May 11, 1997

Refusing to Be Silenced

A book by China's most famous political prisoner includes letters to his archenemy, Deng Xiaoping

THE COURAGE TO STAND ALONE

Letters From Prison and Other Writings. By Wei Jingsheng. Edited and translated by Kristina M. Torgeson. With essays by Andrew J. Nathan, Liu Qing and Sophia Woodman.

Illustrated. 286 pp. New York: Viking. $23.95.

By Judith Shapiro

An international campaign to nominate Wei Jingseng for the Nobel Peace Prize has long been waged by China scholars, dissidents and international public officials concerned with human rights. Yet China's most famous political prisoner has languished in prison for nearly two decades, often in solitary confinement, cut off from the world and relatively unknown outside these special circles.

In 1979, Mr. Wei was sentenced to 15 years on trumped-up charges of revealing state secrets to foreigners and inciting counterrevolution through his underground magazine, Exploration. He was paroled in 1993 in an attempt to win China the 2000 Olympics, but when he continued to speak out against dictatorship (and against China's manipulation of political prisoners for public relations purposes), he was again detained. In 1995, he was sentenced to another 14 years. With the publication of "The Courage to Stand Alone," the first book-length collection of Mr. Wei's letters and other writings, we have an opportunity to examine more deeply the political thought and character of the man who has become the preeminent symbol of China's brutal repression of its most talented citizens. This volume includes the heavily censored, argumentative, personal and political letters from Mr. Wei's 1979-93 incarceration. These have become particularly precious in the light of his return to prison, for now there is only silence.

A former Red Guard who was a member of China's disillusioned "thoughtful generation," Mr. Wei was working as an electrician it the Beijing Zoo when he leapt to prominence during the 1978-79 post-Cultural Revolution out-pouring known as the Democracy Wall movement. Although the movement supported Deng Xiaoping's bid to consolidate power after his return from political purgatory, Deng turned against it in early 1979, and in March Mr. Wei was arrested. In October, his widely publicized kangaroo trial, an instance of what the Chinese call "killing the chicken to scare the monkey," sent a message throughout China that freedoms would remain sharply curtailed. Modernization under Deng meant that China could strive to be strong, but not free.

Mr. Wei was forced to discuss his letters with wardens before lifting his pen; many never made it through the inspection process. His reading material was restricted, for years at a time, to The People's Daily. He wrote in the face of beatings and sleep deprivation from noise and

light torture. At times he was detained in unbearable isolation in a 9-by-12-foot cell; at others he was placed with common criminals assigned to break his spirit. Confined to the Tanggemu labor camp in a Tibetan area of Qinghai Province, where the air was thin and the climate freezing, and later to the Nanpu New Life Salt Works in Hebei Province, where conditions were even worse, he developed arthritis, high blood pressure and a serious heart condition. His teeth rotted and fell out. After years of inadequate medical attention, he came to believe that China's leaders were deliberately creating conditions for him to die of "natural causes."

Admittedly, these prison writings have neither the literary merit of those of a Vaclav Havel nor the theoretical originality of those of an Antonio Granisci. Yet despite the impossible circumstances under which they were written, they are an extraordinary and moving record of a courageous, compassionate and obstinate mind dedicated to democratic principles and the amelioration of the Chinese people's harsh fate. Many of Mr. Wei's letters to officials beg for reading materials. Others plead for the development of his environmentally conscious, ambitious ideas, like solar energy experiments, a "wind-powered alkalinity control plan" to combat desert salinization and an "iceberg transport project" to alleviate water shortages on the coast. He asks for support in his efforts to breed stronger rabbits, a solace briefly permitted him in Qinghai. His siblings were generally allowed to visit only twice a year, and his letters to them, many of which were never delivered, show a touching older-brother solicitousness; h

e corrects a mistake in a Chinese character written by his sister, an artist, and admonishes her not to be swept up in the commercialization of the contemporary Chinese art world.

Because Mr. Wei was permitted to write to the country's leaders as part of his "thought reform," he occupied himself as a self-appointed adviser on the political issues of the day, tackling such questions as China's official stance on human rights, the impoverishment of literature and the arts, constitutional reform and the need for rule of law, the Chinese-British resolution on Hong Kong and the Tiananmen massacre. These letters set forth peaceful and creative solutions to some of China's most difficult international problems. On the Taiwan issue, for example, he suggests that the island's Nationalist Party be given a "speaking seat" in China's United Nations delegation and an office in each embassy. Writing on Tibet (a special interest, since Mr. Wei's former fianc is Tibetan), he analyzes the history of the Chinese-Tibetan relationship in terms of voluntary mutual interest, with China responsible for Tibet's defense and external relations but the Tibetan hierocracy unrestricted in its domestic sovereign

ty. He argues that China should repudiate its colonialist exploitation and chauvinism, welcome the Dalai Lama and build a relationship with Tibet along the lines of the European Union.

Some, including Mr. Wei himself, believe he has been singled out for unusually harsh treatment because he personally offended Deng Xiaoping. His famous pre-arrest essay, "The Fifth Modernization," directly attacked Deng's blueprint for China. As Mr. Wei explained at his trial, "Without democracy there will be no Four Modernizations; without the "fifth modernization, or democracy, any talk of modernization will remain an empty lie." In the goading and provocative prison letters to Deng, Mr. Wei writes as if engaged in an intimate, continuing, archetypal colloquy. After the Tiananmen massacre, for example, he declares: "I've long known that you are precisely the kind of idiot to do something foolish like this, just as you've long known that I am precisely the kind of idiot who will remain stubborn to the end and take blows with his head up. We know each other well; probably better than anyone can imagine. It's just that we have an intimate mutual disgust that probably also exceeds anyone's imagination." Perh

aps Deng's death may change Mr. Wei's situation; there may be little time left.

The translations, most by Kristina M. Torgeson, are unusually fluent. Three excellent essays, by Prof. Andrew J. Nathan of Columbia University, the fellow Democracy Wall organizer and former prisoner Liu Qing and the human rights activist Sophia Woodman, put Mr. Wei's letters in context. Writings reprinted from before his imprisonment include the essay

"The Fifth Modernization," a transcript of his impassioned self-defense at his first trial and a lively, short autobiography that chronicles his dramatic experiences as a leader of a Red Guard faction opposed to Mao's ultraleftist wife, Jiang Qing. Still, nothing can compensate in the prison letters for Mr. Wei's lack of freedom of expression and access to information. We cannot imagine what he might have written under better circumstances, but what is clear is that this intelligent, committed and empathetic mind has been cruelly wasted by the leaders of the land he loves.

Judith Shapiro is co-author, with Liang Heng, of "Son of the Revolution" and other books on contemporary China.