i

HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA:

THE CASE OF WEI JINGSHENG

By

K.M. Rudd

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies) with Honours - taken jointly in the Departments of Chinese and East Asian History and Civilizations.

Australian National University 1980

ii

To my mother.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank both my supervisors, Dr Colin Jeffcott and

Dr Pierre Ryckmans for their assistance throughout the

year. I also thank the other members of the Department

of Chinese who have always been willing to help me when

I have encountered difficulties in my translations.

Mrs Elizabeth McNaughton has, with great patience, typed

this thesis. Dr Wong Yin-wai has written the Chinese

characters, including the frontpiece. I am grateful to

'" "

both these people. Finally, I thank Therese for her

invaluable personal support.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART A

CHAPTER ONE

HUMAN RIGHTS: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

CHAPTER TWO

THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1978-79

CHAPTER THREE

WEI JINGSHENG ON HUMAN RIGHTS

CHAPTER FOUR

THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE

CONCLUSION

PART B

A COMPLETE TRANSLATION OF THE TRIAL OF WEI JINGSHENG

APPENDIX

A LIST OF BEIJING'S UNOFFICIAL JOURNALS BETWEEN DECEMBER 1978 AND MAY 1979

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GLOSSARY

iii

vi

1

44

81

110

142

151

235

238

260

283

v

'Let the people speak out. The heavens will

not fall'.

(People's Daily 3 January 1979)

'There are no such things as rights without

duties or duties without rights ... We must

have freedom of speech but this does not

mean we need not listen to reason'.

(Guangming Daily 20 March 1979)

'Our bill of indictment makes the point very

clearly that you will not be punished because

of your theoretical enquiries or because you

do not believe in Harxism. It is your

counter-revolutionary activities that we are

punishing. You yourself can see this point.

The Constitution prescribes certain things.

It prescribes freedom of belief. You can

disbelieve Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong

thought. You can also believe it. But you

are definitely not permitted to oppose it. To

oppose it would be to violate the Constitution

and if you violate the Constitution, you must

be punished. On this point our position is

clear.

(The Public Prosecutor addressing Wei Jingsheng in Wei's trial on 16 October 1979)

vi

INTRODUCTION

In his inauguration as the thirty-ninth President of

the United States of America, James Earle Carter stated:

Because we are free we can never be indifferent

to the fate of freedom elsewhere. Our moral sense dictates a clare-cut preference for those societies which share with us an a£iding respect for individual human rights.

Since that time, the terms 'human rights' and 'violation of

human rights' have become increasingly commonplace in the

vocabulary used in the conduct of international relations.

However, there is much ambiguity as to what these terms mean.

Both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. are signatories to the

1975 Helsinki Accords on Human Rights. But when Pravda writes

that the Soviet government is 'guaranteeing the Soviet people's

human rights' and when the U.S. State Department decries the

treatment of Andrei Sakharov as a 'gross violation of his

human rights', there are fundamentally different notions

involved. It is therefore necessary to define what we mean

when we use the term 'human rights'.

The notion of 'human rights' has its modern origins in

the philosophical writings of the Enlightenment. The

philosophers of that time had revived a notion which had been

originally formulated by the Stoics of the third century B.C.

With the decline of the city-state, the Stoics began to

emphasize 'man the individual' as opposed to 'man the fraction

of the polity' - a concept that had been expounded by Plato

. 1 . 2

two centurles ear ler.

The Stoics also conceived of a law

validated by the natural order which determined right from

wrong. This 'natural law' was universal in its application

and eternal in its authority. The Stoics conceived that this

vii

natural law dictated that all men were equals and that

therefore equality was man's 'natural right'. Because man's

natural rights were derived from natural law, they too were seen both as universal and eternal.3

Two thousand years later, John Locke revived these

concepts of natural law and natural rights. In His Second

Treatise on Government he argued that by virtue of natural

law, the individual possessed rights of 'life, liberty and

estate'. He argued that government existed for the purpose

of preserving these rights of the individual. He also argued

that a government should be assessed on the basis of the

degree to which it enhanced the individual's opportunity to realize these rights.4

These ideas found expression in the Bill of Rights of

1688 which required the monarch to 'preserve them (the

people) from the violation of their rights •.. and from other attempts upon their religious rights and liberties,.5 England

became the symbol of liberalism for the philosophers of the

Old and New Worlds. In the American colonies, the Virginia

Bill of Rights of 1776, the Declaration of Independence of

1776 and United States Constitution of 1789 all asserted the

rights of the individual over the rights of the state. In

France, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

of 1789 stated explicitly that:

The purpose of all civil associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptable rights of man. These rights are liberty, - prosperity and resistance to oppression.6

Such were the models for the constitutions of Europe which

were drafted during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -

constitutions which enshrined the primacy of the individual.

viii

This constitutional recognition of the natural rights

of the individual was challenged by such philosophers as

Hume, Burke, Bentham, Austin and Hegel. They argued that

rights were the property of the collective rather than the

individual and that these collective rights were not validated

by natural law. These ideas are reflected in such documents

as the German Declaration of Rights of 1848 which referred,

not to the rights of man (the individual), but to the rights 7

of the German people. These ideas are also reflected in the

reasoning of one Karl Marx.

Therefore, by the twentieth century, there existed two

diametrically opposed notions of rights: one which emphasized

the rights of the individual and one which emphasized the

preeminence of the rights of the collective. This fundamental

difference was symbolized in 1948 when the Soviet bloc refused

to ratify the Universal Declaration of Rights which proclaimed

twenty-nine 'equal and inalienable rights of all members of

the human family'. However, when we in the West use the term

'human rights' today, I maintain that we are essentially

drawing upon the Lockeian principles of rights which are

inalienable, rights of life, liberty and property, and rights

which are preeminent over any duty which the individual owes

the collective.

Given that this is our understanding of human rights,

in this account I propose to examine various Chinese notions

of human rights. First, I will examine the evolving notion

of rights through the imperial, republican and communist

periods; second, I will examine the notions of rights

expounded by Wei Jingsheng during the wallposter movement

ix

in Beijing between November 1978 and March 1979; third,

I will examine the Party's response to that movement.

There are a number of limitations involved in

undertaking an analysis of this kind. Our knowledge of

the wallposter movement is primarily dependent upon a

number of foreign journalists stationed in Beijing at the

time. While they were undoubtedly dedicated to their

profession, their coverage of the movement was incomplete

by virtue of insurmountable physical limitations: there

were literally thousands of posters appearing at a number

of different locations in the capital. Therefore-their

coverage was, of necessity, selective. The limitations which

this imposes are made more acute by the fact that not all of

these journalists' dispatches found their way into print,

and of those that did, there is the possibility that they

were edited. Given these difficulties, I have nonetheless

collated a cross-section of reports appearing in the press

in Hong Kong, the united Kingdom and the United States over

a six-month period, in an attempt to systematically analyse

the development of the wallposter movement.

Another set of limitations concerns the unofficial

pUblications which appeared during the movement. I have

had access to a combination of originals, photocopies,

reproductions and translations. There is always the

possibility that some of these documents have been

consciously or unconsciously edited in the process of

t .. 8 ransmlSSlon.

There is also the possibility of forgery.

And in the final analysis, there is no reliable method of

substantiating the authenticity of these documents. As

for Wei's journal, I have access to photocopies of each

x

of its editions, reprints in various Hong Kong Magazines accounting for about three-quarters of its total contents and various translations which account for about the

same proportion. Although I have found the photocopies of the original at times indecipherable, they have been useful in clarifying any inconsistencies arising from a comparison of the reprints and the translations. As for journals other than Wei's, I have not had sufficiently complete collections in original, reprint and translation form to undertake the same kind of comparison. For these journals, I have essentially relied upon the available translations.

A final limitation is one which is not unique to this account. Given that we have no access to Chinese government documents, a great deal of speculation must be made as to the nature of internal political developments on the basis of articles appearing in the official press. For this account the problem is more acute because of the contemporaneous nature of the topic. As will become evident, conjecture plays a prominent part in my analysis

of the regime's response to the movement.

Given all of these limitations, what follows is, I believe, a comprehensive treatment of the three themes

which have been outlined above - drawing upon the unofficial press, the official press and at times the left wing press in Hong Kong. I am aware that a number of works are about to appear on the subject of the wallposter movement.8 I have not referred to any of them. This analysis is original.

CHAPTER ONE

RIGHTS: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

2

Wei Jingsheng did not introduce the concept of the

inalienable rights of the individual to China. The general

concept of rights had been introduced over a century before

by W.A.P. Martin in his translation of Wheaton's Elements of International Law in 1864.1 However, the fact remains

that the concept was introduced. It was not indigenous.

There was no classical Chinese term or terms which Martin

could draw upon to accurately translate the concept of

-!:~ 1 1

'rights'. His selection of quanli ( 1~1t. f ) seems

arbitrary. Quan is usually translated as 'power' and Ii

as

'profit,.2

There is no obvious connection between the

Western understanding of 'rights' and a combination of these

concepts of 'power' and 'profit'. Nor is there any

connection between 'rights' and either of these concepts

individually: 'rights' cannot be equated with 'power', nor can it be equated with 'profit,.3 The inability of the

classical lexicon to express this new notion of 'rights'

was itself a reflection of a fundamental difference between

the Chinese and the Western concepts of the relationship

between the individual and the collective. The concept

introduced by Martin presupposed the primacy of the

individual whereas for two thousand years, Confucian China

had taught not the primacy of the individual but the

primacy of that individual's responsibility to society.

nWERIAL CHINA

Confucianism became the institutional orthodoxy of the

Chinese Empire during the Han dynasty. It remained the

principal strain in Chinese political thinking for over

two thousand years. Confucianism contained no notion of

3

the rights of the individual. Rather, it prescribed the

duties to be performed by one individual to another - or

more accurately, by one class of individuals to another

class. These classes were arranged in a hierarchy.

At the apex of the hierarchy was the ruler: 'the north

pole star, which keeps its place while all other stars turn to it,.4 His relationship with his subjects was defined in

terms of reciprocal duties:

'The

ruler should employ his Ii (~t) and the subj ect ( ~. ) ,.5 Li may be

subject according to the rules of

should serve his ruler with zhong

rendered as 'propriety' and zhong as 'loyalty'. In

Confucian rhetoric, there was a clear distinction between

loyalty and obedience. Zhong did not imply unconditional

obedience to the ruler. Rather, it implied 'action in the ruler's interests' 6 - the nu Le r's moral interests. As to

who decided what was in the rulers moral interest, that,

technically at least, was the prerogativaofthe individual.

The reciprocal duty of Ii is a much wider concept. Li

implies refinement through the practice of ritual and

ceremony. Li also implies regulation - a ruler's

regulation of society for the satisfaction of his subjects

d. 7

eSlres.

A ruler employing his subjects according to the

rules of Ii seems to have both these ceremonial and

regulatory connotations. When zhong and Ii are being

correctly performed, the subject is truly a subject and the

ruler is truly a ruler. Then, says Confucius, 'there is government' - zheng ("if:.t).

Wang Gungwuhasargued that the reciprocity of the

relationship between ruler and subject carries with it an

implicit notion of rights: the 'right' of the ruler was his

4

subject's loyalty and the 'right' of the subject was to be

treated with propriety by his ruler. Wang further argues

that there is a conditionality about these rights: A ruler

cannot expect loyalty unless propriety is evident in his

dealings with his subjects. This argument is supported by

Confucius' statement that 'when rulers have to observe the

rules of propriety, the people respond readily to calls on them for service,.9 However, while zhong may be accepted

as the indisputable right of the ruler, it seems more

tenuous to claim that li is worthy of the assignation 'right'.

Li may well regulate how a subject is treated by his ruler

but it does not challenge the more fundamental principle of

the ultimate political primacy of the ruler. In fact, li

presupposes that primacy. Li serves as little more than a

moral deterrent against the excesses of monarchy - a monarchy which it does not set out to challenge.1Q

Even if this notion of implicit rights is accepted, it

seems to have had little actual effect in restraining the

dictatorial tendencies of successive Chinese emperors. There

was never any doubt as to which of these rights-cum-duties

was the most important. Loyalty was always pre-eminent. In

time, the actual distinction between loyalty and obedience

became less pronounced. By the Song, a Classic of Loyalty

(Zhong jing) had been written which asserted that 'even if

the ruler does not act like a ruler, the subject may not but

b l' k b i 11

act ut 1 e a su Ject .

Any notion of conditionality had

been lost. Loyalty was now an absolute duty and failure to

be loyal was subject to punishment according to the 'Five

, h I ( i ncr ) 12

PunlS ments WU xlng .

Loyalty, in effect, increasingly

5

implied an unconditional obedience to the dictates of the

ruler. Such unconditional obedience is absolutely anti-

thetical to any notion of the rights of the individual.

However, Confucian despotism was mitigated by a number

of other factors. One such factor was the so called 'right

to revolt'. Mencius was asked:

'Is it permitted fora subject to kill a ruler?' He replied: 'One who violates benevolence is a thief and one who violates righteousness is a tyrant. A thief or a tyrant is called a common scoundrel. I have heard that a common scoundrel Zhou13 was killed. I have never heard of anybody killing a ruler,.14

A ruler was only a ruler so long as he behaved like a ruler -

that is through ruling according to the principles of

righteousness and benevolence. When he failed to do so, he

could not longer be considered as a ruler. Under those

circumstances, he was said to have lost Heaven's mandate to

rule. As to how he could be aware of Heaven's attitude

towards him, Mencius went on to say that 'Heaven sees as my people see, Heaven hears as my people hear,.15 Political

stability was a sign of Heaven's approval whereas popular

rebellions were signs of an impending withdrawal of heaven's

mandate. However, the peoples' 'right to rebel' was contingent

upon how accurately they had perceived the ruler's moral

decline. And their accuracy of perception was either

vindicated or invalidated by the eventual success or failure

of their rebellion.

Therefore, in terms of concrete political realities, this

celebrated 'right to rebel' seems little more than a case of

successful treason being treason no longer. Like the ruler's

exortation to proper b e'hav i.ouz , the 'right to rebel' was

primarily a moral constraint on monarchical despotism. At

6

no time was this moral constraint translated into effective

constitutional safeguards. That is to say, the 'right to

rebel' carried with it no notion of popular sovereignty

through the exercise of popular rights.

A second factor mitigating imperial despotism was

ministerial dissent. Confucius said that:

What is called a great minister is one who serves his prince according to what is right and when he finds he cannot do so, retires.16

Here, dao (ill) has been translated as 'right'. Dao suggests an unwavering principle to which all things should aspire.

The minister's commitment to this principle was to take

precedence over his loyalty to the ruler. Confucius went on

to ask whether 'there can be loyalty (zhong) which does not lead to admonishment of its object,17 - its object being the

ruler.

If the minister's admonitions went unheeded, he was

expected to resignr

The Minister Tsze-wan thrice took office and manifested no joy in his countenance. Thrice he retired .•.. He was loyal (zhong) '.18

Confucius, therefore, explicitly states that remonstration

and resignation are legitimate forms of dissent - dissent

which falls within the wider context of ministerial loyalty.

The minister determined the moral nature of a given

situation and the minister alone determined the appropriate

moral response: either approval or censure.

In this sense,

he was a morally autonomous man.

