Saturday, June 03

JAN WONG
The Globe and Mail
Saturday, June 3, 2000

Toronto -- Wei Jingsheng curled up on the living-room sofa, split open a ginger-boiled peanut and spoke about his bitter lesson in U.S.-style democracy.

To his dismay, the U.S. House of Representatives approved normal trading rights for China last week, ending decades of anti-Communist policy. After witnessing the prevote horse-trading, China's best-known dissident was depressed.

"I knew that democracy was dirty and dark," said Mr. Wei, in Chinese. "But I'm still shocked."

This was a sharp comment, coming from a survivor of 18 years in the Chinese gulag, much of it in solitary confinement. It was especially sharp considering that his "crime" back then was advocating Western-style democracy.

Exiled in late 1997, he campaigns full-time for human rights in China. Mr. Wei, who has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, has never married. "Who would want a vagabond like me?" he joked.

To Mr. Wei, nothing was more powerful a lever for improving human rights than Beijing's trade status with Washington. A few evenings ago, after driving up from Washington, he relaxed at a friend's home in Mississauga, Ont. Over homemade chive dumplings, Canadian beer and tiny glasses of powerful sorghum liquor, he regaled guests with tales of Washington pork-barrel politics that culminated in the 237-197 vote. One Democrat from Pennsylvania, for instance, agreed to vote for permanent trading rights in return for tax breaks for his distressed coal region.

"They are completely immoral. As corrupt as Third World countries," Mr. Wei said. "And all this is legal. What kind of democracy is this?"

Mr. Wei, who just turned 50, laughed often, revealing a full set of false teeth. At dinner, a six-year-old boy asked, all innocence, "How come you have so many fake teeth?"

Mr. Wei hesitated. How to explain to a child in the West about jails in the East? "Bad people put me in jail," he said, as someone translated, "because I was trying to help good people." His teeth fell out, he added, because he never had fruit or vegetables.

Then he chuckled and lit a Panda cigarette, which someone noted was the favourite brand of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader responsible for throwing him into jail. He chuckled again. A loner, he turns gregarious in company, especially after 10 hours alone in his car.

He remains stubbornly principled. In Chinese jails, he staged six hunger strikes for newspapers, pen and paper, and better food for political prisoners. In the United States, he declined a grant from Congress of $2-million (U.S.) for his pro-democracy work. "They wanted to control me," Mr. Wei said, explaining that the condition was that he stop criticizing President Bill Clinton's China policy.

Mr. Wei survives through freelance writing and the generosity of his many supporters. (He visited one of them the next day in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.) Columbia University in New York has also given him office space and a dorm room on campus. After his dispute with Congress, Mr. Wei said, Columbia briefly tried to evict him. It soon backed down.

Since arriving in the United States, he has tried to unite the exiled dissident community. But Mr. Wei doesn't always get along with other prominent exiles, including Fang Lizhi, the astrophysicist and human-rights crusader.

It was Mr. Fang's open letter calling for Mr. Wei's release that sparked the biggest spontaneous demonstrations in modern Chinese history. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Mr. Fang took refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

Nor does Mr. Wei have much time for Wang Dan, the No. 1 Tiananmen student leader on Beijing's most-wanted list. Mr. Wang, who was also exiled after serving time in prison, is scheduled to speak in Toronto tonight at a demonstration in front of the Chinese consulate marking the 11th anniversary of the massacre. Later, he joins a candlelight vigil at University of Toronto.

For his part, Mr. Wei spent last night at a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Washington. Tomorrow, he joins a candlelight vigil outside the Chinese consulate in New York. Next Wednesday, he returns to Washington to continue lobbying against normalized trade relations with China. However, the U.S. Senate is expected to endorse the permanent measure as early as this month.

Mr. Wei currently divides his time between his dorm in New York and a tiny apartment in Washington. He has two cellphones and two cars, a snazzy silver Isuzu sport-utility vehicle and a burgundy Volkswagen Passat.

Despite his near-complete lack of English, he drives fearlessly all over North America and Europe. For a long time, he assumed "Ausfahrt" was a popular city name in Germany -- until someone explained that it means "exit."

When Mr. Wei first arrived, U.S. authorities were apparently concerned Chinese agents might harm him. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani provided police bodyguards. Later, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation took over. After months went by without incident, the FBI dropped him.

Two weeks later, Mr. Wei felt he was being followed. It was always two or three Asian men, he said, in either a red Toyota sports car or a dark grey Mercedes Benz.

In the fall of 1998, he noticed a green car following him in Oakland, Calif. "I drive pretty fast, so it's easy to spot any tail." Suddenly, he said, the car cut him off, forcing him into the concrete barrier. Mr. Wei wasn't hurt, but his rental car suffered $3,000 damage. As one who has lived his life defying authority, Mr. Wei still hadn't obtained a driver's licence -- he'd used a friend's licence to rent the car -- so he didn't report the incident.

Mr. Wei has since obtained his licence. He believes Chinese agents are responsible for slashing his tires twice last spring. Three weeks ago, his covert supporters in China warned him that Beijing had sent a team of agents to the United States. "It's a group that specializes in car accidents," he said.

Mr. Wei is unconcerned. Years ago, he said he was willing to die for democracy in China. The son of a senior Communist Party official, he grew up in privileged isolation in Beijing. (His name, Jingsheng, means "born in the capital.") Each night before dinner, his father made him recite a quotation from Chairman Mao. In 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Wei, then 16, was shocked to see a woman, smeared with mud, begging for food at a rural train station. It was his first inkling that China was not a socialist utopia.

After a stint in the army, he worked as an electrician at the Beijing Zoo. In 1979, he pasted up protest posters on "Democracy Wall" in Beijing. Mr. Deng ordered his arrest. After a secret trial, Mr. Wei was sentenced to 15 years.

He was still in jail on June 4, 1989, when Chinese soldiers killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians in and around Tiananmen Square. He was released in 1993, but rearrested a few months later.

Like Rip Van Winkle, Mr. Wei has spent almost no time in the new China. So he has no idea how cellphones, the Internet and capitalist-style economics are undermining traditional Communist controls. Thus, he doesn't buy Mr. Clinton's argument that normalized trade is the fastest way to improve human rights in China.

Instead, he fears that Beijing's now-inevitable entry into the World Trade Organization will spark massive unemployment in China. Some dissidents say instability will only hasten the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party. But not Mr. Wei.

"This kind of collapse isn't what we hope for. It's very possible another kind of dictatorship would emerge. We think a peaceful transformation is best for China."

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