Wei Jingsheng

Lore & Background

Wei was the oldest of four children, brought up by Chinese Communist Party cadres. In 1966, Wei joined the Red Guards as a 16-year-old student during the Cultural Revolution. He lived in remote rural areas in Northern China and was able to speak with peasant farmers about the widespread famines that had occurred a few years before, during the Great Leap Forward. He uncovered the role that the communist government under Mao Zedong played in causing the famines, and it forced Wei to start questioning the nature of the system under which he lived.

Wei would later write about this period: "I felt as if I had suddenly awakened from a long dream, but everyone around me was still plunged in darkness." In 1973, he began working as an electrician at the Beijing Zoo. On 5 December 1978, Wei posted his essay "The Fifth Modernization" on the Democracy Wall. It was a response to paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernizations, arguing that democracy should also be a modernization goal.

Wei signed the essay with his real name and address. The essay immediately caused a stir because of its boldness and because its author was not anonymous. It was also the only essay which addressed Deng Xiaoping by name, and it was also the only essay which referred to him as a dictator.

Wei differed from the mainstream of the Democracy Wall movement because he argued that a totalitarian political system was the source of the people's grievances, and he was one of the few activists who explicitly argued against Marxism and the leadership of a Marxist party. Wei also edited the short-lived magazine Explorations in 1979. He published a letter under his name in March 1979 denouncing the inhuman conditions in Beijing's Qincheng Prison. On 25 March, hearing a crackdown was imminent, Wei and his colleagues rushed out a special edition of Explorations entitled "Do We Want Democracy or a New Dictatorship?" Wei and some thirty other Democracy Wall activists were rounded up soon after.

That October, Wei was brought to trial and accused of "supplying military intelligence [on China's war with Vietnam] to a foreigner and of openly agitating for the overthrow of the government of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system in China." He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He remained imprisoned until 14 September 1993, when he was released just one week before the International Olympic Committee held a vote over whether it should award the 2000 Summer Olympics to Beijing or Sydney. On 27 February 1994, Wei met with United States Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck and also met with journalists. Wei was arrested the following week along with fifteen other democracy and labor activists.

Although released shortly afterward and sent into exile in Tianjin, Wei was arrested once more on 1 April 1994 when he tried to return to Beijing. Charged with plotting against the state, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison, but he would only remain in prison until 16 November 1997, when he was released, ostensibly for medical reasons, and promptly deported to the United States. He was sent to the United States due to international pressure, especially the request by US President Bill Clinton.

Reader's Guide

Wei Jingsheng's significance stems from his role in the Democracy Wall movement and his essay "The Fifth Modernization," which directly challenged Deng Xiaoping by calling democracy a necessary fifth goal for China. His explicit criticism of Marxism and the Communist Party set him apart from other activists. His 18 years in prison—from 1979 to 1993 and again from 1994 to 1997—illustrate the consequences of his outspoken views. His deportation to the United States on 16 November 1997 on medical parole, following international pressure and a request by US President Bill Clinton, allowed him to continue his work from abroad.

In 1998, he established the Wei Jingsheng Foundation in New York City (now based in Washington, D.C.), which aims to improve human rights and advocate democratisation in China. His awards include the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1996, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1996, the National Endowment for Democracy Award in 1997, the Olof Palme Memorial Prize in 1994, and the International Activist Award by the Gleitsman Foundation in 1993. In 1998, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bard College. In a September 2021 documentary titled What Really Happened in Wuhan, Wei claimed that he attempted to warn American authorities about COVID-19 in October 2019 after being informed of an outbreak by contacts in Beijing, and that China was aware of the virus much sooner than they admitted and intentionally spread it during the World Military Games in Wuhan.