The most famous example of collective ministerial dissent

is that of the Donglin Academy during the last decades of the Ming dynasty.19 The academy was a group of active and

retired ministers who shared a common zeal for the moral

7

reform of government. Between 1620-3, their zeal became

particularly directed against the eunuch dictator Wei

Zhongxian who had become the power behind the throne of

the Emperor Xi Zong. To the academy, Wei epitomized moral

evil and evil had to be eliminated so that good could

prevail. Their programme was simply one of 'throwing the

rascals out' so that men of moral integrity could return to

government. Their's was a moral crusade rather than a

campaign for institutional reform. It failed because moral

protest lacked institutional protection and they themselves

did not seek to introduce measures to provide such safeguards.

It also failed because the academy was accused of forming

a faction (dang).

In the Confucian tradition, political

partisanship of any description was invariably equated with

sedition. As the Analects (Lunyu) recorded: 'The superior

man is dignified but does not wrangle. He is

not partisan'.

(qun er bu dang)

sociable but

rif ) .21

\~~~

Partisanship, irrespective of intent, was dang and dang by

definition was evil. This unequivocably perjorative

connotation of dang served as an effective counter-measure

against the emergence of any notion of a loyal opposition.

The ultimate demise of the Donglin

Academy served notice

that moral opposition without institutional protection could

never be an effective check on the growth of imperial

despotism. Morally autonomous men were of little avail in

the world of 'realpolitik'.

There was, therefore, no explicit notion of the rights of

the individual in dynastic Confucianism. Of course there

were other philosophical traditions in imperial China. The

8

Daoist's (Dao jia) pietistic retreat into himself was

perhaps a type of individual liberty. But it was more an

escape from the prevailing order rather than a challenge to

that order. The Buddhists

(Fo jia) challenged that order

and suffered three great persecutions as a result. Legalists

(Fa jia) were perhaps more ardent advocates of the pre-

eminence of the state over the individual than were the

Confucians themselves.

But Confucianism remained unassailed as an imperial

orthodoxy. The social hierarchy which Confucianism prescribed

was itself antithetical to any notion of equality. Within

that hierarchy, unequal persons were linked by unequal duties.

Both inside and outside of government, loyalty invariably

meant obedience - an obedience vaguely tempered by a number

of moral constraints. The absence of any effective legal

protection of the individual against the arbitrary abuse of

power by the state lends credence to Wittfogel's interpretation of Imperial China as an archetypal oriental despotism.22

REPUBLICANISM - PRE 1911

Following humiliating defeats in the 'Opium Wars' of

1839-42 and 1856-60, China embarked upon a campaign of

military and industrial self strengthening. Feng Guifen, a

prime-mover in this se.lf strengthening movement (ziqiang

yundong), had clearly stated its raison d'etre in 1861:

Why are the western nations small and yet strong? Why are we large and yet weak? We must search for means to become their equal ... we should use the instruments of the barbarians, but not adopt the ways of the barbarians. We should use them so that we can repel them.23

That this selective westernization failed in the

realization of its objectives was brought horne by the

9

humiliating terms imposed on China by the Japanese with the

Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. Chinese intellectuals then

turned their attention to a more fundamental reform: that

of their institutions and their ideology. They reasoned

that the institutions and ideology of the west were at the

very heart of western wealth and power. For China 'to

become their equal' would require an assimilation of these

things. Therefore, this generation of Chinese reformers

came to address themselves to notions of liberalism,

parliamentary democracy and more fundamentally, the rights

of the individual. These were not ends in themselves. They

were means toward an end. And that end wa s national power.

The reformers' understanding of rights was influenced

both by their own classical tradition and the example of

Meiji Japan which by the 1890's was hardly a model of

classical western liberalism. An excerpt from a Hunanese

reformist paper in 1897 shows something of the reformer's

preoccupation with the duties of a citizen rather than his

rights:

What would it be like to establish a national assembly (guo hui) ... the national assembly represents the people's public duty (gong yi). But it is representative of popular rights (min quan) ... It (the national assembly) precisely means popular rights. Besides, popular rights is popular duty ... If the people lack rights they cannot devote themselves to public duty.

If they do manage their own undertakings, then the sovereign's authority will reach its utmost ... , the people will avoid becoming slaves of another race.

In this way there can be no severing of the connection between the ruler's sovereignty and popular sovereignty. 24

Rights are validated by their equation with duty. And rights

are valid insofar as they enhance the state's power and

protect the state from foreign sUbjugation. To be sure,

10

parliament is to be concerned both w i, th public duty and

popular rights but the latter are not seen as an absolute

value. A commitment to rights for their own intrinsic sake

is a necessary characteristic of classical Western

liberalism.

Kang Youwei conceived of China passing through three

great ages: the 'Age of Disorder', the 'Age of Order' and

the 'Age of Great Peace' respectively characterized by

absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy and republicanism.

One age inevitably evolved into the next. 'The present time',

he said, 'is the Age of Order. It is therefore necessary ... to

discuss publicly the matter of constitutional government.

If the laws are not reformed, great disorder will result,.25

Kang's constitutional monarchy was to have representative

institutions whose members would be elected by the people.

But these reforms were seen in terms of their ability to

I' h t ' 26. th f f h . . f

unlte t e grea mass ln e ace 0 t e eXlgencles 0

the time. They were also seen in terms of realizing the

'Great Peace' which Kang saw as a completely collectivist

utopia. Kang's holistic concerns in both short and long

terms denied any fundamental commitment to the intrinsic

value of the individual. As he stated himself: 'when

individual rights and priveleges are extended, the power of the state will necessarily be weakened,.27 The rights

he was primarily concerned with were China's sovereign

rights - much needed in the light of territorial

encroachment by the imperialist powers.

Like Kang Youwei, Yan Fu was primarily concerned with

individual rights insofar as they enhanced the 'wealth

11

and power' of the state. This is reflected in his translation of J.S. r.iill's On Liberty. His cumbrous translation of the title as The Boundaries of the Rights of Society and of the Individual is itself reflective of

his cautious treatment of the subject.28 Yan's understanding of liberty was coloured by his predilection for Spencerian

and Darwinian philosophy. Yan stated that 'it is only when the people are granted liberty that natural selection can be applied and that a good society can ultimately be achieved. ,29 Again, the collectivist objective is apparent. Mill himself was not oblivious to social concerns. In his chapter on

'Liberty of Thought and Discussion', he spoke of 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. But Mill's concern for the interests of society was readily interpreted by Yan in terms of the interests of the state. Even Mill's

chapter on the 'Liberty of Individuality' which spoke of the individual's 'strength of impulse', 'energy' and 'powers' lent itself to an interpretation which saw individual energy as the dynamic of a powerful state. Conspicuously, Mill's emphasis on individual spontaneity and eccentricity were ignored in Yan's commentary. In fact, in his preface to the 1903 edition, he was as much against those 'who think of liberty in terms of unbridled license and recklessness' as against those who saw it as

a doctrine 'of raging floods and ferocious beasts,.29 For Yan Fu, the individual was to contribute to the state, and 'liberty' was the best way of facilitating this.

Both Kang and Yan had advocated constitutional monarchy as the means by which to revitalize the Chinese state.

12

However, Kang's disciples, Tan Sitong and Liang Qichao,

advocated a republic. Yet even their republic in which the

people would enjoy equal political rights expressed in

representative assemblies by no means embodied a commit~ent

to the rights of the individual.

Tan maintained that originally, all men had been equal.

For practical purposes, they selected a prince while

retaining the rights to dismiss him. At all times, prince

and people were equals. According to Tan, it was Xun Zi who

distorted this tradition in order to allow the prince

'supreme and unlimited powers'. The resultant inequalities

had then been institutionalized in the three bonds - the

most abused of these being the loyalty between prince and

minister. Tan stated that 'loyalty signifies mutuality' and

asked 'why was it that only ministers and subjects live up

to it'. Instead, all political relationships should be based

on the relationship between friends - founded on 'equality, liberty and mutual feelings. ,30 Tan specifically attacked

the hierarchical nature of Confucian China which was itself

inimical to any notion of equal rights. However, he did not

go on to elaborate on the nature of those rights nor on the

part they would play in the development of the state.

It was Liang Qichao who provided the most definitive

analysis of what the early reformers understood by the

concept of rights. Others tended to presuppose the concept

and then proceeded to describe its importance in terms of

its relationship with duty. However, Liang analyzed the notion itself.31 Liang understood quan (t~ ) to mean political authority and minquan ( ~ t{l ) to mean people's

13

political authority and by extension, the people's right

to that political authority. Minquan was an expressly

political right. It carried no idea of inalienable rights

of life, liberty and property as in classical Lockeian

liberalism. Rather, it was a political right which was to

find expression in a political institution for an ultimate

political purpose. And that purpose was Minzhu - 'democracy'.

However Liang's liberalism could never be disassociated

from contemporary national crisis. Like his forebears,

Liang saw liberalism as being at the heart of Western power.

'If we look at the wealth of America', he said, 'then we

will understand that the political authority of the people should be revived,.32 It was in this sense that the adoption

of minquan was necessary. Again he said that:

in the last hundred years, the democratic spirit (minqi) has spread in western countries. If only China will do the same, she will be as strong

in a few decades.33

Liberalism was the only means by which to unleash the

individual's intellectual energy which when harnessed would

ensure national survival. Liang's prime concern was always

the nation. Until 1903 he saw liberalism as the necessary

means toward a national end though after that time even

Liang turned to a more centralized alternative.

Liang's commitment to the liberal solution is best

evidenced in his Limits of Authority bebveen Government and

People written in 1902. He stated that government authority

should be limited to the extent that it should only undertake

actions which individuals could not undertake on their own

and should only intervene in an individuals actions if they

encroached on the rights of other individuals. Here the idea

14

of the state as the passive policeman is at its best.

However, after 1903, Liang became increasingly

disillusioned with liberalism as a way to wealth and power.

It lacked what Liang saw as the fundamental pre-requisite

for a democracy - a politically conscious and active

citizenry. Liang turned to the 'enlightened despotism'

of Napoleon I and Frederick II as models for the development

of a strong Chinese state. Strong central government, unity

and discipline were emphasized over and above his earlier

concerns for individual liberty. Liang now saw the prime

criterion for government as being its ability to survive in

the international arena.

Even if a governmental system nearly robs the people of the bulk of their rights, it is a good system provided that it is founded on the spirit of meeting the exigencies of national defence.34

Liang's commitment had always been primarily to the

nation. When liberalism had been seen in the national

interest, it was promoted. When its utilitarian value was

suspect, it was rejected. Like his predecessors, Liang

lacked a fundamental commitment to his intrinsic worth of

the individual. Even when commenting on Mill, he had

frequently rendered Mill's 'individual' as 'people' and

Mill's 'society' as 'government'. Despite his initial

iconoclasm, Liang was too steeped in his tradition and too

concerned about the fate of his nation to give any

paramountcy to the rights of the individual.

Most of Liang's writings on liberalism had been written

during his exile in Japan after the failure of the 'hundred

days reform' of 1898 - when Tan had been executed and Liang

and Kang forced to flee for their lives. The fate of the

15

'hundred days reform' had demonstrated the court's

resistance to any notion of institutional reform. However,

it had been China's humiliation in the aftermath of the

Boxer Rising that had caused even the die-hard conservatives

of the imperial court to seriously contemplate ideas of

reform. By 1908/9, the court had produced a programme for

constitutional reform, but more as a reaction to the rise

of revolutionary parties than a commitment to the

institutional recognition of the notion of popular rights.

The most prominent of the revolutionary parties was the

Tongmeng hui whose principal architects had varying views as

to the role of rights in a new republic. Sun Yat-sen

rejected individualism as he did the idea of a state based

on a social contract. He saw the state more 'as an

organized body for mutual assistance rather than the

conglomeration of individuals for the protection of each one's rights,.35 Chen Tianhua stated the position even more

explicitly:

v-Jhat we seek is the freedom of the group. 'We do not seek the freedom of the individual ... in a republic the majority decides and it cannot but restrict the freedom of the minority.36

At the opposite end of the spectrum was the anti-

authoritarian Zhang Binglin who declared that 'only the

. d i . d 1 . 1 th ··11 I 37

ln 1V1 ua 1S rea ... e group 1S 1 usory.

Somewhere

between these poles was Wang Jingwei who saw the role of the

constitution as clearly delineating the powers of government

and the rights and duties of citizens.

'Under absolutism',

he said, 'the state has only rights with respect to the

individual but no obligations while the individual has only

duties to the state but no rights. Under constitutional

democracy, both the state and the individual have rights

16

and duties,.38 Clearly, the Tongmenghui's contradictory

commitment

to the roles of citizens and state did not

augure well for the role of rights in the republic which it founded in 1911.

The reasons for the failure of the republic both as an exercise in popular sovereignty and as an attempt at

.' unifying a disintegrating state are well documented. The republic's constituion and duly elected national assembly were to prove ineffectual with the rise of Yuan Shikai's dictatorship and the spread of warlordism. F. Wakeman has suggested that another reason for the failure of republican democracy lay in its insistence on consensual poli tics. The reformers had argued for representative assemblies in terms of their ability to effect national unity and through that unity, national strength and salvation. Therefore, 'the Great Harmony' would be endangered if partisan interests were promoted - so preventing the development of a conflict theory of constitutional politics. The early reformers 'still sought plurality in the place of pluralism'.38 that a loyal opposition was unacceptable more readily facilitated the rise of a dictator.

REPUBLICANISH - POST 1911

Reacting against the failure of liberalism in the first years of the republic, the intellectuals of the May the Fourth Period sought new solutions for the salvation of China. Cai Yuanpei's appointment to the Chancellorship of the Peking University in 1916 had led to the creation of a vigourous intellectual environment in the university where all ideas could be debated.

17

Cai's idea of education was one 'above politics' and 'beyond political control,.39 He stated that all

must follow the general rule of freedom of thought and freedom of expression and not allow anyone branch of philosophy or anyone tenet of religion to confine our minds.40

It was under these conditions that both liberals and

leftists joined in their condemnation of the old order

and demanded a genuine democracy. Though their notions

of democracy varied considerably.

Immediately after the Hay the Fourth incident itself,

the liberal educator Jiang Menglin likened the movement

to the emancipating effect of the European Renaissance:

It is a first step toward this kind of emancipation. We are going to ... bring about a Chinese Renaissance, emancipating emotions, emancipating thought and demanding human rights.41

In August 1920 both Hu Shi and Li Dazhao were signatories

to a 'Manifesto for the Struggle for Freedom'. Referring to

the 'pseudo - republicanism' of the previous decade, the

manifesto stated that

when politics brings us to such a dead end, we have to arouse ourselves and realize that genuine republicanism can never be achieved until politics is initiated by the people. In order to get people

to initiate politics, we must have as a pre-requisite an atmosphere wherein a genuine spirit of free thought and free ctiricism can be nurtured.42

Again, in May 1922, Hu and Li presented 'Our Political

Proposals' which was concerned about both government

legislation for the wellbeing of society and government's

guarantee of adequate individual freedom for the development of the individual's personality.43 The rights of the

individual came to the fore during the early days of the

movement - particularly rights of free expression as those

18

rights were fundamental to the life of the movement.

However, by 1923, the liberal and leftist elements within

the movement had begun to diverge. And so too did their

respective notions of individual rights.

