Interviews with Wei Jingsheng

So you see during the suppression of 1989, Deng in fact met with tremendous resistance within the army. It was not like what the outside world believed, that Deng Xiaoping was master to and in control to the military. In fact, the different opinions in the army were very strong. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping overcame the opposition and eventually, after two to three months, he had the military under his control. Utilizing his control over the military, he suppressed the strong request from the people and its peaceful elevation.

The ordinary people may not have fully noticed that the 1989 movement caused such an upheaval within the Communist Party. That was because the rejection was not only coming from the ordinary people, but also from the majority within the Communist Party. So that movement had become so intense and so extensive; it was all the people, from both outside and inside the Party, who were opposing this kind of policy of Deng Xiaoping’s.

The reason why Deng Xiaoping could win the difficult battle was due to the gradual formation of an interest group in 1980s that consisted of high-ranking officials and their offspring. This interest group was definitely supporting him. So finally he won by a narrow margin. Then after 1989 China’s policy, and the policy of the Communist Party, was becoming even more dependent on this new bureaucrat capitalist class.

Wei Jingsheng was a prisoner of conscience in China for more than 18 years. Born in 1950 to parents who were Communist Party members, Wei served in the People’s Liberation Army and worked in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.

In 1978, he wrote an essay called “The Fifth Modernization: Democracy” and posted it in a place that had come to be called Democracy Wall. Unlike most pro-freedom authors in China during that time, Wei signed his name to “The Fifth Modernization,” which was a direct challenge to the Beijing government’s strategy of instituting economic reforms while continuing to suppress political dissent. Wei was soon arrested on the charge of being “counter-revolutionary” and served more than 18 years in prison, including several years in forced labor camps and eight years on death row.

By the mid-90s, Wei was China’s best-known political prisoner. There was strong international pressure for his release and, in 1997, he was allowed to go overseas for medical treatment. He now lives in the United States and heads the Overseas Chinese Democratic Coalition.