China's Dissidents Turning Homeward

News Feature

By Russell Mahakian, Pacific News Service

Many Chinese democracy activists from Tiananmen Square and earlier movements are keeping the faith, working from Western countries for human rights and an open political system in their homeland. But their ranks are thinning.

OAKLAND, Calif. - April 14, 2004 - Chinese democracy activists in exile around the world continue to fight for political reform in China, the world's most populous country. But the lure of China's booming, $1.3 trillion dollar economy is overshadowing the country's human rights record and iron-clad, one-party rule, and slowly thinning activist ranks.

The Chinese democracy movement received international attention during the late 1980s, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, when government troops opened fire on demonstrators in Beijing on June 4, 1989. The roots of the struggle started decades earlier, however, and gained momentum with the Democracy Wall movement, which started on a Beijing street where people put up signs and protested for democracy in 1978. The movement later spread to cities across China.

Oakland, Calif., resident Lin Muchen, now in his 50s, was there.

"We went out onto the square in Shanghai and said things that no newspaper would dare to print," questioning the political system and the Cultural Revolution, says Lin, who served four years of hard labor in the early 1980s and came to the United States in 1996. "When I got out of jail in 1985, I continued going to meetings, and everywhere I went the police were there. They found ways of making my life miserable."

Oakland resident Wang Xizhe was one of the earliest advocates for democracy in China. Thirty years ago he and other activists wrote and put up a poster titled, "On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System."

"We criticized the Communist Party and all the awful things that went on during the Cultural Revolution," Wang says. He was jailed in 1977 for two years, and was arrested again in 1981 and imprisoned for 12 years. Like Lin, Wang came to the United States in 1996, fleeing China after a letter criticizing the government he co-authored with activist Liu Xiaobo landed Liu in jail.

Both Lin and Wang are still active in the movement. In between working construction and driving jobs, Lin paints protest banners behind his North Oakland apartment and goes to meetings. Wang corresponds with activists all over the world.

But each recognizes the pressures of keeping the faith.

"Many people have to make a living, study English," Lin says. "Many don't have enough time. Others stop showing up to meetings in hopes of going back to China."

Sociology professor Craig Calhoun of New York University has watched Chinese democracy activists struggle in America. "China has been growing economically and is becoming a more attractive place in material terms, including in the opportunities for intellectual work," says Calhoun, author of "Neither Gods Nor Emperors," a book about the Chinese democracy movement.

"Life in the West isn't all that exciting or rewarding for most activists," Calhoun says. "While they were initially celebrities, they no longer have a very central position in either Chinese or Western public discourse."

The long reach of the Chinese government also affects the movement. Activists say Beijing keeps close tabs on religious and political organizations abroad. "If you become inactive or passive about what you think of the Chinese government, they may take you off blacklists," says Xing Zheng, president of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars (IFCSS). "But if you are active and a leader, it is risky to return to China."

The IFCSS was formed in July of 1989 in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was once an umbrella organization for over 200 Chinese organizations in the United States, and counted nearly 40,000 members. Today, it is an independent organization with less than 50 active members. The majority of Chinese organizations left IFCSS because its leadership refused to stray from its founding principals, which were to pursue political reform in China and to demand justice for the people who died in the Tiananmen massacre. Many local Chinese organizations wanted to establish official relationships with Beijing; as members of the IFCSS, they could not.

"We have fewer and fewer people remaining in our organization, but we are still here," says Dr. Xing Zheng a U.C. Berkeley researcher who took part in the student movement in 1989. "We are not going to withdraw."

"We had a lot of strength in the late eighties," Wang recalls. "Back then, governments would pressure China and they would give in." Wang was released from prison in 1993 along with four other prominent activists because of U.S. pressure and China's desire to host the Olympic Games.

Wang says that because of America's slumping economy, the United States has become more reliant on China. "As far as human rights go, the U.S. has gotten weaker," he says.

Lin understands why many have left the movement. "When you live abroad you have to make a living, pay rent and sometimes you don't have enough time to organize or go to meetings," he says. "You don't have the time to write articles and even if you do, what affect will it have on what's happening in China?"

Wang says he does not resent former democracy activists. "I can't demand people do what I do or go through what I went through. My father died and they wouldn't let me return for his funeral. My mother is in her 80s and I can't go see her."

With the help of his family in America, Wang still dedicates all his time to the movement. "The Chinese government has tried to silence our voices and confiscate our resources," he says. "Today, some people want to forget about all that and make up. I cannot."

PNS contributor Russell Mahakian is a free-lance journalist from Oakland, Calif.