J.B. Grieder has described Hu Shi's liberalism as

follows:

Hui Shi's vision of the new individual - critical, tolerant, creative, intellectually his own master, seeking to mould his ... surroundings to suit his own benign purposes - gave expression to an ideal that had no precedent in the traditions of Chinese social thought and found no echo among his adversaries of the radical extremes. It is, however, a vision that lies close to the heart of modern liberal theory.44

Hu was unique insofar as he expressed a radical

commitment to the ultimate value of the individual. The

individual was not simply a means to 'wealth and power'

as had been the case with earlier 'liberal' reformers. Hu saw the individual as an end in himself.45 He defined

human rights as 'the right to be a man - the conditions necessary for being a man',46 rather than the conditions

necessary for deriving maximum contribution from that man

for the good of soceity. He saw the function of the state

as being the protector of these human rights. If it failed

in this task, man would no longer owe it his allegiance. In fact, it would lose its 'raison d'etre,.47 Of all the

reformers, Hu comes closest to the ideals of classical

Western liberalism.

Chen Duxiu's notion of rights underwent a number of

changes as he became increasingly identified with the

left-wing of politics which grew out of the May the Fourth

Movement. As early as 1915, Chen had suggested that the

19

fundamental difference between Western and Eastern

civilizations lay in their respective emphases on the

individual and the family. In the East, societal demands

destroyed individual dignity, independent thought and

freedom of choice. There were no equal rights because

there were no rights to begin with. He therefore openly advocated individualism.48

However by 1919, Chen's articles in New Youth (Xin

qingnian) commenting on John Dewey's lectures on

political and economic democracy stated that China's prime

concern lay in socio-economic democracy rather than the political notion Of popular rights.49 He made the curious

observation that 'in implementing democracy, China must

follow the British and American models, paying attention to

the social and economic aspects and laying a strong foundation,.50 By 1920, the rights of the individual had

become the 'rights of the proletariat'. The proletariat

was 'to create a new power for itself and to completely conquer the capitalists. ,51 He criticized socialists who

participated in parliamentary politics as that would 'result only in their assimilation by the capitalists. ,52

Chen advocated the notion of 'class rights', a notion that

was completely antithetical to liberal notion of the

inalienable rights of all individuals.

Lin Yusheng has argued that for the May the Fourth

Reformers, liberalism served only 'as a ground for the

legitimation of their iconoclasm' as there was nothing

'more alien to their consciousness' than Western

Li.b I' 53

1 era 1sm.

I wou Ld suggest that Hu Shi and at times

20

even Chen Duxiu provide grounds for this contention to

be contested. Hu's position is clear. Chen, despite his

founding role in the Chinese Communist Party (Gongchan

dang), never seems to have completely abandoned his earlier

liberal ideas. His 1928 letter on the lack of inner-party

democracy is a case in point. In the letter, he suggests

that socialist societies should adopt certain western

political institutions such as parliamentary government

and laws protecting individual rights of free speech, press, .strike and universal suffrage.54 However, Lin Yusheng is

correct in saying that liberalism failed to attract a

lasting commitment on the part of the majority of the

'May Fourth' reformers. The military disintegration of

China in the mid-1920's undoubtedly exacebrated this waning

commitment as once again, national imperatives became pre-

eminent over any doctrine which promoted the primary of the

rights of the individual.

Following Chiang Kai-shek's northern expedition of 1927

which succeeded in re-uniting China after a decade of

political fragmentation, the Guomindang government in

Nanjing debated the form of a national constitution. The

Guomindang had evolved out of the Tongmenghui and it

inherited a varied tradition concerning the importance of

individual rights.

In the 1927-37 debates, Hu Shi's

notion of rights was hotly contested.

Zhou Fohai, for example, argued that

human freedoms are not inalienable but are granted by and may be taken away by society. The concept of the natural rights of the individual has been concocted in the West and does not now fit China.

21

He maintained that the Guomindang stood for the doctrine

of 'peoples revolutionary rights' which he defined as the 'exclusive rights of the supporters of the revolution,.55

Even the more liberal elements with the Guomindang such as

Wu Jingxiong stated that 'westerners in struggling for

freedom start from the individual' while Chinese start

from the group. He contended that in this struggle, it

must be demanded 'that each individual sacrifice his own freedom in order to preserve the freedom of the group,.56

Later, Chiang Kai-shek was to remark that

the people that promoted (liberalism and communism) forgot that they were Chinese ..• their copying of Western theories only caused the decay and ruin

of Chinese civilization and made it easy for the imperialists to carry out cultural aggression.57

The constitution of 1936 left almost unrestricted

powers in the office of the presidency. Following the

Japanese invasion of that year, those powers became more

absolute. Chiang was soon proclaimed Director-General of

the Guomindang - a position of virtual dictatorship.

Neither the first generation of reformers, nor those

of the May the Fourth period, nor the liberal elements

within the Guomindang succeeded in gaining effective

institutional recognition of the rights of the individual.

To be sure, the constitutions of 1912 and 1936 made

mention of rights, but in both cases actual power was

monopolized by dictators. With the rise of the Communist

Party, liberalism as a potent political persuasion receded

further into the background.

22

COMMUNISM - PRE 1949

Mao Zedong had been a long-time opponent of liberalism.

As early as 1920 he had said that liberalism and even democracy 'are fine in theory, but not feasible in practice!58

He saw parliaments as acting in the interests of capitalists

and serving only as a handicap to the proletariat. Rather

than a parliament, Mao conceived of a 'dictatorship of

workers and peasants' as the means by which to realize his

goal of a communist society.

Mao's most definitive critique of liberalism and liberal

rights came in Mao's speech of 1937 simply entitled Combat

'b I' ( du i huv i.) 59

Ll era lsm Fan Ul ZlyOUZ Uyl .

Mao's fundamental

objection was that liberalism entailed an unprincipled

toleration of the actions of others irrespective of the

implication of those actions for the masses. 'Liberalism',

he said, 'negates ideological struggle and advocates

unprincipled peace' to the point that even 'counterrevolutionary opinions' are tolerated.60 Underlying Mao's

objections were the diamatrically opposed notions of

individualism and collectivism inherent in liberal and

Marxist thought. For Mao, 'not to care for the principle

of collective life but only for unrestrained selfindulgence' was a hallmark of liberal values.61 He saw

liberals as demanding 'special dispensations' from the

collective but rejecting its discipline. He concluded

that 'liberalism conflicts fundamentally with Marxism'

and that 'all loyal communists must unite to oppose it,.62

Though written in the early years of the second United

Front with the intent of keeping the party faithful

23

untainted in their co-operation with westernized liberals,

the speech remains a basic text in understanding Mao's

hostility to the notions of individual primacy and

individual rights.

By 1940, Mao's position on liberalism had remained

essentially unchanged though his ideas on class dictatorship

had been modified to cope with the new challenges faced by

the party.

In that year, Mao was faced with the dual problems

of providing some form of theoretical rationale for his

continuing United Front with the Guomindang, as well as

providing a wider base of support for the Communist Party

itself. Both these concerns are reflected in his essay on

New Democracy (Xin minzhuzhuyi lun).

In this essay, Mao distinguished his 'new democratic

republic' from both 'the old, western type bourgeois

democratic republics that are under the bourgeoisie' and

'from the newest Soviet style republic which is under the dictatorship of the proletariat' .63 As to the nature of

this 'new democratic republic', it was to be a 'joint

dictatorship of several anti-imperialist classes ... a

coalition of several revolutionary classes in a united front,.64 He went on to say that the 'proletariat, peasantry,

intelligentsia and other petty bourgeois elements ... were

bound to be the basic parts of the state and government framework of the Dernoc r at.Lc Republic of China'. 65

As far as rights are concerned, this statement had a

number of important implications. First, the notion of

individual rights implicit to liberal democracy is again

uncategorically rejected. Second, and more significantly,

24

a distinction is made between 'proletarian dictatorship' (which Mao himself had endorsed in 1920) and what was to

be the uniquely Chinese practice of the 'dictatorship of several revolutionary classes'. Under the former system,

all non proletarian classes are disenfranchised of their rights whereas the latter system leaves an undefined number of these non proletarian classes with the same rights as

the proletariat.66 Third, implicit to this idea of 'joint dictatorship' is the fact that those undefined classes which are not deemed as being revolutionary therefore cannot participate in the dictatorship and therefore cannot enjoy the rights of the enfranchised classes. Mao's vagueness on this point in 1940 is understandable in the context of .the insecurity of the times. Significantly in 1949 when his

party held the reins of power, he became much more explicit as to who was revolutionary and who was not. Mao's On Coalition Government (Lun lianhe zhengfu) of 1945 is perhaps more conciliatory in tone than his statement of 1940. In 1945 it was necessary to leave two options open: a peace time coalition government with the K.M.T., or a military confrontation with them, in which case the broadest possible base of support would be necessary. Whereas in 1940, Mao had spoken of the 'joint dictatorship of revolutionary classes', in 1945, he spoke more leniently of 'a new democratic state based on the coalition of several democratic classes,.67 Rather than being revolutionary, people were simply required to 'adopt a co-operative and friendly attitude towards the C.C.P.' Presumably, therefore, rights would be enjoyed by

all such friendly people. Again, however, there was a studied

25

vagueness as to who was democratic and who was not.

On the Peoples Democratic Dictatorship (Lun renmin

minzhu zhuanzheng) of 1949 provides the clearest statement

of who was and who was not to have rights in the new People's

Republic of China. Under the People's Democratic Dictatorship

it was 'the people' who had rights. 'Who are the people?'

Mao asks.

'At the present stage of China they are the

working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie

and the national bourgeoisie'. He goes on to enumerate the

rights which are possessed by 'the people'.

Democracy is practised among the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people •..

Whereas in 1940 and 1945 Mao refrained from overtly stating

who was excluded from his revolutionary and democratic

coalitions, his statement of 1949 goes some way towards

defining who are the 'unpeople':

The running dogs of Imperalism - the landlord class and bureaucratic bourgeoisie - as well as the representatives of those classes, the K.M.T. reactionaries and their accomplices ...

These classes had no rights, least of all the right to speak.

In fact it was the responsibility of 'the people' to

exercise their dictatorship over these enemies of 'the people'.

Mao states that

The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, ... constitutes the peoples democratic dictatorship.

Yet democracy and dictatorship were not left to the popular

prerogative of the people because what had hitherto been

a vague notion of proletarian leadership in 'New Democracy'

was now made concrete.

'The People' were now to be 'led by

26

the working class and the Communist Party' because 'the peoples democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the

working class'.

It will be noted that at least the

theoretical distinction is maintained between proletarian leadership and proletarian dictatorship.68 Yet one must speculate as to whether there was any practical difference. Certainly, in reality, the exercise of the rights of 'the people' would at least be tempered by the dictates of the proletariat - or more specifically its party, the C.C.P. The rights of 'the people' were completely conditional upon the performance of their duty. And their duty was loyalty to the party.69

In post revolutionary China it was the party rather than 'the people' - even the limited notion of 'the people' defined by the party - which was the locus of real political power. This centralist formula for the administration of

the state also applied to the adminstration within the party itself. This formula had been clearly expounded in Mao's writings of 1942. His essay On Democratic Centralism

stated that 'the C.C.P. not only needs democracy, but needs centralization even more,.70 Democratic Centralism was a

system in which 'the minority is subordinate to the majority, the lower level to the higher level, the part to the whole, the entire membership to the Central Committee ... ,71 There was certainly no populist notion of decision making within the party. Nor was there a representative one whereby local members elected central members. Rather, in common with Confucian tradition, it was totally hierarchical.

As regards the party's attitude towards intellectual

27

liberty, Mao's famous Talks on Art and Literature (Zai Yan'an

wenyi zuotanhui shangde jianghua) of 1942

stated that all realms of activity - even artistic activity -

must be subjected to certain political requirements determined

by the party. The party's internal rectification movement

of the same year was further evidence that it was not a party

which tolerated individual dissent.

Therefore with respect to rights, the communist party had

laid down a number of premises from the outset. First, rights

were only to be enjoyed by 'the people'. 'The people' were

to use their rights to exercise dictatorship over the

'enemies of the people' and these 'enemies' had no rights.

Second, this limited definition of 'the people' was temporary.

Mao had stated that 'at the present stage', 'the people'

comprised a certain number of classes. Thus he implied that

at a later stage this definition of the people would be

limited even further. Third, any rights possessed by 'the

people', and even those possessed by 'the people' who were

members of the party, were completely conditional on their

loyalty to the central leadership of the party.

COMMUNISM - POST 1949

These principles were encapsulated in the Constitution of

the People's Republic of China (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo xianfa) of 1954.72 This document contains fourteen specific

articles in its section on the 'Fundamental Rights and

Duties of Citizens'. Of these, the most important is

article eighty-seven.

Citizens of the People's Republic of China have freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of

28

assembly, freedom of association, freedom of procession and freedom of demonstration. By providing the necessary material facilities, the state guarantees to citizens enjoyment of these freedoms.75

However, these freedoms are subject to two major

qualifications found elsewhere in the document. First,

article nineteen deprives enemies of 'the people' of

74 political rights until such time as they have reformed.

Second, article eighteen requires that 'the servants of

the state' (i.e. 'the people') be loyal to the people's democratic system.75

In Liu Shaoqi's report delivered immediately prior to

the ratification of the constitution, he defined people's

democracy as a system where 'personal interests are

indivisible from public interests of the country and society'. They were, he said, 'one and the same,.76 Though

loyalty to the people's democratic system appears less

stringent than the loyalty to the Communist Party leadership

prescribed in the 1978 constitution, its effect was to place

individual rights in the context of an overall collectivist

objective. Therefore, 'people's democracy' limited the

number of people entitled to rights. And for those who were

considered among the ranks of 'the people', there were also

limitations on the pruposes for which they could exercise

their rights.

Events during the 1950's indicated that the party's notion

of limited individual freedom was more than an abstract

theoretical doctrine. Writers such as Yu Pingbo, Feng

Xuefeng and Hu Feng who refused to abide by the party's

definition of ideological orthodoxy became the object of

29

nation-wide rectification campaigns in 1954-55 in an

attempt to eliminate intellectual dissent.

However, the party was not unwavering in terms of its

commitment to limited individual expression. Mao's

speeches on Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, (Baihuaqifang

baijia zhengming), The Ten Major Relationships, (Shi da

guanxi), and The Correct Handling of Contradictions

among the People (Guanyu zhengque renmin neibu mao dun de wenti)77 of 1956-7 had a liberalizing effect on freedom

of expression. The first of these was primarily concerned

with intellectual freedom in the arts and sciences.

However, the remaining two served to fundamentally amend

previous statements on the rights of the individual.

First, Mao's definition of 'the people' is enlarged

to include 'all classes, strata and social groups that

approve, support and work for the cause of socialist construction,.78 Of Mao's three previous definitions of

'the people', this is perhaps the most liberal. Second,

Mao spoke of the possibility of non-violent resolution of

the non-antagonistic conflicts which existed between the

various classes of 'the people'. This implied lattitude

for discussion and debate. Third, he spoke of righting the

imbalance between rights and duties:

Within the ranks of the people, democracy stands in relation to centralism and freedom to discipline.

They are two aspects of a single entity, contradictory as well as united, and we should not one-sidedly emphasize one to the detriment of the other.79

Here Mao advances the notion that freedom and discipline

should be equally contending forces, whereas previously

the former was largely conditional on the latter.

