Wei Jingsheng

Early Life

Wei Jingsheng was born on 20 May 1950 in Beijing into a Chinese Communist Party cadre family; his father worked in the civil aviation administration and his mother in the textile industry, and he was the eldest of their children. After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, he joined the Red Guards. From 1969 to 1973 he served in the People’s Liberation Army. Following his discharge in 1973, he worked as an electrician at the Beijing Zoo until his arrest in 1979.

The Democracy Wall Movement and "The Fifth Modernization"

On 5 December 1978, Wei posted an essay titled "The Fifth Modernization: Democracy and Other Issues" on Beijing’s Xidan Democracy Wall, signing it with his real name and address. The essay argued that alongside Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations — agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology — a fifth modernization, democracy, was essential, without which the other four would be unattainable; it became one of the defining texts of the Democracy Wall Movement. On 25 March 1979, shortly after Deng put forward the "Four Cardinal Principles," Wei posted a follow-up essay, "Do We Want Democracy or a New Dictatorship?", directly likening Deng to a dictator and naming him in public criticism.

First Arrest and Sentence

On 29 March 1979, three days after Beijing authorities banned the posting of critical wall posters, Wei was arrested along with roughly a hundred other activists. He was accused of supplying a foreign national with military intelligence concerning the Sino-Vietnamese border conflict and was charged with "counterrevolutionary agitation." On 16 October 1979 he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. He was granted early parole on 14 September 1993, six months before his term was due to end — timing widely reported as linked to Beijing’s bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympics, which was ultimately awarded to Sydney. After his release he resumed human rights advocacy.

Second Arrest and Sentence

Around 1 April 1994, shortly after meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck, Wei was detained again and held incommunicado for an extended period before being formally arrested on subversion charges in November 1994. On 13 December 1995 he was sentenced to a further 14 years’ imprisonment for "conspiring to subvert the government."

Exile

On 16 November 1997, Wei was released on medical parole and flown directly to the United States, arriving in Detroit and being admitted to Henry Ford Hospital for treatment; his two prison terms had totalled nearly eighteen years. He subsequently settled in the Washington, D.C. area, founded the Wei Jingsheng Foundation in 1998, and helped establish the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition, continuing his advocacy work in exile. He received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1996 while still imprisoned, and an award from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy in 1997, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on multiple occasions, though the exact number cannot be confirmed since Nobel nomination records remain sealed for fifty years. Reporting on the overseas democracy movement has also documented disputes between Wei and figures such as Liu Qing and Harry Wu over organisational direction and resources. As of recent years, Wei continues to live in the United States and comments on Chinese current affairs through social media.