Wang Zaoshi was a Chinese lawyer and activist for human rights and constitutional government under both the Nationalist Government in Republican China and the People's Republic of China.
19 Facts About Wang Zaoshi
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Wang Zaoshi was educated at Tsinghua University then went to the United States for a doctorate at University of Wisconsin, Madison and post-doctoral work at University of London.
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Wang Zaoshi was one of the so-called Seven Gentlemen, liberal scholars and activists arrested in 1936 for advocating a United Front between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party in order to fight the Empire of Japan during leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War.
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Wang Zaoshi was active in the China Democratic League during and after the war.
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Wang Zaoshi then went as a research student to London School of Economics, where he worked with Harold Laski, the Fabian Socialist.
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In 1930 Wang Zaoshi returned to China by way of the Soviet Union and was appointed Dean of Faculty of Arts at Shanghai's Guanghua University.
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Wang Zaoshi joined them, but seemed more interested in theoretical discussions than their campaigns to support political prisoners or civil rights.
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Wang Zaoshi urged the Nationalist government to stop internal repression, to free political prisoners, and to put up resistance to the Japanese.
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In March 1938, Wang Zaoshi offered a politics class at Jiangxi School of Education as Professor and Director, responsible for the training of cadres in Jiangxi Province during the Anti-Japanese War.
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In September 1960 Wang Zaoshi was briefly rehabilitated, but in the Cultural Revolution Wang Zaoshi's daughter, Hairuo had schizophrenia.
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Wang Zaoshi's sons were hospitalized for schizophrenia and died in hospital.
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In 1966 Wang Zaoshi was held in Shanghai First Detention Center, where he died in August 1971 due to hepatorenal syndrome, at the age of 70.
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Wang Zaoshi argued "human rights" were different from the "natural rights" advocated by John Locke and rejected the idea that these rights proceeded from nature or that they were inherent; Wang insisted that human rights were indeed attached to man's moral nature, but that their central value was that meaningful existence would be impossible without them.
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Wang Zaoshi argued that constitutionalism had not failed in the years since the establishment of the Republic in 1912, for in fact it had never been tried.
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Wang Zaoshi had high hopes for the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, established just after the war with Japan started in 1937.
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Wang Zaoshi felt that the wide range of political parties and views represented in the new body could become a channel of communication between the government and the masses, leading eventually to democratic institutions.
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Wang Zaoshi criticized the Nationalist Party's doctrine of tutelage, which Sun Yat-sen had proposed to use for a transitional period but Chiang Kai-shek saw as justifying almost indefinite party rule.
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Wang Zaoshi agreed that the majority of the Chinese people were ignorant, but questioned whether the GMD was full of talented, honest, and morally pure members.
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Political tutelage, Wang Zaoshi charged, should be based on "good-man politics".