30

It is difficult to ascertain whether Mao's policies

were reflective of a genuine concern for the liberalization of the system in the light of Kruschev's revelations about the real nature of Stalinist Russia. Certainly events in Hungary were prominent in Mao's thinking. Irrespective of the cause of this policy shift, its long term effect lay

in that the party was now equipped with a greater degree of ideological flexibility. When individual initiative was required (invariably for the realization of a particular economic objective), democracy was emphasized over centralism. Conversely, centralism was emphasized over democracy when the party required tighter control.80 However, the 'contradictions' speeches by no means serve

to alter the fundamental notion that the rights of 'the people' are ultimately for the collective wellbeing.8l

In the history of the P.R.C., there have been a number

of periods of relaxation of the controls on individual expression - invariably separated by rectification

movements which then re-established those controls. The periodic revitalization of the slogan 'let a hundred

flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend' usually indicated the return of more liberal policies. In the decade which elapsed between the enunciation of Mao's

'contradictions' policy and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (Wuchanjieji wenhua dageming) there were a number of periods of liberalization which in different ways challenged the party's centralized notion of authority.

The first and most celebrated of these liberalizations was the 'Hundred Flowers Movement' which occurred as a

31

direct consequence of Mao's 'contradictions' speeches of 1956-7.82 Non communist intellectuals spoke out

initially against the party's control over intellectual

activity. However, the focus of this attack was broadened

to encompass the party's monopoly of power generally.

Zhu Anping of the 'China Democratic League' {Zhongguo minzhu tongmeng)83 argued through Guangming ribao that the

party 'sought to bring about the monolithic structure of a

f 'I " 84

one aml y emplre

He demanded institutional changes

which would lend substance to what had been no more than

a sham of coalition government. His colleague, Chen Xingui,

took the argument to its conclusion:

The system adopted by the Soviet Union and the New Democracies is the dictatorship of the proletariat ... is it any wonder that sectarianism thrives on a system which regards all outside the party as pagan elements .. How can the democratic parties supervise a one party dictatorship.85

Chen challenged the very idea of a vanguard party, or at

least as it had been interpreted by the Chinese communists.

In fact, inherent in the challenge is a call for a type of

parliamentary opposition - a loyal opposition. This in

turn had obvious implications for the individual's political

rights.

Students of Peking University (Beijing Daxue) adopted an

even more radical posture. They began a 'democratic wall'

for displaying 'contending' wall posters, they produced

unofficial journals and organized themselves into various

d ' ,,86

emocratlc socletles.

One such society was appropriately

called the 'Hundred Flowers Society' (Baihua she) whose

stated purpose was the initiation of 'a movement for

freedom and democracy' in wh i.ch people could learn from the

32

1 f th . t I' . 87

examp e 0 e cap1 a 1St countr1es.

Lin Xiling, the

most prominent of the student activists, had stated that

whereas socialism in its pure form was democratic, the

party's version of socialism was the antithesis of 88

democracy.

Whereas the China Democratic League had called for

political reform, the students suggested that the models

for that reform should be drawn from the liberal democracies

of the west.

Undoubtedly, all those who 'bloomed and contended' in

the Spring of 1957 had in common an assertion of the

individual's right to freedom of expression. In doing so

they had attacked the system which had previously dictated

the parameters of that freedom. Clearly, the party was not

about to tolerate dissent of such magnitude. The ensuing

'anti-rightist campaign' (fanyoupai yundong) aimed at

re-establishing party control. As the Minister for Education

stated:

The tendency to relax ideological and political indoctrination, to practice democracy in the extreme, to emphasize individualism one-sidedly, and to neglect collectivist acts and discipline should be rectified.89

A second period of liberalization occurred in the years

immediately following the failure of the Great Leap Forward.

(Dayuejin). The official press began re-emphasizing Mao's

'hundred flowers' speech, though this time seemingly at Liu

Shaoqi's rather than Mao's direction. In fact, it was Mao

who became the target of criticism over his autocratic

handling of the 'Great Leap'.

Criticism was expressed through literary analogy. Wu

33

Han's play The Dismissal of Hai Rui from Office (Hai Rui

ba guan) was a critique of arbitrary government,

particularly in terms of its inability to tolerate dissent.

Wu's play and his other writings on Hai Rui clearly painted

an analogy with Mao's dismissal of Peng Dehuai following

the latter's criticism of Mao's 'Great Leap' policies at the Lushan conference of 1959.90 Tian Han's play Xie

Yaohuan repeatedly lamented the passing of the 'thaw'

(jiedong), a term used by Soviet writers of the time when

referring to more liberal attitudes towards the toleration of dissent.9l Deng Tuo's famous Evening Chats at Yens han

(Yanshan yehua) eulogized the dissident spirits of

the Danglin Academy of the Ming. The jointly authored

Notes from a Three Family Village (Sanjiacun zhaji) was

a thinly veiled attack on Maoism itself. However, these

calls for a genuine plurality of views in 1961-2 met with

Mao's call for a return to intellectual orthodoxy at the

September plennum of 1962.

However, Mao's call went largely unheeded by the party

bureaucracy which was responsible for the carrying out of any rectification.92 So while party cadres busied themselves

with the 'Socialist Education Movement' (Shehuizhuyi jiaoyu

yundong) aimed at imbuing agricultural workers with

collectivist values, a number of intellectuals again set

out to challenge the party's claim to be the embodiment

of all orthodoxy. The January 1963 editorial of New

Construction (Xin jianshe) stated that:

Scholars of any subject, including those of Marxism, have no authority to consider themselves absolutely correct and suppress views at variance with their own.93

34

Students of the party idealogue Yang Xianzhen challenged

Mao's theory of contradictions. Whereas Mao stated that

opposites would ultimately become a single entity by means

of struggle, it was now held that opposites should reconcile

with one another rather than struggle for one another's

elimination. They criticized those who 'saw only good and bad' and advocated an ongoing diversity of viewpoints.94

In harmony with these calls for a more pluralist society,

Wu Han suggested that New China should incorporate various

Confucian and bourgeois values - including bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois profit making motive.95

However, by June 1964 there were new calls for

rectification though the ensuing campaign proved as

indecisive as the campaign of two years earlier. Mao's

inability to re-establish ideological control during these

periods of liberalization undoubtedly led him to adopt

the extreme measures which became evident in the Cultural

R 1 . 96 evo utlon.

It is true that those who were active in these various

periods of liberalization seldom addressed themselves

directly to the issue of individual rights. Nonetheless,

the individual's freedom of expression and freedom of

participation in the political process were obviously at

the heart of their proposals. Whereas their common call

had been for a type of pluralist democracy, the

ideological zealots of the Cultural Revolution sought a

return to the populist principles which they ascribed to the

model of the Paris Commune.

In July 1966, Mao proclaimed a poster written by Nie Yuanzi97 as the 'manifesto of the Chinese Paris Commune

35

of the sixties of the twentieth century,.98 The nature

of the new order was left largely undefined though it was

stated that a system of general elections would be 't' d 99

lns ltute .

The proclamation of the 'Shanghai People's Commune'

(Shanghai renmin gongshe) in February 1967 provided a

more concrete example of this populist notion of government.

The Commune referred to itself as a 'proletarian

dictatorship' for the self government of the producers.

Officials were to be 'democratically elected' and thereupon

subject to 'popular supervision' and 'popular recall'.

However, the central government was wary of the potentially

anarchic consequences of Shanghai's populist experiment.

After a brief nineteen day existence, the Commune came under

the rule of a 'revolutionary committee' (geming weiyanhui)

which became the instrumentality through which centralized

control was eventually re-established.

This reimposition of central control did not go

unchallenged. Various Red Guard (Hong weibing) groupings

saw this as a betrayal of the ideal of the Paris Commune.

The most famous of these was the 'Hunan Provincial

Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance' (Hunansheng

wuchanjieji geming dalianmeng) or more commonly Sheng wulian) - which was active in late 1967 and early 1968.100 Their manifesto, Whither China (Zhongguo xiang hechu qu)lOl

stated that the power that had been seized from the party

had been taken by the people who had then organized their

own administration of the party, state and economy. This

was pursuant with their ultimate objectiv~ of realizing

36

the 'China People's Commune' (ZhOngguo renmin gongshe)~02

They saw the realization of this objective as being totally

incompatible with central control:

We openly declare that our establishment of the China People's Commune can be attained only by the forcible removal of the Revolutionary Committee's dictatorship of the bourgeois

class ... 103

This 'bourgeois dictatorship' would be replaced by a system

of cadres

'vested with genuine proletarian authority' who

could be dismissed and replaced at any time at the masse's demand.104

The Sheng wulian notion of proletarian rights was

completely at variance with the idea of a vanguard party.

And the challenge to the party came not only from Hunan.

Guangzhou, Shanghai and Zhejiang produced similar such

alliances. The party's response was to send in the army

to restore central control and as of July 1968, to

despatch the Red Guards to the countryside for re-education.

Gradually, a revitalized party re-emerged as the effective

locus of political power.

Whereas in the Cultural Revolution, the significance

of the individual lay in his participation in an ill defined

populism,

there have been several movements since that

time which have indicated a general retreat from such

exclusively collectivist notions of the individual. And

at least one began to speak of the need to protect the

rights of the individual.

The first such movement - though movement is

undoubtedly an overstatement - involved those Red Guards

who found their way to Hong Kong in the latter days of

the Cultural Revolution. They produced a limited number

37

of editions of a magazine entitled Voice of China

(Zhongguo zhi sheng) which defined the principle

contradiction in Chinese society as being between peasants

and privileged Maoists. They disclaimed Mao's proletarian

dictatorship as nothing more than a swindle and predicted

that China would eventually 'take the great way of freedom,

l' d d" 105

equa lty, emocracy an SClence.

The significance of

this group lies not in its influence on subsequent events

on the mainland because it had none. Rather, it is perhaps

symptomatic of the reaction of the red guard generation

against the authority which ultimately suppressed them

and against many of the very principles for which they had

once fought. This disillusioned generation were to be the

principal actors in the dissident movements of 1974, 1976

and 1978-9.

In November 1974, three ex-Red Guards under the

pseudonymn of Li Yizhe posted a hundred metre long poster

in Guangzhou entitled On Socialist Democracy and the

Legal System (Guanyu shehuizhuyi minzhu yu fazhi). The

poster commended the recent campaign criticizing Lin Biao

and Confucius insofar as it was a critique of arbitrary power.106 However it then criticized .t.h a't; campaign's affirmation of the revolutionary role of Qin Shihuangl07 -

an affirmation which Li Yizhe described as an exhortation

to feudal autocracy and the physical elimination of all

opposition. As the official campaign implied that Mao was

the Qin Shihuang of modern China, Li Yizhe's criticisms

were aimed at the autocratic powers of the helmsman

himself. The poster maintained that as power corrupts,

38

the people must be protected from its arbitrary exercise through effective democratic rights.l08

Li Yizhe maintained that democracy is a cornerstone of

new China. Citing the Chairman as their authority, they

note that 'without extensive people's democracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be consolidated. ,109

The poster then dwells on whether that democracy has ever

been effective. The country's constitution had guaranteed

democratic rights but these rights had never been

effectively exercised, partly because of the anti-democratic

nature of certain elements within the party and partly

because of an anti-democratic tradition. The flagrant

disregard for individual rights during the Cultural

Revolution had caused people to rediscover the value of

their rights - 'just like a traveller from the well rivered

south who treasures water only when he comes to the 110

desert', However the aftermath of the Cultural

Revolution had not witnessed the establishment of a genuine

democracy, but rather the rise of a 'factional democracy'

in which one faction's objective is the elimination of III

the other. Clearly, the author's saw democracy as

practised in People's China as completely impotent In the

face of actual political power.

Li Yizhe then calls for democracy to be injected with

a political potency of its own. They say that contending

factions should have democratic rights and that these

rights should be mutually respected. In fact, one faction

should not seek to overcome the other through class

struggle. Rather, both (or all) factions should remain

39

ln a type of continuing opposition.112 They further

stated that:

The masses of people demand democracy, they demand a socialist legal system and they demand the revolutionary rights!and h~man rights

(renshen renquan A. ;.... ~~ ) which

protect the masses of th peop~'.113

Li Yizhe's notion of democracy is therefore twofold:

one which protects the rights of the individual from the

abuse of the state's power and one which enables the

individual to participate in the government of the state

irrespective of his convictions. This call for political

pluralism is reminiscent of the 'Hundred Flowers' movement

and carries with it the same implicit denial of one class

exercising dictatorship over the other. Indeed, the authors

are aware that their arguments largely parallel those of

the 19S7 'rightists' and make the tenuous claim that

whereas the 'rightists' sought to undermine the

proletarian dictatorship, their campaign would only serve to consolidate it.114 P.R. Moody makes the point that

with Li Yizhe, 'Chinese radicalism had come full circle. Li

converges with Lin Xiling and both converge with

liberalism' - separated by an illiberal Cultural Revolution. lIS While to describe them as liberals is

something of an overstatement, the liberal tendencies

of both these activists have much in common.

The Li Yizhe poster evoked a rapid official response

in a poster signed Xuan Jiwen (Collection of Propaganda

Documents) which reportedly orginated in the Central

Committee itself. It redefined democracy in terms of

its class nature - either proletarian democracy or

bourgeois democracy - warning that the latter enabled

40

the bourgeoisie to attack the party.116 It criticized

Li Yizhe for its failure to distinguish between the two

and its failure to state that the essence of the

dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship by

the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. For implicit to

Li Yizhe's argument, Xuan Jiwen suggested, is an extension

of democratic rights to all classes of people - including

such class enemies as the landlords, rich peasants,

bureaucratic-capitalists, bourgeois rightists and counter-

1 t' , 117 h L' Y' h f '1 d '

revo u lonarles. In sort, l lZ e al e to appreclate

that democracy was the pr~vilege of a single class - the

proletariat.

Xu an Jiwen's poster went on to further define the

rights available to the proletariat itself.

The 'four great weapons - great contending, great blooming, big character posters and great debates' (Darning dafang dabianlun dazibao) are not unconditional rights. Rather, they are absolutely conditional on the six standards outlined in Mao's 'contradictions' speech of 1957. By these means, 'fragrant flowers' (xiang hua) could be distinguished from 'poisonous weeds' (du cao), so eliminating the possibility of using 'democracy for smearing and attacking the Party Central, Chairman Mao ... the socialist system and the dictatorship of the proletariat!118

This was a clear statement on the relative nature of

proletarian rights - rights which were called 'weapons'

rather than rights.

Xu an Jiwen dismissed Li Yizhe's poster as trumpeting

'the democracy, liberty and legal system of the bourgeois

class' and 'wildly attempting .. to incite the masses and

create chaos in order to duplicate a Hungarian incident in China,.119 Li Yizhe's democracy was equated with anarchy

and subversion. It came as no surprise that the authors

41

of the poster were imprisoned.

The official response to Li Yizhe widened into a

campaign against 'bourgeois legal rights' (2i faquan) in

1975.

In March of that year, Yao Nenyuan wrote of

bourgeois rights as 'means to carry out insidious

adventures ... to incite certain people of various classes to oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat,.120 Though

the campaign seems to have been primarily directed against

the re-emergence of private property, it was also of

obvious political significance. Unlike the 'anti-rightist

campaign', this campaign drew to a quiet conclusion. As

a public issue, rights remained in the background until

the Tiananmen Incident (Tiananmen shijian) of April 1976.

