Fang Has Long Been Thorn in Side of China’s Regime

Given the exceptional boldness of Fang Lizhi, the dissident Chinese astrophysicist who took refuge in the American Embassy last week, it is not surprising that he is on the run now--but rather that he did not go into hiding long ago.

Even considering that he was once a protege of reformists in power, Fang had long exceeded the usual bounds of public protest in China.

He had tweaked the tolerance of high officials by saying out loud what many Chinese whisper: that top leaders have large foreign bank accounts. He dismissed Marxism as passe and suggested that Taiwan, ruled by the heirs of the Nationalist government that fled the mainland after the Communist triumph of 1949, should be the model for development on the Chinese mainland.

Fang had gone so far as to lead a drive to free political prisoners, a subject rarely raised in China. The government denies there are any such prisoners.

By fleeing into the embassy along with his wife, Li Shuxian, Fang evidently wants to avoid the fate of the dissidents he had hoped to free.

The police are moving to round up student and worker activists who took part in the protests at Tian An Men Square. Increasingly, intellectuals such as Fang believe that they too are about to be swept into a net of repression. Soldiers have surrounded the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where many reformist scholars work. Teachers at several universities believe they may be called to account for pro-democracy sympathies.

“They’re out for blood,” said a young university instructor who had taken part in the recent pro-democracy demonstrations. “They want total vengeance. It’s not safe for me to stay in Beijing.”

Fang himself was not directly involved in the occupation of Tian An Men Square by students, although his wife--a Beijing University physics professor--made speeches on campus in the weeks leading up to the unrest. Some student leaders pointed to him as an inspiration. One, Wang Dan, an activist at Beijing University and a key leader in the protests, said he is a personal friend.

In a complaint to the U.S. Embassy for having granted refuge to Fang, the Chinese government labeled the scientist a “traitor,” which is tantamount to being given a death sentence in China.

China’s aging paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, reportedly said of Fang last fall: “We will not suppress people who hold differing political views from our own. But Fang Lizhi has been indulging in mudslinging and spreading slander without any basis, and we should take criminal action against him.”

Fang, 53, was the center of a diplomatic storm during President Bush’s visit to China earlier this spring. Bush had invited Fang to a dinner along with other Chinese notables and government officials. The police blocked Fang’s way, and he never arrived.

By criticizing China’s government, Fang is playing a role out of China’s history and lore: that of the virtuous government monitor whose duty it is to call to account the emperor--even at the risk of his own life. This role has been picked up by numerous Chinese intellectuals in the 40 years of Communist Party rule, with often turbulent results.

In the 1950s, during the Hundred Flowers Movement, Mao Tse-tung called on intellectuals to “bloom and contend” in criticizing government performance. The surge of political candor went sour. Mao turned on the same critics he had invited to step forward, persecuting them in what was called the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

‘Stinking’ Category

During the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals were branded a “stinking” category of Chinese society. Mao condemned them as “being basically bourgeois in their world outlook,” and many of the country’s top intellects were banished to the countryside, beaten or even killed.

Now, the conflict in the Communist Party over intellectual freedom is being played out again. As tools in development, must China’s best educated minds be left unfettered? Or are the intellectual elites untrustworthy carriers of foreign political viruses aimed at weakening the Communist system?

Disgraced Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang, while stopping short of endorsing calls for political reform that would undermine Communist rule, nonetheless sponsored greater freedom for the intellectuals. His opponents, including Premier Li Peng, want tighter reins imposed in the name of warding off “bourgeois liberalization” and “spiritual pollution.”

Fang has gone much further than the reformers in his calls for change. He has also taken a theoretical position that puts him in conflict with Marxist dogma, the underpinning of one-party rule here. He says that intellectuals are the leading force in society, not the working class and certainly not the Communist Party.

In 1987, Fang was dismissed from his job as vice president of the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, in Anhui province, as well as from the Communist Party. The government blamed him and a few other dissidents for inciting a series of student democracy protests in Hefei, Shanghai and other cities.

Fang was given a non-teaching post at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, but he kept speaking out in ways rarely heard since 1979, when an earlier wave of democratic agitation swept China’s cities.

A listing of just a few of Fang Lizhi’s thoughts indicate his unorthodoxy:

On Marxism: “I feel Marxism is out of date.”

On the Communist Party: “The Chinese Communist Party is an interest group which will inevitably and firmly protect its vested interests and will never voluntarily give up these interests or voluntarily take the road of democratization.”

On China’s development: “China will not be able to modernize if it does not break the shackles of Maoist and Stalinist-style socialism.”

On government corruption and secret bank accounts: “I do not know how big some of our comrades’ foreign bank accounts are. Some of the bank accounts are the privately acquired middlemen’s money, the fruits of corruption and fraud. This is a criminal act.”

‘No Basic Trust’

On the mood in China (before the Tian An Men incident): “The situation is very dangerous. There is no basic trust in the government, the law or party.”

On intellectual leadership: “Generally speaking, people who have internalized the elements of civilization and possess knowledge have hearts which are relatively noble, their mode of thought is invariably scientific and they have a high sense of social responsibility.”

On human rights: “Human rights means everyone has the right to think. You can’t say China’s freedom of speech is different from foreign countries’ freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the same everywhere.”

On the building democracy: “Democracy can be achieved only gradually through consistent effort. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

At least nothing until last Sunday.