“China’s Sakharov”, the astrophysicist known for the 1986 student protests and his 1989 refuge in the US embassy
Astrophysicist and Chinese dissident who argued that repression of thought damaged both science and society.
An astrophysicist from Beijing, labelled a rightist in 1957 and later rehabilitated, he became vice-president of the University of Science and Technology of China. In 1986 lectures he openly questioned Marxism’s scientific authority and party leadership, was named the spiritual guide of that winter’s student protests, and in 1987 was expelled from the party — a pretext for Hu Yaobang’s fall. In January 1989 he wrote an open letter to Deng Xiaoping asking for Wei Jingsheng’s release; after the crackdown of 4 June he and his wife Li Shuxian took refuge in the US embassy for thirteen months before being allowed to leave. He taught at the University of Arizona and died in 2012.
Career timeline
- 1984–1987Vice-President of the University of Science and Technology of China
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.
Career timeline
- 1978–1979Democracy Wall activist and editor of Explorations