Unlike the Voice of China or Socialist Democracy and

Legality, the Tiananmen Incident did not produce a body

of literature expounding any thesis on the issue of

democratic rights. Its significance lay in the spontaneous

expression of those rights by one hundred thousand rioters

in Tiananmen Square (Tiananmen guangchang) on 5 April

1976. It was a mass revolt against authority.

The touchstone for the riot was the removal of wreathes

placed at the People's Mero's Monument (Renmin yingxiong

jinianbei) by people honouring the memory of Zhou Enlai

who had died that January. Poems attached to the wreathes

expressed feelings which would be given violent expression

in the riot that would follow. Agence France Presse

reported one poem which read:

Hail Chairman Mao

Beat Down Indira Gandhi and Empress zi Xi.12l

42

The latter two names were apparent references to Jiang

Qing who at that time was at the centre of power.

However, it was the poem printed by Renmin ribao the

day after the riot that was most clearly directed agsinst

the regime.

In part it read:

China is no longer the China of yore,

And the people are no longer wrapped in sheer ignorance,

Gone for good is Qin Shihuang's feudal society.122

Whereas Li Yizhe spoke disparagingly of the campaign

promoting Qin Shihuang, this poem sees the Tiananmen

demonstrations as overthrowing the emperor himself. Again

the reference is Mao and the Maoist order.

It is difficult to ascertain just how representative

these poems were of the demonstrations generally. But the

fact that the ensuing riot was aimed at government

buildings, vehicles and personnel suggests that the

political orientation of the incident extended beyond the

literary exploits of a couple of individuals. Rather, it

was more like a mass revolt against the arbitrary exercise

of power by an arbitrary political order.

That the incident posed a serious political challenge

to the regime's authority is further attested by the

regime's response. It was bloodily suppressed. There were

mass arrests. There was an intensive rectification campaign involving practically every household in peking.123 It

lead to Deng Xiaoping's dismissal from all party and state

positions and the promotion of Hua Guofeng to the

premiership. And the incident itself was labelled 'counter-

revolutionary'. It is completely understandable that when

this counter-revolutionary verdict was finally reversed

43

two years later, it unleashed a torrent of popular resentments which found expression on Democracy Wall (Minzhu qiang) .

Thus, we have seen something of the notion of the rights in Chinese history. In Imperial China, there

was no notion of individual rights. In Republican China, the search for a new identity offered the opportunity

for animated debate on the nature of rights and the

role of rights in a new China - though the military demands of the time meant that rights became little more than a theoretical notion. In Communist China, rights were defined in terms of class rights which were to be exercised by one class over the other. In all these periods, rights were conditional on one's duty to the collective: at one time that duty was to 'save the nation' (jiu guo) while at another it was to rebuild

it. Such conditionality is antithetical to the absolute and inalienable rights of the individual espoused in classical western liberalism. However, Wei Jingsheng was to evince a refreshingly original commitment to the inherent value of the individual.

44

CHAPTER TWO

THE HUMAN RIGHTS r-mVEMENT OF 1978-1979

45

Before analyzing Wei Jingsheng's understanding of

human rights, it is necessary to examine the context in which

he wrote. Wei must be seen as part of a wider movement - a

movement which in turn must be seen in terms o£ political

developments within the regime as reflected in the regime's

mass media.

ORIGINS OF THE MOVEMENT

The origins of the movement are complex. They are complex

because the movement itself reflects a complex interplay of

official, semi-official and unofficial interests. And this

interplay cannot be monitored with any assurance of accuracy.

Since the enunciation of the Yan'an doctrine in 1942,

politics had been at the centre of any literary activity. As

W.F. Jenner recently commented,

the degree of license allowed to writers and editors has been determined by the extent that their views coincide with the policy on the arts of the rulers of the day.l

However, the unofficial literary movement which began in

November 1978 was more than a political pinnochio.

It had

its own being. Certainly, the movement could not have begun

without the support of the regime - or at least the strongest

faction within the regime. And certainly their support was

given for the realization of particular political objectives.

But the fact that no faction enjoyed immunity from the

movement's attacks suggests that the movement had something

of an independent orientation from the outset.

It was no

mere surrogate for the central leadership.

There was, therefore, a temporary coincidence of

interests. One faction of the leadership seems to have seen

46

the movement as a means of isolating its political opponents whereas those who participated in the movement had grievances

of their own.

It is the inter-relationship between these

interests which complicates any analysis of the origins of the movement.

The fall of the 'Gang of Four' (siren bang) 2 in October of 1976 marked the close of an era which was fundamentally committed to Maoist orthodoxy. The new regime, especially the new Deng regime,3 reacted against this emphasis on ideological orthodoxy. Economic reform rather than ideological rectitude became the regime's overriding concern. This change in emphasis was expressed at the Fifth National Peoples Congress (diwuci quanguo renmin daibiao dahui) held between 26/2/78 and 5/3/78 with the campaign for the

'Realization of the Four Modernizations' (shixian sige xiandaihua).4 Hua Guofeng stated that though 'proletarian politics must dominate, ... one must do business according to objective economic laws'S - implying that the economy should be allowed to develop relatively independently of ideological considerations. However, he went on to say that 'MarxismLeninism-Mao Zedong thought will maintain primary position in science and culture, exclusive of any bourgeois liberalism dreamt of by reactionaries inside and outside the country. ,6 Still, a fundamental reorientation towards a more liberal economic policy had occurred.

The regime then set about launching a series of

propaganda campaigns complementing this economic liberalization. Undoubtedly, the purpose was to free people's minds from the ideological shackles imposed by a decade of 'cultural revolution' and so free their individual economic initiative -

47

both for the purpose of the rapid realization of the 'Four

Modernizations~. However, the propaganda campaigns of 1978

served as a double-edged sword : on one hand encouraging

freedom in the economic sphere while on the other, causing

people to inquire why no such freedoms were forthcoming in

the political sphere.

In this way, conditions were created

which led to the wallposter movement of mid-November.

The first of these propaganda campaigns was the 'Study

the New Constitution' campaign (xuexi xinde xianfa)

launched by Renmin ribao on 3 May 1978. The campaign sought

to emphasize the return of the rule of law after the

lawlessness of the Cultural Revolution.

It stated that the

new constitution summed up the experience of struggle against

7 the 'Gang of Four' who wanted 'anarchy and extreme democracy'.

Again, dictatorship was to be exercised over the enemy and

democracy practiced among 'the people'. Among 'the people's'

various democratic rights, the campaign paid particular

attention to article fifty-five of the constitution which

guaranteed

the right to lodge complaints ... against any person working in an organ of state, enterprise or institution for transgression of the law or neglect of duty.8

Renmin ribao encouraged people to vent their grievances by

writing letters to the press and paying visits to the

relevant state departments. The paper went further and

suggested that it may be appropriate for the masses to write anonymous letters if they were afraid of reprisals.9 In

response to these calls from the organ of the Central

Committee, the provinces organized a series of conferences

on 'letters and visits' work (xinzuo fanggong) in order to

48

realize a more effective socialist democracy.10 Such

exhortations to publicly criticize the authorities may well

have encouraged those who were more fundamentally opposed

to the system to eventually speak out.

In another sense, the constitution was a curious

combination of both liberal and illiberal innovations. It

was the first constitution to encapsulate Mao's 'Hundred

Flowers' slogan:

The state applies the policy of "letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools contend" so as to promote the development of the arts and sciences and brin1 about a flourishing socialist culture. 1

Yet it was also the first constitution which required its

citizens to 'support the leadership of the Communist Party' 12

and to 'support the socialist system'. These clauses

imposed a conditionality on any rights which may be

guaranteed in other clauses of the constitution. However,

on balances it seems to be a more liberal document than that

of 1975.

The 'Study the Constitution' campaign was followed by a

more widespread campaign which challenged the fundamentalist

interpretation which had been given 11arxism-Leninism-Mao

Zedong thought during the Cultural Revolution. The campaign

went under either of two names: tSeek Truth From Facts'

(shishi qiushi) or the more longwinded version 'Practice is

the Sole Criterion for the Verification of Truth' (shijian

shi jianyan zhenlide weiyi biaozhun). It seems to have been

launched by Deng Xiaoping in a speech at an army conference

on 2 June 1978.

Signs of an impending re-evaluation of Mao Zedong had

been evident since the end of 1977 when the official press

49

began suggesting that one should not 'act in accordance

with every sentence' (juju zhaoban) - that is, every

sentence uttered by the Chairman.

In April 1978, Renmin

ribao criticized those who venerated ~1arxism-Leninism-Mao

Zedong thought as 'objects rather of faith than of knowledge'

and those 'who do not allow people to use their brains, much less to discern truth from falsehood,.13 In the following

month, Guangming ribao said that Mao Zedong thought must be 'subjected to an examination on the basis of social practice,.14

Therefore, Mao Zedong thought was no longer to be accepted as

an article of faith but rather was to be subjected to a type

of empirical analysis.

These themes were brought together in Deng's important

speech of 2 June:

There are comrades who ... turn against the basic concept and method of Marxism, the realism (shishi qiushi) of Chairman Mao, which always starts from facts, and combines theory and practice ... there are even persons who believe that a realist who relies on facts and combines theory with practice commits a crime. They think that it is enough to parrot the words of Harx, Lenin and Chairman Mao ... This is not a minor matter. It is a problem of how Marxism-LeninismMao Zedong thought should be regarded.lS

That this was not regarded as a minor matter is attested by

the nationwide coverage given both to the speech and the

maxim of 'Seeking Truth From Facts' which it encapsulated. Mao, and to the same extent Mao's Cultural Revolution,16 could

now be publicly debated within the parameters of an ill-

defined notion of 'practice'.

The official press subsequently widened the debate17

(Jiefangjun bao) attempted to clarify the criterion of the

debate by defining 'practice' as the 'revolutionary practice

50

of the masses,.18 A theory's value should be determined

in accordance with how it actually advantages 'social

productive forces, socialism and the masses'. The article

implies that a theory's utilitarian value is of central

importance.

In July, Renmin ribao for the first time published

Mao's 30/1/62 speech in which Mao accepted responsibility

for mistakes both he and his central committee had made -

indicating that the Chairman was fallible at his own

admission. In June, the same paper had stated that as

Marx, Engels and Mao had all been fallible, their theories

must constantly be revised, corrected and supplemented. The

paper stated that as truth was developing,

the development of ... Mao Zedong though undoubtedly involves the revision (xiuzheng) of some outmoded principles.19

At the end of July, Zhou Yang maintained that seeking truth

from facts did not deny the guiding function of Marxism-

Leninism-Mao Zedong thought, although the latter should be 20 seen as a developing doctrine rather than a dead dogma.

These statements suggest that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong

thought was no longer to be regarded as absolute truth. This

in turn implied that it could be criticized, albeit from the

point of view of 'practice'. It also implied that new

theories verified by practice could be added to it. These

developments served to loosen the definitions of ideological

orthodoxy to the point that by October, Renmin ribao was

calling for the purging of all the superstitious qualities

that the Cultural Revolution had attributed to Mao Zedong 21

thought.

51

However, the campaign encounted considerable

resistance as indicated by a number of articles in the 22

official press. Though not quoting opposing views, the

articles nonetheless attest to the existence of opposition.

Something of a literary debate occurred between Guangming

ribao and Renmin ribao in August and September on the question of absolute and relative truth.23 Something of a

more fundamental difference of opinion is evidenced by the

fact that by November, the party theoretical journal Hong

qi had yet to endorse the shishi qiushi campaign. While

Renmin ribao waxed lyrical on the subject, Hong qi

maintained a conspicuous silence.

In fact, wallposters

attacking Hong qi for its silence appeared in early November. 24

Differences of opinion were further evidenced by the

sudden withdrawal from circulation of the first edition

of Zhongguo qingnian on 11 September only hours after its

, , , 1 d i i.bu t.i 25

lnltla lstrl utlon.

When it reappeared on 21 September,

its contents were unaltered but for the addition of two

loose sheets which carried Mao's photo, some poems by Mao

and some calligraphy by Hua. It would seem that the

magazine had been too zealous in its reappraisal of Mao

by not even acknowledging him on the second anniversary of

his death.

Both the Hong qi and the Zhongguo qingnian cases

suggest dissension within the highest levels of the party

on the programme of de-Maoization which had been set in

motion by Deng's shishi qiushi campaign. Such dissension

could be explained by the fact that a number of Central

52

Committee members owed their position to their relationship

with Mao, not least of whom was Hua Guofeng.

However, that the supporters of the campaign prevailed

over their opponents was attested by the fact that by

October, twenty-five of the twenty-six provinces had

announced their support for the campaign. The only province 26 to remain silent was Hunan - the province of Hua Guofeng.

The overall effect of the campaign was two-fold. First,

it stated that a thing should be evaluated on the basis of

its practical utility rather than on its class character or its

ideological rectitude generally.

It provided a new frame of

analysis which was officially sanctioned. It is significant

that a number of the wallposters of November invoked shishi

qiushi as their rationale for attacking all manner of things.27 Second, the campaign specifically addressed itself

to a re-evaluation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought,

Mao Zedong himself and the Cultural Revolution.

It is again

significant that these were the issues which became the

focus of the wallposter attacks.

At least in terms of the

re-evaluation of Mao, it seems that the wallposters took up

where the official campaign left off.

A third liberalizing campaign seems to have been 28

launched in September, using a variety of slogans such as

'emancipate thinking' (jiefang sixiang), 'give full play to

democracy' (fayang minzhu) and 'strengthen socialist

democracy and the socialist legal system' (jiaqiang

shehuizhuyi minzhu yu fazhi) - collectively constituting

what can generally be described as a democratization

campaign. On 18 September, Renmin ribao printed a lengthy

53

article entitled Uphold the Principles of Socialist Democracy (Jianchi shehuizhuyi minzhu de yuanze) stating that by the turn of the century, the Chinese people 'are completely capable of realizing a strong socialist state wi th a high level of economic modernization and a high

level of political democracy'.

In remarkably unremarkable

style, the article went on to point out that the main obstacles to the development of democracy lay in the feudal

and bureaucratic tendencies of leading cadres who were indifferent to the masses' material advantage and their 'rights of economic democracy'. However, following the

publication of this relatively innocuous piece, the official democratization campaign seems to have developed in different directions: one which emphasized democracy as a means of criticizing the 'Gang of Four' and realizing the 'Four Modernizations' and one which emphasized the nature of

democracy itself.

The former was undoubtedly the more cautious of the two in that it never attempted to define democracy. It simply invoked the term 'democracy' as a better way of coping with modernization and the 'Gang of Four'. This part of the campaign centred around the jiefang sixiang slogan - a slogan which the official press invariably attributed to Hua. On 15 October, Wenyi bao reported on a conference which it held on liberating thinking among literary workers. It stated that 'literature must produce the effect of

exploring and criticizing the "Gang of Four"', and that

literary innovation should be encouraged when it contributes to a more profound and penetrating criticism of the gang.29

54

Howeve~ such criticism should only be aimed at 'the enemies of socialism, not the socialist system itself,.30 And while

literary workers may criticize the defects of any particular

work, they 'must not immediately link themselves with

I, , l' I 31

po ltlca lssues

Subsequent articles in Renmin ribao confirmed "Nenyi bao's interpretation of jiefang sixiang.32 This campaign

carried no call for any fundamental political reform. In

fact it warned against any such political interpretation.

At best, it was a call for a more creative endorsement of

the regime's policies.

