1950.5.20.–
The electrician who pasted “The Fifth Modernisation” on Democracy Wall, deported after eighteen years in prison
Born 20 May 1950, he pasted “The Fifth Modernization” on the Xidan Democracy Wall in December 1978, spent a total of eighteen years in prison across 1979–1993 and 1994–1997, and was deported to the United States on 16 November 1997.
Raised in a senior-cadre family in Beijing, he wandered the countryside as a Red Guard and saw the traces of famine before becoming an electrician at the Beijing Zoo. In December 1978 he pasted “The Fifth Modernisation — Democracy” on the Xidan Democracy Wall, arguing that Deng Xiaoping’s four modernisations were hollow without democracy, and published the journal Explorations. Arrested in March 1979, he received fifteen years for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and leaking military secrets”; released in 1993, he was rearrested and sentenced to fourteen more. Deported to the United States on medical grounds in 1997, he continues the democracy movement in exile.
Also known as: Wei Jing-sheng
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1973Worked as an electrician at Beijing Zoo
- 1978–1979Democracy Wall activist and editor of Explorations
- 1978.12.05Posted The Fifth Modernization on the Democracy Wall
- 1979–1993Imprisoned on counterrevolutionary charges
- 1993Resumed interviews and democratic activism after release
- 1994–1997Imprisoned again before exile in the United States
Related historical events
- 1976–1992Reform and opening: the Deng Xiaoping eraAuthor of “The Fifth Modernisation”Demanded democracy at Democracy Wall; arrested in 1979 and sentenced to fifteen years.
- 1989The Tiananmen protests and the crackdown of 4 June 1989Political prisoner named in the petitionsIntellectuals demanded his release early in 1989.
Prison Letters and International Recognition
Wei Jingsheng remained in prison until 14 September 1993, but the years behind bars were not merely a period of detention. He continued to write letters explaining his views, some addressed directly to Deng Xiaoping and others to family members, which accumulated into a book of prison letters. Even inside, his name became fixed in international human-rights discourse: beginning with the Gleitsman Foundation's International Activist Award in 1993, he received the Olof Palme Memorial Prize in 1994, then the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1996, and the National Endowment for Democracy Award in 1997. In 1998 he established the Wei Jingsheng Foundation in New York, which still works from Washington, D.C. for human rights and democratisation in China. His release, one week before the International Olympic Committee voted on the 2000 Summer Olympics, is documented without a claim about the motive behind it.