His parents were loyal party members. His father instilled in Wei a respect for Marxist-Leninist-Mao-Zedong Thought but it was his mother who taught him to sympathize with the suffering of workers and peasants.

Three episodes have been crucial in Wei's intellectual and political development.

First, he became, at 16, one of Mao's loyal millions, a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution, whom Mao hopes to use to demolish the established order and to restore his factional supremacy. "The Red Guards were fanatically Maoist" Wei recalls in an autobiographical essay, "but more importantly they were deeply dissatisfied with the status quo".

What the Red Guards saw and experienced during the turmoil and anarchy of the Cultural Revolution makes some, like Wei, even more dissatisfied. As he travels around China with his fellow fanatics, Wei sees more of the status quo and starts to think about what really needs changing.

As a Red Guard, Wei goes to prison for the first time when, in early 1967, he is kept in jail for three months for taking part in factional activities against the infamous Gang of Four, led by Mao's widow, Jiang Qing and also in an attack on the Ministry of Public Security. To escape Red Guard factionalism, Wei goes to Anhui province and sees the sad fate which the peasants endure there.

Second, in the early seventies, he becomes a People's Liberation Army soldier for three years and again travels to remote parts of China, seeing more of the injustices and inadequacies of the communist regime.

Leaving the army, Wei prefers to become an electrician at the Beijing Zoo rather than a CCP cadre. Thirdly, there is the Democracy Wall experience. Deng comes to power advocating the four economic, defense and scientific modernizations. Wei comes to prominence advocating the Fifth Modernization -- Democracy, and attacking Deng as one more despot.

He is arrested and tried. Wei speaks eloquently in his defense but has to serve fourteen and a half years of his 15 years sentence for his allegedly counter-revolutionary activities, during which time he writes many pungent letters to Deng, Prime Minister Li Peng and President Jiang Zemin. (Writing to Li Peng on May 4, 1989, Wei anticipates the folly, the inevitability and the tragedy of the Beijing Massacre a month later).

He is released to serve the state's purposes in 1994, but continues to express his democratic convictions. So Wei is made to disappear for a year by the regime, before being tried and sentenced in 1995 to another 14 years of more severe and brutal imprisonment.

His health is impaired so his jailers offer medical treatment -- provided Wei agrees to exile in the United States. In China's eyes, Wei will remain a convicted criminal -- but his only crime lies in his convictions.

As Professor Andrew Nathan puts it in a collection of Wei's writings published recently in The Courage to Stand Alone, "The Chinese leaders do not know how lucky they are. They should be grateful to have as their hardest opponent a man who shares the best values of socialism and nationalism, who is committed to peace and reason, who refrains from organizing opposition or breaking Chinese law".

Those leaders do not appreciate their good fortune. Now Wei is faced with a new, learning experience and a great challenge.

For the first time in his life he is going to witness at first hand how a democratic nation practices its faith.

He is faced with the daunting task of finding a way to remain relevant to China from the inevitable distance of exile in the United States.