However, the democratization campaign also took a less

conservative direction, particularly in articles concerning

socialist democracy and the socialist legal system. This

part of the campaign proposed a number of actual reforms

Guangming ribao demanded 'a perfect legal system which

, 1 d "h' 33 , i.b d

lnsures peop es emocratlc rlg ts. Renmln rl ao state

that one of these rights was the right to elect cadres.

The paper called for resistance to 'such traditional

concepts that hold that "elections of cadres is ultra-

democracy.'" Cadres should be elected and after an

appropriate period in office, should stand for re-election.

Though the article does not stipulate which cadres should be

subject to such a system, it does speak of the advantages

of replacing 'leading members of county municipal or

, '1 't' 34

provlncla party comml tees.

Elsewhere, Guangming ribao specifically criticizes

the 'Gang of Four' for its inability to tolerate dissident

views and implies that dissidence should be countenanced by

55

the new regime. The article then goes on to enumerate

the rights of the citizens to criticize the state and the

right of a party member to criticize the party leadership.

Finally, the article infers that though these rights are

safeguarded by the constitution, 'struggle' is the only

b h' h t th' ff t' ,35

means y w lC 0 ensure elr e ec lve protectlon.

Unlike articles concerned with jiefang sixiang, these

articles underline the direct political significance of

the democratization campaign.

By mid-November, this democratization campaign in the

official press had become even more outspoken. Renmin ribao

stated that the success of the socialist transformation of

China did not mean that 'the struggle to fight for people's democracy had come to an end,.36 Despotism had still to be

eliminated. In a pointed reference, the article then

criticized what it described as the Confucian doctrine

that 'one should not talk about the emperor's shortcomings,.37

Elsewhere, it quoted Liu Bang of the Han as saying that

'the Qin dynasty fell because its emperor refused to listen

t i t Lc i 38

o crl lClsm .

This is perhaps the clearest call for

criticism of Mao and for the toleration of dissent generally

since the beginning of the official campaigns of 1978. As

Renmin ribao concluded, 'there is no reason why a communist

h Ld f ' " ,39

s ou ear crltlclsm .

The same 10 November edition of Renmin ribao carried

another article which called upon the leadership to conquer 'the theory of brilliant leadership,40 which again is a

reference to Mao. The article continued that the leadership should 'enthusiastically welcome criticism from the masses',41

irrespective of whether their criticisms accorded with facts.

56

And should the criticisms be accurate, 'they should be acted on,.42

On 13 November, the same paper reprinted an article

from the third edition of Zhongguo qingnian entitled

It is Necessary to Bring Democracy into Full Play and 43

Consolidate the Legal System. It will be recalled that

the first edition of Zhongguo qingnian was withdrawn for

its insufficiently reverential attitude towards Mao. In

the article reprinted on 13 November, it is stated that

'the workers real ownership in the economic field calls for corresponding democratic rights in the political field,.44

It goes on to cite Engel's questioning whether 'we demand

others to give us freedom of speech only for the purpose of suppressing free speech among our own ranks' .45 It responds

by stating that:

the people have the right to use the methods of extensive democracy including speaking out freely, airing views fully, writing big character posters, holding great debates, staging parades, demonstrations and even strikes against any cadre who lacks a democratic work-style,.46

The article then argues that it is fallacious to equate

democracy with bourgeois democracy and asks: 'why shouldn't

we instead of the bourgeoisie hold aloft the great banner 47

of democracy'. Finally, it asks a question similar to

one asked by Wei Jingsheng some months later:

Could it be that the people have followed the Communist Party for decades only to have a bunch of new overlords sitting on their backs.48

This is a strong statement. It is particularly strong in

that it comes from the organ of the Central Committee itself.

This article was published just three days before the

appearance of the first wallposters of the so-called 'Peking

57

Spring'. The article was undoubtedly the most outspoken of all those associated with the official democratization campaign, the shishi qiushi campaign and the campaign to study the constitution. All three of these campaigns

tended to encourage a plurality of views. At the very least, they elevated the notion of democracy to the level of general public consciousness and declared that this democracy was desirable. At most, it called for public criticism of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Certainly, there were sobering aspects of the campaigns such as the inclusion of article fifty-six in the constitution and

the conservative character of the jiefang sixiang campaign which saw innovation in terms of its contribution to the

higher tasks of eliminating the gang's influence and promoting modernization. Nonetheless, the overall effect of the campaigns was one which suggested political liberalization - a liberalization which crystallized with the events of 15 November.

At the beginning of November, the Central Committee had convened an enlarged central work conference in preparation for the third party plennum which was held

18 - 22 December. Unofficial reports from Hong Kong49 suggest that the work conference produced heated exchanges between supporters of Deng Xiaoping and those of Wang Dongxing. The latter was identified with what was described as a 'whatever faction' (fanshi pai) - so named because its adherents supposedly endorsed 'whatever' Mao said. This fanshi pai was therefore in direct conflict with Deng's campaign for a re-evaluation of Mao. That Deng's supporters

58

prevailed during the November meetings is evidenced by

the decisions publicized on 15 November which repudiated

a number of Mao's policies.

The first of these decisions was the rehabilitation

of the last of those who had been labelled 'rightists'

after the 'Hundred Flowers' movement of 1957. In explaining

the decision, Renmin ribao stated that while the mainstream

of Mao's decisions were correct, it had to be admitted

'that owing to interference by wrong political lines, there were some innocent people wrongly charged,.50 Significantly,

the wording is such that there is ambiguity as to who was

responsible for these 'wrong political lines'. However, the

article then says that a number of 1957 'rightists' were

'truly wronged' and that the Central Committee had advised

the removal of their rightist designation. The obvious

implication was that Mao was wrong as it was his Central

Committee of September 1957 which officially sanctioned

th t i i crh t i ,51

e an 1-r1g 1st campa1gn.

The removal of the 'rightist'

designation also suggested a more favourable interpretation

of the 'Hundred Flowers' movement itself and its associated

demands for democracy and human rights.

The second decision of 15 November was a repudiation of

Yao Wenyuan's 1965 criticism of Wu Han's play Hai Rui

Dismissed from Office.

It will be recalled that Wu Han had

been critical of Mao in the aftermath of the 'Great Leap'

and that his play eulogized Peng Dehuai's defiance of Mao

in 1958. The publication of Yao's critique in November 1965

was reportedly at the personal request of Mao. Its

publication was subsequently described by the official

59

press as having triggered the Cultural Revolution. In its

repudiation of Yao's critique, Guangming ribao praised

Hai Rui as an 'impartial and upright official with a

courageous spirit

bold enough to speak the truth and

bold enough to point out the corrupt practices of the

. 52

court of that time'. It criticized Yao's interpretation

of the 'courageous spirit' as encouraging 'right

opportunists to attack the party', saying that such an

interpretation was applied in order to suppress popular

dissent. The article then said that 'the courageous spirit'

had always been promoted by the party. Taking Mao as its

reference, it then cited him as saying that all people

should be allowed to 'express their opinions freely so

that they dare to speak, dare to criticize and dare to

debate'. As with the decision on the rightists, Mao is criticized implicitly and the right to dissent is

asserted in a positive light.

The third and the most important of the decisions of

15 November was the rehabilitation of the Tiananmen

Incident by the Beijing Municipal Committee

with the

approval of the Central Committee.53 The announcement was

made in a Xinhua despatch late in the evening of the

fifteenth and followed by two lengthy articles appearing

in Renmin ribao on the twenty-first and twenty-second of

November entitled The Truth About the Tiananmen Incident

(Tiananmen shij ian de zhenmian).

The process leading up to the eventual rehabilitation

of the incident had begun soon after the fall of the 'Gang

of Four'. On the first anniversary of the incident, an

60

internal document was allegedly circulated to the effect

that Deng was not responsible for the incident, that Deng

would soon return to his duties and that the masses

behaviour in the incident itself was 'understandable'.

Yet it was the actions of a small number of counter-

revolutionaries among the masses that had 'created the

t 1 t' i.n c i.d t' 54

coun er-revo u lonary lnCl en .

On its second

anniversary, thousands of people again gathered in the

square and through posters and poems demanded the

rehabilitation of the incident. Some of these posters

called for the realization of democracy and human rights.

These calls included 'making the square into a democratic

forum' and declaring the fifth of April the 'China Poetry

Festival' when people could come to the square and exercise their rights of freedom of speech and publication.55 Signs

of an impending reversal of verdict began appearing in the official press as early as July 1978.56 The process

gained momentum after Wu De lost the mayoralty of Beijing

on 10 October. Wu De, among others, had been prominent in

the actual suppression of the incident. When a play

emphasizing the revolutionary character of the incident

was staged in Beijing in early November, it was clear that

rehabilitation was imminent.

The Renmin ribao articles explaining the reversal of

the incident's verdict sought to interpret the incident

as a spontaneous mass revolt against the 'Gang of Four',

ln support of Deng, Zhou and Mao. The exoneration of Mao

was to prove the most problematic. It was now claimed that

Mao had been struggling against the gang since 1975. Even

61

the famous poem about Qin Shihuang was now aimed at the

gang rather than Mao - though Renmin ribao makes an

apallingly weak attempt to explain this mysterious

h ' 57 metamorp OSlS.

In short, it was now the gang and the

gang alone who were the objects of the people's wrath

in April 1976.

The gang was also made solely responsible for the

suppression of the demonstrations. In the only reference

as to who actually ordered the militia to move in on the

demonstrators in the evening of 5 April, Renmin ribao

quotes 'the gang's sinister henchman in the Public Security Bureau,58 as saying that 'a united action will be carried out tonight,.59 The paper conspicuously avoids any

explanation of the activities of the then Minister for

Public Security - Hua Guofeng. Elsewhere, the article

rather limply defends Hua as having been persecuted by

the Gang after they had eliminated Deng. But the banquet

hosted by Hua on 17 April to honour those who had 'bravely

suppressed the counter-revolutionary incident in Tiananmen Square'is not mentioned in the article.60 There is also no

mention of Wu De's speech in the early evening of 5 April

in which he described the demonstrators as counter-

revolutionary and threatened to suppress them unless they

d i d 61

1sperse .

And there is no mention of Ni Zhifu who at

that time commanded the Beijing militia which participated in the actual suppression of the demonstration.62 These

omissions are understandable in that at the time of this

article's publication, Ni was a member of the Central

Committee, Wu a member of the Politbureau and Hua,

62

Chairman of the Party.

It was these decisions of 15 November - especially

the Tiananmen decision - that provoked the first wallposters. For the people of Peking who had experienced the bloody reality of Tiananmen, Renmin ribao's explanations proved completely inadequate. Emboldened by the liberalizing campaigns of the previous nine months and angered by the party's treatment

of 'their' incident, people protested.

THE ~HDER MOVEMENT

The movement, like its origins, was complex. In fact, the term 'movement' is a misnomer as there were many movements. There were movements in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou and wuhan,63 of which the one in Beijing was undoubtedly the most important. There were, in turn, many submovements within the Beijing movement. There was criticisms of the sexual exploitation suffered by females. Rapidly rising prices of consumer commodities were also criticized. There were pleas for the redressing of personal grievances. There were pleas for food,clothing and employment from peasants who came to the capital from the provinces. There were calls for a thorough re-examination of the Tiananmen Incident while other lauded the

official account given in Renmin Ribao.

There were calls

for the rehabilitation of Peng Dehuai, Tao Zhu and Liu

Shaoqi as there were calls for the purging of Wu De, Wang Dongxing, Chen Xilian, Ji Dengkui and Ni Zhifu. There were attacks on Mao, Hua and even Deng. And there were refutations of these attacks on the central leadership. There were demands for democracy and human rights and repudiations of

63

these demands. Some posters rejected the socialist system

itself while others described the authors of such posters

as 'out and out counter-revolutionaries'. And there were

posters which supported the war against Vietnam. The

'movement' embraced all these themes. Some of them

undoubtedly enjoyed official sponsorship - or at least

the sponsorship of a faction within the regime. Other

themes were pursued in complete defiance of the regime.

These varied themes were expressed through varied media:

speeches, rallies, marches, wallposters and journals. Yet

this multifaceted movement did have one unifying symbol.

And that was a wall in the centre of Beijing which became

known as 'Democracy Wall'.

'Democracy Wall' was so named because it became for

people from Peking and the provinces a forum for free

expression. It was actually the back wall of a bus station

on the corner of Chang'an jie and Xidan dajie.

It was

not the only 'Democracy Wall' in Peking. Posters also

appeared near the Renmin ribao building in Wangfujing as

well as at two locations in Tiananmen Square itself beneath

the Monument of the Peoples Heroes (Renmin yingxiong

jinianbei) and beside the National Historical Museum (Guoli

lishi bowuguan). However, when people spoke of 'Democracy

Wall', they invariably referred to the Chang'an - Xidan

. 64

site as it was there that the activity was the most lntense.

It was at this wall that people exercised what was at that

time their constitutional right to 'put up big character

posters'. It was here that unofficial journals were sold.

And it was here that speeches were delivered, rallies were

64

held and protest marches began.

The history of the movement until the end of !"1arch

1979 broadly encompasses three periods. The first is from

16 November until 28 November when the movement seemed to

be at its height and without encountering any official opposition. The second period followed the publication of some sobering comments by Deng in Renmin ribao on 28

November and lasted until the third anniversary of the

death of Zhou Enlai in early January 1979. During this period, critics of the regime were relatively restrained whereas critics of the critics were increasingly outspoken. However, in the week following the anniversary, the entire nature of the movement changed. Disparate interests were brought together into a number of democratic societies which began producing their own journals. A number of these journals came increasingly into conflict with the regime

over such issues as democracy and human rights and increasingly drew direct fire from the official press. This third period lasted nearly three months until the publication of the 29 March circular which imposed substantial restrictions on the movement.

There are always inconsistencies with any attempt at periodization and this attempt is no exception. For example, some journals began publishing as early as November and some posters had been appearing sporadically in the weeks prior to the events of 15 November. Nonetheless, the periodization suggested above does account for the major developments in the life of the wider movement.

Immediately following the rehabilitation of the

65

Tiananmen Incident, two wallposters appeared on the wall:

one congratulating the Beijing Municipal Committee on its

fine decision and one criticizing the role played by Wu De

. th . f the' 'd t 65

In e suppresslon 0 lnCl en .

Though Wu had

recently been relieved of his duties as First Secretary of

the Peking Committee, he still retained his positions on

the politburo

and the Standing Committee of the National

Peoples Congress

(quanguo renmin daibiao dahui changwu

weiyanhui)

It was the fact that Wu had not been completely

removed from office that inspired many wallposters of the

following weeks. Posters accused Renmin ribao of protecting wu.66 Wu himself was accused of having delayed the

incident's rehabilitation and the suppression of the

September edition of Zhongguo qingnian which carried articles

commending the demonstrators'

. 67

actlons.

