Dissident

Dissident 1936–2012 → Exile 1990 · natural causes

“China’s Sakharov”, the astrophysicist known for the 1986 student protests and his 1989 refuge in the US embassy

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.

Dissident 1950–

The electrician who pasted “The Fifth Modernisation” on Democracy Wall, deported after eighteen years in prison

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.