Taking a New Route to a Free China

Last summer, milelong marches and tearful rallies of Chinese pro-democracy demonstrators in Los Angeles pulled at the heartstrings of the Southern California public.

Today, the emotional cries have given way to grass-roots lobbying and behind-the-scenes assistance for political refugees who have fled to Los Angeles, including survivors of the Chinese government’s bloody attack against demonstrators in Beijing last June.

The local movement no longer dominates the headlines, but a core group of supporters, numbering in the hundreds, keeps it going strong seven months after the Beijing bloodshed.

“On the surface those who don’t know think it has died down,” said Caltech student Chuan Hua. “But many tasks now are even more important than at the height of the movement.”

One is a nationwide lobbying effort to get Congress to override President Bush’s veto of a bill that would allow Chinese students in the United States to remain in this country after their visas expire. The House of Representatives voted 390-to-25 Wednesday to reverse the President.

Many Southern Californians, such as pharmacist Andrew Kwong, feverishly collected signatures for a petition urging Congress to override the veto. Others called or fired off letters to legislators, and exchanged information or words of encouragement over a computer network.

With the Senate vote scheduled for today, members of the local Chinese community were engaging Wednesday in a last-minute blitz to flood the offices of Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) with phone calls, said Philip Lam, a board member of the Southern California Foundation for Chinese Democracy.

The lobbying campaign, which awed some in Washington with its sophistication and organization, was undertaken because many of the 40,000 Chinese students in this country fear government persecution if they return to China.

“They don’t have to put you in jail to ruin you,” said UCLA student Hui Feng, who has spoken out in the press here against China’s crackdown. “People like me, if I go back, what am I to do?”

Many in the movement, however, say they realize that achieving democracy in China will not be an overnight task. “I look at the Chinese democracy movement as a long-term project,” said activist Robert Huang. “It may go on for 50 years.”

During the past seven months, some Chinese activists, including Los Angeles-area students and residents, also have worked quietly to help dissidents smuggled out of China through an “underground railroad” run by sympathizers in China and other countries. For some dissidents, this rescue mission may have meant the difference between life and death.

Since the June 4 crackdown, Chinese authorities have executed at least 40 pro-democracy demonstrators and arrested more than 6,000 others, said Ellen Lutz, director of Human Rights Watch in Los Angeles. Recently, three Hong Kong and two Macao residents were arrested in China for allegedly helping dissidents escape the country, she said.

When escapees do arrive safely in Southern California, local movement sympathizers lend a hand to help find jobs and homes for the dissidents. In recent months, at least 10 refugees who escaped and entered the United States as international political refugees have been helped by supporters in Los Angeles, said one local activist.

In one recent case, supporters persuaded some hotel owners to offer free rooms or discounted rates to two Chinese women waiting for word on political asylum applications in Los Angeles, said George Mo, a spokesman for the Western American Assn. for Chinese Political Refugees.

The association also provides money, food, dictionaries and clothing to other Chinese nationals detained by immigration officials. Mo said his group has helped at least a dozen political asylum applicants since last summer.

Among them is Chen Yiwei, who attracted media attention last summer when U.S. immigration officials detained her for several weeks. Eventually, she was granted political asylum and is now living with relatives in New York and working in a garment factory, Mo said.

Monday night, over a meal of homemade dumplings at the El Monte home of a democracy activist, two Chinese dissidents who rode the underground railroad out of China recounted harrowing moments of their escape.

“If you wore glasses and looked like a student and if you had a Beijing accent, the police would come over and question you,” said a newspaper editor in his early 20s who asked to remain unidentified. “I was afraid to wear my glasses.”

Another young man, who requested an alias, Wu Zhong Shien, be used, swam from China to Hong Kong and arrived at the British colony clad only in trunks. Wu said he wanted to thank the underground volunteers who risked their safety to house, clothe and feed him and other escapees. Many of them told him simply, “Thank me by doing something to help China,” he said.

China’s announcement two weeks ago that the government lifted martial law did little to raise the Southern California community’s hope for improved conditions in the homeland.

“There is no difference,” said UCLA student Ding Jian. His contacts in China tell him arrests and mandatory political re-education classes continue, and it is still impossible to get parade permits. “To me that doesn’t show they are relaxing at all,” Ding said.

Although the activist movement in Southern California continues to thrive, it has not escaped internal squabbling over leadership and finances--lessons of the democratic process. “There are tremendous splits and cleavages in the movement,” said USC politics professor Stanley Rosen. “There are too many people trying to be heads.”

For example, the Alhambra-based Press Freedom Herald, a Chinese-language newspaper launched by Chinese journalists last June to provide uncensored news, has been troubled by staff disagreements over editorial policies and the use of donated funds.

Other political differences in the movement may surface this week between the Federation for a Democratic China, which wants to enter a float featuring a Goddess of Democracy in next month’s Chinese New Year parade in Chinatown, and the Los Angeles Chinese Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the parade and discourages floats with political themes.

Overall, more than 50 pro-democracy groups with varying purposes and memberships blossomed in Southern California last summer, and still more are forming, activists say. Some focus sharply on issues of special interest to particular Chinese immigrants--such as those from Hong Kong--while others support Chinese artists. Still others are devoted to recruiting non-Chinese into the movement.

Despite the growing pains, these groups remain dedicated to the cause and are trying to expand membership in their organizations, including reaching out to local Romanian immigrants.

“We’re very supportive of events in Eastern Europe,” said pharmacist Kwong, who is also president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Federation for a Democratic China, a Paris-based group formed last September to urge democratic reforms for China. With more than 170 active members, the Los Angeles chapter is the largest in the world, Kwong said.

During the political turmoil in Romania, the Chinese Students and Scholars Assn. in Southern California donated $1,000 to the Romanian relief effort in Los Angeles, said Ding of UCLA. And a representative from the Los Angeles Romanian community will speak at a Chinese democracy fund-raiser in Chinatown Sunday.

The fall of the dictatorship in Romania provoked bittersweet feelings among Chinese activists here who admire the political successes of Eastern Europe but wish things had gone differently in their homeland.

“We are excited for them,” said Ding, one of two UCLA students who went back to Beijing last June and was briefly detained by Chinese authorities. But he also feels sad. “It’s an unbearable feeling. How come it didn’t succeed in China?”