Other posters

claimed that Wu was a 'feudal fascist dictator who should be put on public trial,.68

On 24 November, posters implicated Ni Zhifu with Wu in

the suppression of the incident and demanded that 'both must give an account for their role,.69

On 25 November, Wang Dongxing became the third

politburo member,

and the most senior, to be attacked

by wallposters. Wang was criticized for 'decorating the

executioners' of Tiananmen - referring to those members of

Ni's militia who were honoured at Hua's banquet after the

suppression of the incident. Wang was also criticized for

his opposition to Deng's rehabilitation, Deng's shishi

. . h .' 70 .

qiushi campalgn and the magazlne Z ongguo qlngnlan. HlS

expulsion was called for.71

66

There was even opposition to Hua himself when a poster demanded that Deng rather than Hua write the inscription

for a book of Tiananmen poems. If Hua's inscription was

not removed, then the author warned that he would withdraw his poem from the collection.72 Elsewhere, it was stated that the two remaining resolutions of 7/4/76 - one promoting Hua and the other purging Deng - should be categorically

abrograted. In an ironic reference to Mao's supposed

remark to Hua that 'with you in charge, I am at ease'(ni banshi wo fangxin), the same author said in another poster that 'with Deng in charge, the people feel at ease' (Deng banshi min fangxin). Deng's good press among the wallposters was further enhanced by other posters praising individuals closely identified with Dengist policies. Hu Yaobang, Hu Qiaomu, Wan Li, Zhang Aiping and Zhao Ziyang who has since been elevated to the premiership in place of Hua.73

Common to Wu, Ni, Wang and Hua is that their political promotions were to varying degrees enhanced by the events

of the Cultural Revolution, or by the personal patronage

of Mao himself. Thus when the posters began attacking Mao, his political beneficiaries were at least indirect targets. On 20 November, Mao was accused of having supported the 'Gang of Four' in the suppression of the Tiananmen Incident and the subsequent removal of Deng.74 Another poster claimed that since 1966, there had been a struggle between two intra-party groups: the democrats led by Zhou and the fascist dictators represented by Mao.75 Three days later,

a poster announced the establishment of a 'Torch Society' (Huojushe) which dedicated itself to the eliminination of

67

all dictators. In an obvious reference to Mao, it said

t,pa t though Qin Shihuang had united the country, he should

be condemned for having 'oppressed the people and burnt 76

the books'.

Mao's Cultural Revolution was also criticized. A

poster which was signed 'Communist Youth League' members

(Gongchanzhuyi qingniantuan) described the Cultural

Revolution as both 'a disaster and a great leap backwards'

and held Mao personally responsible for the extreme violence

. f h 77

o t ose years.

Mao's image was tarnished even further by calls for the

rehabilitation of a number of leaders who had been purged

during the Cultural Revolution, chief among whom was Liu

Shaoqi. One poster proclaimed that 'the principles of Liu Shaoqi must be put into practice,.78 Another called for the rehabilitation of Tao Zhu and Peng Dehuai79 and there

were demands for the reinstatement of Peng Zhen who had

been First Secretary of the Beijing Committee until his purge in 1966.80

Such outspoken attacks on Mao's person, his purges

and his revolution not only threatened his prot~g~s but

also the more fundamental notions of revolution and class

struggle which Mao symbolized.

Other posters during this first period in the life of

the movement addressed themselves to vague concepts of

democracy. On 22 November, a poster signed Min Yi, or

'Interests of the People', proclaimed in banner headline

manner: 'Long Live Democracy, Long Live the People, Long Live the Spirit of 5 April' .81 In terms reminiscent of

68

Cultural Revolution populism, it said that leading cadres

should be directly elected by the masses after the model of

the Paris Commune. It was this poster that marked the

beginning of that part of the movement concerned with

democracy and later with human rights.

On 27 November, the first of the April Fifth Forum

(Siwu luntan) series called for the right of the individual

to choose his profession and the right for people to elect officials by secret ballot.82 Another poster demanded

the right to dissent:

Why must people be overthrown if they have different opinions ... why not let different opinions exist ... Liu and Peng had different opinions to Mao, so they became traitors.83

Other posters claimed that 'only those leaders who allow themselves to be criticized are good leaders,.84 Here there

are the initial calls for a political pluralism which were

eventually to prove unacceptable to the existing order.

On 26, 27 and 28 November, there were a series of

speeches, rallies and marches which marked the climax of

this initial phase of the movement. Western correspondents

estimated crowds of up to ten thousand people at some of

these meetings. One protest march extended over half a mile

along Changa'n jie with demonstrators shouting 'long live

d 1 I, f d 1 I' human rl'ghts,.85 emocracy, ong lve ree om, ong lve

At another rally, one orator proclaimed that as Yan'an was

the base for supporting the revolution of the 1940's, so 'Xidan is the base supporting democracy in China today,.86

These heady days immediately preceded an article

appearing in Renmin ribao in which Deng suggested that the

masses needed guidance in the exercise of democracy. During

69

this initial period, all aspects of the movement were

orginally related to the reversal of the verdict of the

Tiananmen Incident. That decision marked the headwaters

of a widening movement. There were no reports of posters

being torn down during this period. And there was only one

poster which attacked the movement and defended Hao as

I· h 87

a great revo utlonary ero.

However, with the publication

of the Renmin ribao article on 28 November, this period of

seemingly unrestricted blooming and contending came to an

end.

The change in the tone of the movement was evidenced

in the last days of November. In a rally on 28 November, in

addition to chanting 'support democracy', the crowd for

the first time chanted their support for Mao, Ye (Jianying)

Deng, the 'Four Modernizations' and 'Stability and Unity' (anding tuanjie) .88 On the following day, it was stated

at another rally that democracy and freedom should be discussed 'within the framework of socialism,.89 Agence

France Presse suggests that the authorities also began

conducting study sessions while actively discouraging

outdoor political activities. The study materials reportedly

included a Renmin ribao editorial on how to go about

correcting errors, if in fact there were any errors to be corrected.90 Though this toning down of the movement met with some resistance,91 it signified the beginning of a

period in which posters contended with one another on the

merits and de-merits of the system, rather than attacking

the system with the kind of unanimity evidenced in the

earlier period.

70

During this period, however, the attacks on Wang, wu

and Ni continued. And indeed they were extended to include

Ch 'I' d J' , 92

en Xl lan an l Dengkul.

They had also risen to

prominence during the Cultural Revolution and both were

politburo members at the time they were attacked by the

wallposters. Chen concurrently held the influential

position of Commander of the Beijing Military Region

(Beijing weishuqu silingyuan), in which capacity he shared

with others the responsibility for suppressing the

Tiananmen Incident. That the wallposter attacks on such

prominent figures continued unabated suggests that they

had been successfully isolated within the politburo itself,

as events of the following year were to prove.

The attacks on Mao also continued. He was again

criticized for his collaboration with the 'Gang of Four' and his role in handling the Tiananmen Incident.93 The Cultural Revolution was still criticized.94 There were still calls for the rehabilitation of Liu.95 And it was

during December that both Peng Dehuai and Tao Zhu were

actually rehabilitated - albeit posthumously. However, for

the first time, substantial numbers of posters began

appearing in Mao's defence.

On 2 December, a poster suggested that:

... if people who want to put up posters criticizing Chairman Mao would only give us their names, then we would smash their dog heads in.96

Another likened such critics to flies who gathered on

the wounds of a noble warrior and went on to urge the

organization of a 'Maoist faction' Mao pai to denounce those

who had criticized the Chairman. It stated that the

71

sacred task for their generation 'was not to examine Mao's

defects but to realize the four modernizations'.

It even

stated that as yet, there was not enough 'practice' by

which to test Mao's mistakes in the Cultural Revolution -

thereby indirectly criticizing Deng's much publicized

shishi qiushi campaign. It warned the people of the capital

to 'be on guard against those who lift up the banner of

democracy and liberty to slander the leadership'. 'Let our

foreign friends have peace of mind', the poster concluded,

implying that political dissension should be discouraged in

order to foster a stable environment which would be

. f" 97

attractlve to orelgn lnvestors.

This was an argument

which later appeared in the official press to justify the

eventual suppression of the movement. Posters such as this

sought to counter the criticism that Mao had suffered in

previous weeks.

Democracy also became a more contentious issue during

this period: it was contentious in the sense that its

apologists became more articulate and for the first time

came under attack itself. On 5 December, Wei Jingsheng

posted his first poster calling for a 'fifth modernization' -

democracy. On 7 December, the Zhongguo renquan tongmeng

(China Human Rights Alliance) posted its first poster. It

referred to a speech made by President Carter on the role of human rights in American foreign policy.98 It called

on Carter and Congress to 'pay attention to the state of

human rights in China' because the Chinese people 'did not

want to repeat the tragic life of the Soviet people in the Gulag Archepelego,.99 A week later, an open letter to

72

Carter and Brezinski was posted, calling on these 'prime

movers of the worldwide human rights' movement to 'speak out for the respect of human rights in China,.lOO Another

poster advocated the adaptation of the Yugoslov model of

'freedom of speech, publication, meeting, demonstration,

strike, press, religion, ideology, work, dwelling and 101

travel'. Finally, Renquan tongmeng published a nineteen

point manifesto on 5 January.l02 Among its demands were

calls for direct elections and public participation in the

formulation of government policy, including government

fiscal policy. It also carried an appeal to various

international human rights organizations to support the

Chinese movement. Thus, by the early new year, the 'human

rights movement' within the wider movement, had assumed

its own identity.

However, it did not go unchallenged. The first of the

Renquan tongmeng posters was torn down within twenty-four

h h' 1 d ' d' 103

ours.W en It was rep ace, It was torn own agaln. It

was attacked in a poster on 7 December which described

the American President as a'democratic emperor'. It went

on to cite the mass suicides by a thousand Christians in

Guyana as a testimony to 'the magnificent image of

't I' t d and f d I 104

capl a lS emocracy ree om .

Further indication

of opposition to the movement came with reports of increases

in plain clothes police at the wall and the arrest of two 105

people on 13 December.

It was also during this period that the dimensions of

the movement were widened through the arrival of large

numbers of peasants from the provinces in the hope of

73

bringing their local grievances to the attention of the

central authorities. It is debatable as to whether these

peasants should be considered as part of the 'wider movement'

or as their own separate entity. Certainly their demands

differed from the political activists in that they were

primarily concerned with basic material sustenance.

Nonetheless a common bond existed in that both groups

were making vocal demands of the authorities - a commonality

of purpose which was evidenced in an increasing degree of

co-operation between them. Posters attacked Renmin ribao

f . . h 106 h . d

or 19norlng t e peasants. T e peasants In turn seeme

to allign themselves with a number of the human rights

activists in the hope of furthering their own cause. And

activists such as Fu Yuehua attempted to organize the

peasants into an effective movement.

On 3 January, one of the many democratic groups

which had arisen during December announced that a rally

would be held in Tiananmen Square on 9 January to commemorate the anniversary of Zhou Enlai's death.l07 The

events of the week of the anniversary seemed to bring the

movement's consciousness back to the Tiananmen Incident

which had begun as an expression of the people's grief

over the premier's death. The rallies of 7 - 13 January

re-radicalized the movement.

It was during the week of the anniversary that at least eight unofficial journals appeared. lOB Among them

was Wei Jingsheng's Tansuo. Although unofficial journals

had appeared earlier, after the anniversary they replaced

the wallposters as the most important medium of expression

74

for the movement. It was also during this week that

peasant activists joined with the human rights advocates

in a march along Changanjie. The peasants now marched under banners of 'we want human rights,.109 After this march,

protesting peasants became increasingly active in the

. 1 110 caplta .

The movement was developing its own momentum,

independent of any course that the regime may have

originally intended.

During this third period, there were no reports of

further attacks on Wang, Wu, Ni,Chen or Ji. Only one poster called for Liuls rehabilitationlll and there was no

further mention of Peng Dehuai, Tao Zhu or Peng Zhen. The

attacks on Mao himself continued but they increasingly

became attacks on the communist system itself. These

developments suggest that for whatever purpose the regime

had allowed the movement to begin in the first place, and

whatever purpose it had subsequently used the movement

for, by early January it was clear that it was no longer

a vehicle for the realization of central policies.

This thesis is supported by the fact that during this

period, the new movement came into increasing conflict

with the authorities. In mid-January, an internal document

seems to have been circulated to the effect that the

municipal authorities were contemplating a crackdown.

Renquan tongmeng posted the text of a speech alleged to

have been given by the Second Secretary of the Municipal

Committee (Wang Shouyi) which stated that the activists

should be dealt with before they became counterrevolutionaries. 112 On 23 January, Renquan tongmeng

75

produced a poster in response to the alleged speech which

claimed that the exercise of one's constitutional rights

of freedom of speech could not be defined as counter-

1 . 113 revo ut1on.

On 25 January, Siwu luntan demanded that

the authorities retract their accusations.114 And Tansuo

inquired of the Municipal Committee:

Who gives you the right to speak like that. No one appointed you to make such accusations and you do not represent the hopes of the people. 115

That there was substance to their fears of impending

repression was evidenced with the arrest of Fu Yuehua on

23 February.

In mid-March, both Beijing ribao and Gongren ribao

attacked the movement's activists as lackeys of bourgeois

, '1' 116

1mper1a 1sm.

Again the journals counter-attacked.

They maintained that human rights was not a 'bourgeois

slogan but an expression of the profound desire of the people,117 and that the official press was engaging in 'absurd polemics,.118 On 25 March, Tansuo's special

edition accused Deng Xiaoping of betraying the movement

for the purpose of realizing his own dictatorial ambitions.

From the outset, Deng's support for the movement had been qualified. (See chapter four)l19 By mid-March, he

was attacking it publicly. When he was then attacked by

Tansuo, the suppression of the movement was inevitable.

Beijing ribao published a circular prohibiting all posters 120

opposing the leadership of the Communist Party. On

29 March, Wei was arrested. On 4 April, when Renquan

tongmeng protested against his arrest, its leaders were also arrested.12l Posters soon appeared praising Mao,

'76

the Cultural Revolution and the Beijing Municipal Committee

, 1 122 Clrcu are

Ironically, but by no means coincidentally,

the movement was suspended on the eve of the third

anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident.

'TANSUO' WITHIN THE WIDER MOVEHENT -t~ ,h

Tansuo ( 1q' \~, ) may be translated as I Exploration' ,

'Investigation' or 'Enquiry'. It was the name of the

unofficial journal edited by Wei Jingsheng.

The story of Tansuo originates with the posting of

Wei's poster The Fifth Modernization - Democracy And Other

Topics (Diwuge xiandaihua - minzhu ji qita) on 5 December.

A number of people subsequently contacted him to express

their support for his poster. At a meeting of these people

held on 1 January, Wei suggested the publication of a

magazine in order to attract a wider audience. It was

unanimously decided to launch Tansuo. Apart from Wei,

th' Y G 'd ' J' h 123

e prlme movers were ang uang, Lu Lln an LlU lngs eng.

In all, six editions of Tansuo were published, including

one special edition. These were published on 9 January,

29 January, 11 March, 25 March (Special Edition) I 9

September and 1 October. Of these I the latter two were

published after Wei's imprisonment and are therefore not

directly related to this study. The magazine was written

by hand and then mimeographed on a privately owned machine:

200 copies each for the first and second editions, 1000

copies for the third edition and 1700 for the special

d i 124 e ltlon.

They were sold for between 30 and 50 fen per

125 copy though the special edition sold for only 10.

Foreigners were usually charged higher prices. They were

77

sold at all three of Peking's 'Democracy Walls' - Xidan,

Wangfujing and Tiananmen Square. The third edition was

also taken to Tianjin for distribution. Given the population

of Peking, these details suggest an extremely modest

circulation though no figures are available to compare it

with other unofficial publications.

