"My freedom is your victory," Wei told Marie Holzman soon after his 1993 release. On one point he was emphatic - that without the international pressure which had been brought to bear on his behalf, he would have been killed in prison. He is convinced that the prison regimen at the beginning of his incarceration was expressly designed to weaken him in the hopes that he would collapse and die. While his fourteen-and-a-half years of incarceration certainly succeeded in weakening him physically, it did not weaken him mentally. "The loneliness, the impression that no one was concerned about me any more weighed on me terribly, " he told Holzman. Even beatings, he acknowledged, were sometimes preferable to the crushing solitude.
From his arrest until 1981, Wei was held in the notorious K-Block of Banbuqiao Detention Center, a section which was supposed to house only prisoners who had not yet been sentenced and those who had been condemned to death. In his solitary confinement cell, he maintained his health by practicing calisthenics and boxing daily and sleeping with the window open even in freezing temperatures. His guards permitted him to go outside for a few minutes every day. It was on one of these occasions in 1980 that Liu Qing saw Wei while crossing a courtyard. "As I was returning to my cell after being let out for exercise, I came face to face with Wei Jingsheng,' Liu wrote in his account of his own early days in prison. "He was pale and thin, and when he saw me, there was an expression of bewilderment on his face. Two interrogators led him straight past me."
Then, in 1981, Wei was transferred to a solitary confinement cell in Beijing No. 1 Prison. For most of 1982 and 1983, he was not allowed to leave his cell. Moreover, his food rations became increasingly meager, the main diet consisting of coarse grains and thin "vegetable soup" which was actually little more than water with a dash of soy sauce. 'When I asked to buy fruit with the money my brother and sisters sent me," Wei said, "they just laughed in my face." Normally, if prisoners had money they could ask the guards to purchase food for them to supplement the severely inadequate diet which is an aspect of all Chinese prisons. What is more, Wei believed that the flue from a heating stove in the neighboring cell was intentionally directed towards his tiny window so that he could not allow fresh air into his cell. "I lived in total pollution," he said.
During this period, Wei's health declined precipitously: he lost eight of his teeth, developed a heart condition, contracted hepatitis and became very weak. Several hunger strikes in protest brought no changes in his conditions. Wei realized the reason for the lack of a response when he discovered that the guards who were charged with recording his every word and action were writing down that he was eating the meals brought to him. He decided that hunger strikes under such conditions were worse than pointless, and decided he must try to maintain his strength. He was kept so incommunicado that even the guards were forbidden to speak to him. "In 1984, it was difficult for me to speak since my vocal chords had lost the habit of functioning," he later remembered. "It was hard for me to utter any words."
Somehow, Wei survived this inhuman treatment, and in 1984, he was finally sent to a labor camp in Qinghai Province, on a high desert plateau at Tanggemu. "They tried to find a labor camp which was at above an altitude of above 3,500 meters, because in general, people with heart conditions don't survive this kind of expedition," Wei said. Most such camps were in Tibet, but since the authorities were worried about security there, Wei was sent to Tanggemu, where the altitude was only 3,000 meters.
The strategy backfired: in Qinghai Wei was able to go outside and the clear air and the company of three other prisoners transferred with him helped to restore him to relative good health. He was also able to raise rabbits in the yard outside his cell, and thus earned some extra money to supplement his meager diet. Ironically, two of Wei's three companions in the tiny wing for political prisoners were former Red Guards who had belonged to the pro-Jiang Qing faction and had been sent to prison for their actions. The third was a CCP official convicted of embezzlement. Wei believes that the three were incarcerated with him to serve as "impartial" witnesses to what the authorities hoped would be a death from "natural causes." Despite their differing political careers, Wei formed a close friendship with Kuai Dafu, one of Beijing's most notorious Red Guard leaders, during their four years together in Qinghai.
Starting in December 1979, his family was permitted to begin sending him things in prison. From August 1981 onwards, his brother and two sisters were able to see him every two or three months, but only when notified, not on any regular schedule. Such notification had to precede all family visits during Wei's long imprisonment. During his time in Qinghai he was allowed only one visit annually until 1990 when it became biannual. Visits were occasionally suspended, the family was never given a reason for this. Wei's father, who was said to have been pressured to cut off relations with Wei, to "draw a clear line of demarcation with the enemy,' did not wish to visit his son. In all his years in prison, Wei never knew of the campaigns being waged for his release in the outside world, the termination of all visits was threatened if his siblings spoke of anything but family matters during their annual reunions. Their visits were taped and filmed, Wei said.
In the absence of any concrete information about Wei's condition, rumors abounded. In 1984, there were reports that he had had a nervous breakdown, was suffering from schizophrenia and had twice been admitted to a psychiatric hospital; in 1987 rumors circulated that he had died in prison. Rumors were used to demoralize other dissidents. Liu Qing remembers: "Around the time of the June 4th massacre in 1989, the prisoners and guards said to me: 'Have you heard? Wei Jingsheng is suffering a complete mental and physical breakdown.' They said Deng Xiaoping had personally ordered that Wei be sent to Beijing for treatment, since he wished to preserve Wei as a living lesson for any who would challenge him. Whether Deng ever said any such thing may never be known, but the fact that both prisoners and guards all knew Wei Jingsheng by name shows that although his fourteen years in jail may have silenced his voice, his fame actually increased."
