People of 1989: Zhang Wei (张炜)

Born in 1955, Zhang Wei is one of the luckier ones among his generation. When college entrance exam was re-established in 1977 after the turmoil of Cultural Revolution, he earned his entrance to Peking University as a student of economics. Two years later, he became the President of the official student union, typically a step stone to a political career in China.

In 1989, when an unexpected election campaign emerged in Peking University, Zhang Wei couldn't help to jump in, despite cautions from school officials. He joined the dissident-minded candidates such as Hu Ping and Wang Juntao but maintained his own brand of "moderate reformer" stand. He garnered third most votes, just behind Hu Ping and Wang Juntao but won deserved respects from his peers.

Zhang Wei (second from left) and his classmates at Peking University in 1982.

After graduating in 1982, Zhang Wei turned down an offer to be a youth official at the school and chose a low level position in Tianjin. In two years, he rose to be the head of a new development zone in the city and became a distinguished reformer. His work earned attentions of top-level government officials.

Zhang Wei (left) and Zhao Ziyang (right) in the 1980s.

As his star was rising, the 1989 student movement erupted. Zhang Wei was 34 then, already one of the top officials in the Tianjin city government. He did not participate in any of the protests, but after the declaration of the martial law, he wrote and submitted a short resignation letter:

I protest the decision of deploying army against unarmed people engaging in peaceful protests. I cannot agree with Li Peng's speech. Now my official duty and my loyalty to people are in conflict. I have to choose the latter. Therefore, I resign from my post.

After the Tiananmen Massacre, He wrote more protesting letters to the central government.

Zhang Wei lingered on a few years after the resignation and suffered a divorce. In 1993, he got accepted by Harvard University and left China for graduate study, while seeking treatment for his young son with leukemia. He earned a masters degree from Harvard in 1995 and then a Ph. D. from Oxford University in 2000.

Since 2002, Zhang Wei has been the president of the Center of Chinese Economics that he founded at Cambridge University. He is still not allowed to return to China.

People of 1989

Dissident Magazine "Beijing Spring" Ceases Print Edition

Beijing Spring, self-claimed to be the only Chinese dissident magazine that has a print edition, announced that it will end that edition immediately. It will continue with digital edition only.

Based in New York City, Beijing Spring boasts a history of almost 30 years. In 1982, a Chinese student by the name of Wang Bingzhang (王炳章) decided to launch the first oversea dissident publication. He named it China Spring, derived from "Beijing Spring," a term generally used to describe the "Democracy Wall" movement a few years earlier in Beijing.

In 1989, Wang Bingzhang was entangled in an internal struggle with Hu Ping, his hand-picked leader to the movement he founded. Wang Bingzhang was eventually expelled and took the rights to China Spring with him. But most of the editors and writers stayed with Hu Ping and launched Beijing Spring instead.

Later, after finally escaping from China, 1989 student leader Wang Dan joined the magazine and became its publisher. Wang Dan was instrumental in securing financial support from Taiwan's semi-official foundations to keep it afloat. However, that lifeline was severed in 2008 after Ma Yingjeou became the new President of Taiwan, according to comments posted by Wang Dan in his Facebook page.

The exact extent of readership of Beijing Spring is unknown. Hu Ping and Wang Dan expressed sorrow for the occasion and vowed to carry on with its digital edition.

Wang Dan Calls For Commemorating Tiananmen Square Massacre

October 1 is the National Day of the People's Republic of China. On this day, Wang Dan released a statement calling for the preparation of a world-wide commemoration of the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.

The statement, titled as "Commemorating June 4th, Recover Justice, Let China become the Safe Homeland for all Chinese", is cosigned by his fellow exiled leaders Wang Juntao, Hu Ping, Chen Yizi, Liu Gang, Xiang Xiaoji, Li Jinjin, and Li Hengqing. It proclaims the planning of a series of commemorative activities in Hong Kong, Washington DC, and all over the world, as well as the publication of books and art works. It also calls for volunteers to join the efforts.

NYT Archive 1989: Open Letter Signature Gatherer Deported

In a sign that the government was growing impatient with the amnesty call initiated by Fang Lizhi at the beginning of the year, New York Times reported on April 8, 1989, that the man who had been gathering signatures supporting Fang had been deported abroad.

Although labeled as a "prominent dissident", Chen Jun (陈军) was actually quite an unknown figure. When he started his signature drive within the circle of prominent intellectuals in Beijing, practically nobody had heard of him before. But nonetheless he was able to collect dozens of such signatures and provided much of the momentum in the call of amnesty. (There were also controversies that a few of the signatures might be forged or improperly collected.)

It also appeared that Chen Jun was a member of the Chinese Democracy Alliance, a dissident group based in New York and denounced by no other than Deng Xiaoping himself. At the time, Hu Ping had become the head of that group but was involved in an ugly power struggle with its founder Wang Bingzhang.

As of himself, Chen Jun practically disappeared after his deportation.

Exiled Tiananmen Leaders Appeal for Rights to Citizenship

Nineteen years after the Tiananmen Massacre, most of the then student leaders and intellectuals have come abroad. Some of them had escaped China clandestinely. But most left China legally, either as private visitors after having served their sentences in China or were "sent out" by the Chinese government in one of her "humanitarian" gestures to the world.

But no matter how they got here, they all share the same fate: their citizenships are forever in a limbo state. Even if they came with valid Chinese passports, the Chinese embassies and consulates here refused to renew them. So their passports had expired years ago. They could still travel as UN refugees, but they are, quite literally, people without a country.

Today, some of these leaders, including Wang Dan, Hu Ping, Chen Yizi, Wuer Kaixi, Liu Gang, Chen Xiaoping, Wu Renhua, and Wang Juntao, published an open letter to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand their rights of citizenship. They also appeal to UN and the International Olympic Committee to help.

The letter also indicated that these leaders are ready to try various legal actions against the Chinese government if their demands are not answered within a month. It also hinted that they might try their own ways to return to China.

The College Entrance Exam of 1977

The New York Times published an interesting article today commemorating the college entrance exam of 1977 in China. Thirty years ago, the culture revolution had interrupted higher education for a decade. High school graduates were sent down to country side to receive "reeducation" from the peasants, with their lives permanently fixated in hard labor.

That had all changed in 1977, when the new leader Deng Xiaoping re-instituted the National College Entrance Exam. He did that only months after he regained power, as one of the first critical decisions he had ever made. The decision sent shock waves throughout the country and millions of families to drop everything at hand for the preparation of the exams. 5.7 million youth took the exam and only 4.7 percent of them gained admission to any colleges.

The Times article listed a few prominent names in that generation, such as Li Keqiang (李克强), who is now poised to become the next generation to lead the country.

However, the article failed to mention another group of people in that 1977 class. People such as Hu Ping (胡平), Chen Ziming (陈子明), and Wang Juntao (王军涛). They played significant roles in the subsequent Beijing Spring movement and the 1980 local election campaign in Beijing. Later, Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao was deeply involved in the 1989 student movement and was blamed as the "black hands" behind the students.

One of the student leaders of the 1989 movement, Liu Gang (刘刚), also belonged to that class of 1977. He took the exam despite of his young age: he was only a junior in high school at the time. But he earned a score good enough to be admitted into the University of Science and Technology of China.