By the end of March, Tansuo had published a total of

thirty separate articles written by authors who used the

pen-names Jin Sheng, Chu Tian, Mu Mu, Liang Yao, Chun Si

(~. f:l:

and Ah Q. Jin Sheng ~

was Wei's

pen-name. Other articles were written in the name of the

'Editorial Department' (Bianjibu). Still others were

reprints from foreign magazines including Far Eastern

Economic Review, Ming bao, Dongxiang and the Amnesty

International Report on Political Imprisonment in the

People's Republic of China. Tansuo probably gained access

to these publications from the foreign community in Peking,

or possibly from members of their immediate families who

may have held senior administrative positions. Of the

thirty articles printed, eight are known to have been written by wei.126

Tansuo primarily addressed itself to political issues -

either polemical attacks on the regime or attempted

theoretical discourses on the ideal nature of government.

Though only one of its articles was specifically addressed

to the question of human rights, the wider notion of rights

was a continuing theme for most of its contributors.

Tansuo was one of many unofficial journals which

appeared during the life of the movement. Altogether, there

78

were at least twenty-seven such journals of which I have had

access to incomplete collections of fifteen - either as

t 1 t' . . . 1 127

rans a lons, reprlnts or orlglna s.

Some, such as

Qimeng (Enlightenment) began appearing when the movement

began. But most began in early January around the

anniversary of Zhou's death. And most were discontinued

after the suppression at the end of March, though a couple continued until early 1980.128 During the November - March

period, the number of editions produced by each of these

publications ranged from a single issue to as many as ten.

Altogether, the various journals produced some eighty-seven

editions of which Tansuo produced four - slightly less 120

than the average. J

Broadly, there were three types of journals. First,

there were those exclusively devoted to creative writing

such as Jintian (Today) and Baihua (Hundred Flowers) f

though the literary nature of these journals did not

preclude poignant political comment.

Second, there are journals with a relatively orthodox

political standpoint. These would include Beijing zhi chun

(Peking Spring), Renmin zhi sheng (Voice of the People) ,

Qimeng she (Enlightenment Society), Qunzhong cankao xiaoxi

(Reference News for the Masses), Qiushi bao (Truth), Minzhu

.yu shidai (Democracy and the Times), Qiushi (Harvest), Sihua

luntan (Four Modernizations Forum), and Women (Us). The

publication statements of these journals invariably pledged

the journals' support for the leadership of the Communist

Party. Beijing zhi chun's statement reads in part:

This pUblication takes Harxism-Leninism as its guide, adheres to the socialist road and follows

79

Comrade Mao Zedong's policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom.130

It is significant that some articles from this particular

publication were later included in officially commissioned

k 'h' i.d 131

wor s commemoratlng t e Tlananmen InCl ent.

A third group was comprised of those journals that

were not concerned about political orthodoxy. This group includes Renquan tongmeng,132 Tansuo and Jiedong (Thaw) of

which Tansuo was the most unorthodox. While Jiedong

dedicated itself to the abolition of the anachronisms contained in Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought,133

T 'd t' f . d 1 '1 134

ansuo re]ecte any no lon 0 an 1 eo oglca norm.

Of course, these are general groupings which do not

account for some journals' tendency to oscillate between

radical and conservative positions. Changes in policy were

often dictated by the political exigencies of the time.

One such journal was Siwu luntan which I have deliberately

omitted from the categories above. When it began, it

stated its opposition to 'bourgeois factionalism and

135 anarchy' and called for a correctly centralized democracy.

However, this conservative position contrasts with its

subsequent attacks on the regime for slandering the

movement and for its abuse of the law in its handling of

W ' 136 el.

Journals such as Siwu luntan defy any attempt at

categorization. Nonetheless, it is clear that Tansuo was

always at the radical fringe of the movement.

There were times when Tansuo co-operated with other

journals such as in a joint declaration by Tansuo, Siwu

luntan, Qunzhong cankao xiaoxi,Renquan tongmeng, Qimeng,

Renmin luntan and Jintian published on 25 January. The

80

statement declared that articles forty-five and fifty-two

of the constitution rendered any criticisms of the movement

unconstitutional. It also committed itself to continuing

opposition to such criticism and support for those who

had been 'unconstitutionally arrested'. For Tansuo, this

was mild language. However, the joint declaration did

demonstrate its ability to co-operate with the wider

movement.

There were other times when the journals carried on

literary debates with one another. After Renquan tongmeng

split in March, one faction accused the other of betraying

the human rights cause and rival publications were established.137 Siwu luntan attacked Qimeng she which it

accused of deviating from the principle of 'making foreign

things serve China' by advocating the American model of democracy.138 Siwu luntan also attacked Tansuo over Tansuo's attack on Deng Xiaoping in its special edition.139

It was a diverse movement. Wei Jingsheng was one of a

number of authors who contributed to Tansuo. Tansuo was

one of a number of journals which appeared during the

movement. And journals were not the movement's only

medium of expression. However, the movement's diversity

should not obscure two fundamental facts: that the official

campaign that was subsequently directed against the movement

concentrated its attack on the movement's position on

human rights and that of all the movements activists, Wei

1 b bl" 1 140

was the on y one to e put on pu lC trla .

For these

reasons alone, it is necessary to examine Wei's specific

notion of human rights.

81

CHAPTER THREE

WEI JINGSHENG ON HUMAN RIGHTS

82

BIOGRAPHY

Little is known about Wei's background. The only

reliable source of information is the transcript of his trial.l He was born in 1950 in Chao District in Anhui

Province. His class origin (chushen) is given as

revolutionary cadre (geming ganbu), indicating that either

or both his parents were party members. It has been

suggested that his father was a deputy director of the

State Capital Construction Commission (guojia jiben jianshe

. hu i.) 2

welyuan Ul .

However, this cannot be verified.

He attended both primary and high school in Beijing.

When he graduated from the Junior High School attached to

the People's University (Renmin daxue fuzhong) in the

Spring of 1966, Beijing was experiencing the initial

convulsions of the Cultural Revolution. Between 1966-68, Wei served as a Red Guard both in Beijing and shanghai.3

Along with most other Red Guards, he was 'sent down to

the countryside' (xiaxiang) in 1968 where he spent more

than a year 'learning from the poor and lower-middle peasants' in his native province of Anhui.4 He then served

as a soldier both in Anhui and Shanxi until his discharge

in 1973. Wei was then employed by the Beijing Municipal

Parks Service as an electrician in its Administrative

Office. (Beijingshi gongyuan fuwu guanlichu). There he

remained until his arrest on 29 March 1979.

DIFFICULTIES IN ANALYSIS

In the first three editions of Tansuo, Wei wrote the

following articles: the Publication Statement (Fakan

83

shengming), The Fifth Modernization - Democracy And Other Topics, The Fifth Modernization - Democracy And Other Topics Part II, (Xu diwuge xiandaihua - minzhu ji qita) ,

The Fifth Modernization - Democracy And Other Topics, Part III (Zaixu diwuge xiandaihua - minzhu ji qita) , The 'Limits' to Democracy (Minzhu de 'xiandu'), Human Rights, Equality and Democracy (Renquan pingdeng yu minzhu), The Bastille

of the Twentieth Century - Qincheng Number One Prison

(Ershi shiji de Bashidiyu - Qincheng yihao jianyu) and the

special edition's Democracy or a New Dictatorship (Yao minzhu haishi yao xinde ducai).5 Of these eight, five

have Wei's pen-name Jin Sheng while he admitted having written the other three during his cross-examination during the trial.6

However, in the course of the trial, Wei also admits

to having written 'most of the articles' appearing in Tansuo. If taken literally, this would imply that he was responsible for at least fifteen articles. Wei was responsible for reviewing all manuscripts prior to their inclusion in the journal, though the final decision to include an article seems to have been taken by a meeting of all the contributors. Though Wei may have exercised general editorial responsibility for the journal,7 it cannot be conclusively established that he actually wrote any more

than the eight articles listed above.

In any case, these

were the articles which provided the central thrust of the journal.

An analysis of the ideas contained in Wei's articles is fraught with its own difficulties. First, Wei was

84

principally a polemicist. He was more adept at attacking the regime over its abuse of human rights than he was at systematizing his attacks into a comprehensive theory of human rights. And polemical literature by its very nature does not lend itself to a systematic conceptual analysis. In fact, there is a danger in attempting to systematize

such literature in that it imposes a logical structure which may not be evident in the original.

Second, Wei's polemics are at times contradictory.

Wei had been isolated from western intellectual traditions as well as his own classical tradition. Even his regular education had been seriously interrupted by the Cultural Revolution which in turn, effectively prevented him from attending university. Therefore, when Wei came to address himself to the notion of human rights, he had no alternative but to begin at its conceptual beginnings. That some of

his notions apparently contradict one another is completely understandable in this sense.

Therefore, any analysis of Wei must take into account both these sets of complexities. To weld Wei's disparate ideas into a cohesive conceptual scheme would only result

in an inaccurate impression. Wei's ideas need to be

analyzed article by article in order to accurately ascertain both the consistencies and the contradictions in his argument.

ANALYSIS

Perhaps the most fundamental of Wei's convictions concerned the absolute or relative nature of truth. It will be recalled that Deng's shishi qiushi campaign had suggested that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought should be viewed

85

in accordance with the particular dictates of any given

time or place. Indeed, it had corne close to suggesting

that shishi or reality should be the ultimate determinant or orthodoxy. It involved only a small step to then conclude that all truth was relative and subject to unfettered enquiry. The regime avoided this step by making the contradictory claim that though Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought be 'scientifically revised', this revision would in no way alter its status as 'scientifically revealed truth'. There were others who were less willing to accept the contradiction. Among them was Wei who rejected all the parameters of what had hitherto been accepted as orthodoxy. His commitment to a relativist understanding of truth was fundamental to his other proposals.

These proposals were principally threefold: First, that the individual had the inherent right to seek selffulfillment; second, that this right should be protected

by a democratic system - a system based on a total rejection of the 'Marxist' model and a partial adaptation of 'Western' democratic concepts; third, that these reforms be achieved through struggle. These are the themes (including his

theme on the relativity of truth) that will be examined in this examination of seven of Wei's articles.8

As will become evident, not all the essays deal with all of these themes. If my analysis neglects anyone theme in a discussion of anyone article, it is because Wei himself has not mentioned it. There is, however, sufficient continuity between his articles to explore the development of his various themes - developments which at times appear contradictory.

86

Wei's Publication Statement defines his relativist

understanding of truth from the outset. Article three of

the statement reads:

Our explorations (tansuo) shall be based on realities in Chinese and world history. In other words we do not recognize the absolute correctness of any theory or person. All theories, including current theories and those which may emerge soon, shall be the themes for our discussions as well as the tools for analysis.9

Wei's reference to 'realities' and 'tools for analysis',

are concepts parallel to those used in the official press

in the shishi qiushi campaign. But Wei's implicit rejection

of Mao and Mao Zedong thought went beyond even that

campaigns elastic parameters of acceptability.

The Publication Statement has no explicit reference

to the individual or individual rights. It does refer to

the need to develop people's spiritual lives (jingshen

shenghuo) - a theme to which he returns in a later article criticizing the 'soullessness of Marxism,.lO In the same

sentence, he refers to the need to speedily achieve

d . . 11

mo ernlzatlon.

In the context of the sentence, this

'modernization' is simply a means towards an end which is

the people's spiritual and material wellbeing. However,

the nature of Wei's 'modernization' varies in some of his

later writings.

Though Wei's 'Fifth Modernization' essays were written

as a trilogy, there is little evidence of a continuing

theme.

It seems that after the posting of Wei's first

and most famous 'Modernization' poster, Wei used the title

a second and third time to symbolize a certain style of

writing - namely invective. The three essays do not

87

represent a cumulative thesis on democracy.

In the first of these essays, Wei elaborated on the

relationship between the individual and modernization:

Why is human history oriented towards progress - which may also be called modernization. It is because mankind needs all the advantages which

only a developed society can provide. It is because the social consequences of these advantages are the surest way to achieve the primordial human objective in its pursuit of happiness - and that is freedom. 12

And again

The only reason why we want to achieve modernization is to ensure democracy, freedom and happiness for the people.13

Here, the ultimate human aspiration is happiness, though

Wei speaks of the people's rather than the individual's

happiness. Nonetheless, modernization is a means to that

happiness rather than a prescription for the national wealth

and power dreamt of by earlier 'liberal' reformers.

Wei contrasted this notion of modernization with the

regimes campaign for the 'Four Modernizations'. He

criticized its use of the campaign to consolidate its own

dictatorship. He likened the campaign to the Great Leap

Forward, the Cultural Revolution and even the shishi qiushi

campaign. All held out a vision of utopia. All used that

vision to justify the need for strong centralized leadership

to co-ordinate the people - those 'dutiful packhorses of the

revolution' .

In Wei's view, the people were no more than

'mere tools in the hands of despots with expansionist

b't' ,14 am l lons .

Wei distinguishes his modernization, which aspires to

such liberal values as 'freedom and happiness', from the

regime's campaign which is seen as no more than a ploy to

88

consolidate its own power.

Wei maintained that his modernization could only be

achieved through democracy - which Wei describes as the

'Fifth Modernization':

If the Chinese people wish to modernize, they must first establish democracy. They must first modernize China's social system.lS

Wei argued that without democracy, the economy would

continue to stagnate. With democracy, production would

increase because the producers would be working 'in their

own interests'. This would cause an economic recovery.

However, it will be recalled that one of the purposes

he assigned to modernization was to 'ensure democracy'.

Therefore, Wei's democracy is both a means to an end, and

an end itself.

It is both the prerequisite of modernization

and the object of modernization. It is the state of

'happiness' to which he aspires and the system through which

he must work to achieve that 'happiness'. And Wei is

seemingly unaware of the distinction.

Wei attacks Marxism and Maoism as antithetical to

democracy. He accepts what he terms as Marx's original

concept of socialism though not explaining what he

understands that concept to be. But he rejects the

dissonance between Marxist theory and practice:

"The people are the masters of history" is mere hollow chatter. Its emptiness is plain because we see that in point of fact, the people are deprived of any possibility to determine their fate according to the wishes of the majority.16

He attributes the Chinese people's powerlessness to the

evolution of a Maoist dictatorship:

89

After the Chinese Communist Party victory, what came of all the earlier promises (of democracy) . First, they changed the slogan "People's Democratic D~ctatorship" into the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat". And the last leftovers of democracy ... disappeared too, to be replaced by the personal despotism of the Great Leader.17

In fact, he went on to equate China with Nazi Germany and

warned that it was only through democracy that the Chinese

people could escape the fate suffered by their German counterparts. 18

Wei's notion of democracy is primarily defined in

terms of a number of foreign models. He states quite boldly

that:

If one compares the democratic centralism of socialist countries with the democracy of the exploiting classes in capitalist regimes, the difference is as great as between night and day.19

However, he then equates democracy with both the Yugoslav

and the American models. It was both a system which gives

'all power to the worker's collective' and a system which

'allows the people to choose ... representatives who

administer in the name of the people' and who can always be 20

replaced by the people. Wei's commitment to economic

as well as political democracy implies that there is no

private property in his scheme. But this seems to

contradict his earlier statement regarding the producers

working in their own interests. His commitment to the

'right to recall' may be as much drawn from his experiences

in the Cultural Revolution as from his reading of the

American constitution. Nonetheless, his notion of

representative government, however illdefined, is clearly

at variance with the doctrine of democratic centralism.·