In the fall of 1989, Wei was again transferred, this time to a labor camp, the Nanpu New Life Salt Works on the Bohai Gulf near the city of Tangshan. This is one of the largest penal colonies in the PRC and the largest coastal salt works in Asia. Its production generates a great deal of revenue for the authorities. Wei, however, was not put to work. He was confined entirely to a special compound, consisting of a cell measuring two by two and a half meters with an adjoining 15-square meter yard. He was allowed no contact with fellow prisoners.
During his time at Nanpu, Wei protested almost constantly, demanding improvements in his conditions such as more access to reading material. He also pressed relentlessly for a reexamination and appeal of his case. He wanted to engage a lawyer to mount a legal challenge against his conviction, but this was denied. He staged a number of hunger strikes. During one, which lasted close to 100 days, he consumed only a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in water per day. His fasts achieved only limited success: Wei was given more books, magazines and newspapers (all of which had first to be vetted by the prison authorities) and the color TV he had asked for.
Concern about the situation of political prisoners in China reached a high point after the suppression of the 1989 democracy movement, and Wei Jingsheng's case was frequently raised by governments and human rights organizations around the world. In May 1992, the first picture of Wei seen abroad since his trial was published in a Beijing-run magazine in Hong Kong. The picture showed Wei being examined by a doctor, who was looking into his mouth, and was said to "prove' that Wei had neither been tortured nor lost his teeth.
Between 1979 and 1981, Wei was not even permitted to have a pen. Like many other uncooperative dissidents who also refused to "admit their crimes," he was forbidden to write letters, even to his family or friends. Only letters to the "higher authorities" were permitted. Consequently, he wrote to all the top leaders of the CCP and the government, filling thousands of pages with questions on such subjects as the future of Tibet (excerpts reprinted below), the treatment of political prisoners, the development of China's economy and human rights (excerpts reprinted below), as well as numerous appeals related to his own case.
After Wei's release in 1993, when the Chinese-language Taiwan newspaper chain, United Daily, published some of his prison letters, readers could discern the same ironic turns of phrase of Wei's earlier writings. He addressed the leaders as equals in the same familiar, somewhat disrespectful tone evident in 'Do we Want Democracy or New Autocracy?" For instance, at the beginning of a letter dated September 1990 to CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin (who was brought in after the 1989 crackdown to replace ousted Party leader Zhao Ziyang), Wei wrote: "On the TV. screen you look fatter than you were in Shanghai; I guess this only indicates what your very skillful cook has achieved, rather than implying that you are having an easy time. In fact, you are not.... Nominally, you are the most senior leader but you still have to echo what others say." Wei impudently went on to encourage Jiang to stand for political and economic progress and reject outdated thinking of the reactionaries in the Party.
"Throughout his long years in prison, Wei never stopped thinking, analyzing, planning for the future," said Robin Munro, Hong Kong director of Human Rights Watch/Asia. 'The rare glimpses of dogged resistance and perseverance by one solitary man on behalf of an ideal that these letters give, coming as they did from the depths of the Chinese gulag, are of an awe-inspiring intensity."
Considering their author's situation, the letters show a remarkable grasp of world events. "When I was in prison, I did not know much about things happening in the outside world," Wei told United Daily on the eve of the publication of his first letter. "Sometimes I had to rely on conjectures, which were not necessarily accurate. However, from another point of view, if you speak for the sake of accuracy only, then you had better shut your mouth completely in prison. Therefore, readers can consider what is correct and just laugh at the mistakes I have made.' Reading between the lines in the official press, Wei learned of the 1989 protest movement and its bloody conclusion. Following the international community's condemnation of the authorities' massacre of peaceful demonstrators, he responded to the Party's attempts to recapture the political high-ground by formulating its own definition of human rights.
In a March 1991 letter to Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng, Wei criticizes the Party's use of the Criminal Code's articles on "counterrevolutionary crimes" to imprison its opponents, as well as the petty restrictions it places on such prisoners. "Whether a political view is correct or not is an issue that must be decided by history rather than by judges.... Moreover, no one in this country can be an outsider in political terms, so it is impossible to have real judicial independence." Political prisoners, wrote Wei, are treated even worse in Chinese prisons than criminal offenders. In Wei's view, enforced political "stability," the watchword of the post-1989 leadership, only allowed pressure to build up dangerously for the future. "Only in a society where internal hate is minimized and internal disputes are resolved in as gentle a way as possible can the greatest possible capabilities be brought into play and can people work for development and construction.... Only when a mild approach is adopted can there be no future trouble, can people be sincerely persuaded, and can disputes be resolved fairly and reasonably. Compelling people into submission by using force just postpones arguments and allows disputes to accumulate and will solve no problems." Wei concludes his letter, "I will observe and await your responses while carrying out a hunger strike." Although he was told by his guards that they were transmitted to the highest levels, he never received a single response to any of his letters.