GLOBAL VIEWPOINT: The United States was once the greatest champion of human rights in China. Now (President) Clinton is going to the "scene of the crime" at Tiananmen Square. What are the implications of his visit? How will it be viewed by the average Chinese?
WEI: America has become the leader of a full Western retreat from the human rights cause in China. Clinton's decision to go to Beijing at this time sends a very clear signal that he is more concerned with supporting the autocracy than the democratic movement in China.
The Chinese people will view Clinton's visit the same way normal Americans or other decent people would: Imagine if your brother or sister had been killed on the street. And then you were to see Clinton shaking hands with the very people who killed your loved ones. You can imagine the depth of your anger and shame at the brutal cynicism of it all.
VIEWPOINT: Perhaps Clinton's embrace of China's leaders only seals the fate of a human rights movement already defeated? When you were released from jail, another important dissident, Liu Binyan, wrote that you were "alone" because the temptation of prosperity had made the Chinese people indifferent to your cause.
WEI: There is certainly truth in what Liu says, but it only describes half of the situation. It is true that most people have turned their energies and attention to making and spending money. That doesn't mean they are not concerned with human rights. It only means they don't dare make any public statements out of fear of persecution.
What is more interesting is that activism and discussions of human rights and democracy have now moved from students and dissidents to mainstream academics, non-political activists and officials within the Communist Party itself. Their approach is different, though. They do not publicly demand democracy but instead work to resolve specific cases concerning individual rights in the criminal system, in the workplace or as peasants or consumers. Everything they do involves the principles that are contained in democracy and human rights.
For example, one of the most famous people in China today is Wang Hai, a kind of consumer advocate. Under Chinese law, any store that is caught knowingly selling counterfeit items - such as cell phones or Sony Walkmans - at prices paid for authentic brand-name products must pay the consumer back double the purchase price. Wang has made it his business to discover frauds and use the "rule of law" to get refunds on behalf of "the rights of consumers."
One can say, therefore, that the movement has not been defeated but transformed.
VIEWPOINT: Perhaps, then, the path to the rule of law has shifted from the Democracy Wall - where your famous call for "the fifth modernization of democracy" was posted back in 1979 - to the shopping mall. Perhaps the Wang Hais of China are replacing the Wei Jingshengs?
WEI: Wang certainly represents a new characteristic of the democratic movement inside China, though he is not overly important because his stated purpose is so aligned with consumer materialism. More important, I think, are those working on property rights, the rights of women, peasants and citizens.
Another highly significant process unfolding now in China is the expanding freedom of expression. I'm not speaking only about editors, reporters, television producers and filmmakers breaking out of censorship but of the creation of new media forums that include many voices and reveal far more information to the public than ever before. The Beijing press, to take one example, now regularly reports reliable information on the unhealthful air quality of the city. Even a year ago providing truthful, if negative, information to the public was considered an intrusion on authority.
VIEWPOINT: Some Chinese leaders like Qiao Shi have called for "the rule of law." Are these calls sincere?
WEI: I think Qiao, who was head of the National People's Congress, means what he says because he feels the pressure from below in the party and in the Congress. Even many party members have come to the conclusion that the cost of maintaining the present one-party dictatorship will be the collapse of China. For Chinese patriots, that price is too high.
VIEWPOINT: With political repression but economic liberty, the state of freedom in China today lies somewhere between "the hard line and the Hard Rock Cafe" out in the Beijing suburbs. Is it an illusion for the West to believe that the hard line can't last because the bubbling freedom to prosper will inevitably crack the crusty political mantle?
WEI: China's change in a democratic direction is not inevitable. All we can say is that inside China today the Communist Party has no way of containing the countervailing forces for more freedom. But because the communists don't allow for the organized existence of democratic influences inside China - and because the West has now abandoned the democratic movement - one can't say which direction events will turn in a crisis.
The case of Zaire is instructive. Mobutu knew he couldn't go on the way things were. But since the West failed to support a democratic alternative, Laurent Kabila emerged out of the vacuum. Is Kabila a change for the better? China could get an even bigger Kabila.