Wang Dan (王丹), who once topped the Chinese government’s most wanted list of leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement, remains fiercely proud of his role, despite years in jail and exile.
“We lost a lot but we gained a lot too ... I’m proud every time I think about it,” Wang said in an interview from Taiwan.
Twenty years on he has no regrets over the tumultuous period that transformed him from a college student to a counter-revolutionary.
Along with other student leaders like Chai Ling (柴玲) and Wu’er Kaixi (吾爾開希), Wang led six weeks of peaceful protests from makeshift tents on Tiananmen Square, turning the movement into the biggest threat ever to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule.
“We did not make sufficient preparation at the time,” Wang said of his eventual capture and nearly seven years of imprisonment.
In 1998 he was expelled to the US following an international campaign for his release.
He graduated with a doctorate in history from Harvard University last year and currently is a senior associate member of Oxford University, where he continues his fight to bring democracy to China.
A photo of Wang in Tiananmen Square epitomizes youth in revolt. Microphone in hand, long floppy hair brushed away from big, round glasses, Wang thoughtfully harangues the crowd with a tense look on his face. At the time he was 20 years old.
“We are going to take back the powers of democracy and freedom from the hands of that gang of old men who have grabbed those powers away from us,” Wang said in his first speech at the end of April 1989.
“What was the most memorable for me was the demonstration on April 27,” Wang said in an interview conducted 20 years later.
“There were banners everywhere. This was the first unauthorized political demonstration in the People’s Republic of China ... the Chinese people had begun to speak with their own voice,” he said.
An editorial in the People’s Daily a day earlier triggered the protest after it called the initial days of unrest “a well planned plot ... to throw the country into turmoil” and “reject the Communist Party and the socialist system.”
Defying police orders, more than 50,000 Beijing students walked from the university district to Tiananmen Square in an orderly and peaceful march that elicited wide support from the local population.
There was a sense of euphoria, as students felt victory could be within reach.
“There were indeed many differences in opinion among students, but obviously that was not the cause for the massacre,” Wang said.
“It was the differences in opinion among the Chinese Communist Party leadership. As long as the government insisted on suppression, it would not have mattered what strategy or tactics the students adopted, the result would be the same,” Wang said.
Wang said that China’s leaders today “are a lot more conservative” than leaders in 1989 like Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦) and Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽), the two top party leaders who were ousted in 1987 and 1989 respectively for being too soft on student protests.
“Today’s leaders no longer have any will to change the way the Chinese Communist Party governs,” Wang said.
“Of course we are facing more difficulties than in 1989,” he said. “Economic development has distracted people’s attention and the international environment has changed.”
This has not prevented Wang from maintaining contact with many of the veterans of the 1989 movement, including those in China.
“The government has less and less control over the people, a civil society is emerging with the help of the Internet,” he said.
And what has he himself learned from the history-changing events 20 years ago?
“I learned to be patient in waiting, being optimistic while facing the difficulties,” Wang said.
“I am optimistic on returning to China. I think it will come soon,” he said.
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