Wei Jingsheng is a Chinese human rights activist and dissident.
24 Facts About Wei Jingsheng
2.
Wei Jingsheng is best known for his involvement in the Chinese democracy movement.
3.
Wei Jingsheng is most prominent for having authored the essay "The Fifth Modernization", which was posted on the Democracy Wall in Beijing in 1978.
4.
Briefly released in 1993, Wei Jingsheng continued to engage in his dissident activities by speaking to visiting journalists, and as punishment, he was imprisoned again from 1994 to 1997, making it a total of 18 years he has spent in various prisons.
5.
Wei Jingsheng was deported to the United States of America on 16 November 1997, on medical parole.
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Wei Jingsheng was the oldest of four children, brought up by Chinese Communist Party cadres.
7.
In 1966, Wei Jingsheng joined the Red Guards as a 16-year-old student during the Cultural Revolution.
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Wei Jingsheng lived in remote rural areas in Northern China and was able to speak with peasant farmers about the widespread famines that had occurred a few years before, during the Great Leap Forward.
9.
Wei Jingsheng uncovered the role that the communist government under Mao Zedong played in causing the famines, and it forced Wei to start questioning the nature of the system which he lived under.
10.
Wei Jingsheng did not publicly voice his feelings until 1978, when he decided to take part in the newly emerging Democracy Wall movement which was then taking place in Beijing.
11.
The basic theme of Wei Jingsheng's essay is that democracy should be a modernization goal for China along with the other four modernizations which were proposed by Deng.
12.
Wei Jingsheng signed the essay with his real name and address.
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Wei Jingsheng differed from the mainstream of the Democracy Wall movement because unlike the majority of movement participants, he argued that a totalitarian political system was the source of the people's grievances.
14.
Wei Jingsheng was one of the few activists who explicitly argued against Marxism and the leadership of a Marxist party.
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Wei Jingsheng was known for his editorial work in the short-lived magazine Explorations in 1979.
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Wei Jingsheng had published a letter under his name in March 1979 in which he denounced the inhuman conditions which existed in Beijing's Qincheng Prison, where the 10th Panchen Lama was imprisoned.
17.
Wei Jingsheng ultimately spent a total of 18 years in different prisons in China.
18.
Wei Jingsheng remained imprisoned until 14 September 1993, when he was released just one week before the International Olympic Committee held a vote over whether it should award the 2000 Summer Olympics to Beijing or Sydney.
19.
Wei Jingsheng continued to speak out, despite the threat of arrest.
20.
On 27 February 1994, Wei Jingsheng met with United States Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck to discuss human rights conditions in China, and he met with journalists.
21.
Wei Jingsheng was arrested the following week along with fifteen other democracy and labor activists.
22.
Wei Jingsheng was sent to the United States due to international pressure, especially the request by the then US President Bill Clinton.
23.
In 1996, Wei Jingsheng was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
24.
Wei Jingsheng is a winner of numerous other human rights and democracy awards, including the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1996, the National Endowment for Democracy Award in 1997, the Olof Palme Memorial Prize in 1994, and the International Activist Award by the Gleitsman Foundation in 1993.