Freed Chinese Dissident Enjoys ‘Small Victory’

With a clear head and voice, Wei Jingsheng, who spent most of the last 19 years in Chinese prisons, said Friday that his recent release was “only a small victory” in a much larger battle for democracy in the world’s most-populous nation.

“I have waited decades for this chance to exercise my right to free speech, but the Chinese people have been waiting for centuries,” China’s most-renowned dissident said at a news conference here in his first public remarks since arriving in the United States on Sunday.

Wei said he hopes to return to China--and, in fact, never intended to leave, until the Chinese government told him that he could receive medical treatment only overseas.

But, in an oblique reference to the rough treatment he suffered in the Chinese penal system, Wei added that there are some limits to his desire to go home. “Nobody would like to go back there to go to jail,” he said.

Wei, 47, was first imprisoned in 1979 after he put up wall posters in Beijing calling on Deng Xiaoping, the late “paramount leader” who was then consolidating his control over the Chinese Communist Party, to open up the country to democracy.

After serving 14 1/2 years of a 15-year sentence for subversive activity, Wei was released in the fall of 1993, when Beijing was seeking--unsuccessfully--to host the 2000 Summer Olympics. He was rearrested six months later and confined again until Sunday, when the Chinese regime let him fly to the United States.

Even after resting for four days in a Detroit hospital, Wei admitted Friday that he was still tired and weak from prison and from his trip to the U.S.

Yet he made it clear that he plans to keep on working for greater freedom in China.

“Right now there are several thousand political prisoners still suffering in Chinese Communist Party jails,” he said. “Our conscience as human beings will not allow us to forget them.”

He also took direct aim at the Chinese Communist Party, challenging the regime’s claim to be the embodiment of Chinese nationalism and patriotism.

“Loving China is not the same thing as loving the Chinese Communist Party,” Wei said. “The Chinese Communist Party asks the Chinese people to love it and asks people to equate this with patriotism, but these are two separate things.”

Until recently a resident of the Nanpu New Life Salt Works, a Chinese labor camp, Wei is for the moment the toast of New York. Xiao Qiang, the director of the New York-based group Human Rights in China, introduced Wei at Friday’s news conference as “our hero.”

New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who last month refused to meet with Chinese President Jiang Zemin when he was in New York, will give the dissident a warm official welcome on Tuesday. Wei will also visit the White House early next month.

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Although he has high blood pressure and several other medical ailments, Wei appeared to be in relatively good health. Dressed in a khaki sports coat and plain gray sweater, he answered questions for more than 45 minutes before finally pleading fatigue.

Wei said he has no clear plans of what he will do in the United States, but he intends to “participate in all sorts of democracy activities.” He said he was optimistic that, eventually, these activities will have an impact on the political situation in China.

“The future prospect of the Chinese democracy movement is excellent,” he asserted. “You should not pay attention to the immediate low tide because, after a low tide, there is always a high tide that follows it.”

Employing the same sweeping language that has characterized his writings, Wei appealed to the West to not forget about repression in China or to make excuses for it.

“Generations of martyrs sacrificed themselves in order to obtain democracy in Europe, North America and many other places in the world,” he said. “But people should not be satisfied with this. Those who already enjoy democracy, liberty and human rights . . . should not allow their own personal happiness to lull them into forgetting the many others who are still struggling against tyranny. . . .

“Dictators,” he continued, “can never be satisfied with the power they already hold. The freedom and prosperity you have obtained is not protected by walls of steel. If you look aside when gangsters abuse your neighbors, then your own home will no longer be safe. Only when people join together to defeat all the gangsters will everyone be safe and free.”

Deng, Wei’s longtime nemesis, died in February. Asked what he would like to say to Jiang, who succeeded Deng as China’s top leader, Wei replied in terms much less personal than his past attacks on Deng.

“I have always wanted to have a dialogue with Jiang Zemin,” he said. “But they [Chinese leaders] have always refused any dialogue with anybody except for agencies like the United States that have the power to force them into a dialogue. And I don’t have that power.”

Representatives of the human rights groups that sponsored Friday’s news conference said Wei’s release shows that the Chinese regime is not impervious to public appeals from abroad.

“Pressure works,” said Sidney Jones, executive director of Human Rights Watch / Asia. She said the Clinton administration “deserves enormous credit for pushing this man’s case” but added that there should be continued pressure on China to free other political prisoners.

As he seeks to establish himself in the U.S., Wei can help support himself with royalties from a collection of his prison writings, published in the U.S. last year.

Wei was asked Friday whether he had learned anything from his prolonged confinements. Many things, he replied. He thought for a moment. The most important lesson of all, he said, was that “for a human being, there is no difficulty that cannot be overcome. You just have to rely on yourself, and you can overcome any difficulty.”