The Missing Modernization
New York Times
December 5, 1997
By WEI JINGSHENG
Since I was released from a Chinese prison a few
weeks ago, I have heard the same statement over
and over. "At least in China's special situation,"
people say to me, "there's no need for democracy in order
for modernization to be realized."
That statement was not true 19 years ago, when I posted
an essay on a downtown Beijing street corner known as
Democracy Wall. In that poster I stated that the policy of
Four Modernizations (in industry, agriculture, defense and
science) advocated by Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese
Communist Party would be inadequate without the addition
of a fifth -- democracy.
That bit of truth landed me in prison, where I spent nearly
18 years. And in that time, my prediction -- that
modernization cannot occur without democracy -- has
been fulfilled. What has happened to China in the last few
years proves that.
I remember that the year I was arrested, Deng Xiaoping
told the Chinese people in a speech that, "Important
national matters are the consideration of the Communist
Party leadership. Ordinary people need not say too much;
they should just keep their heads down and work hard."
To put this another way: A billion Chinese people should
give up their fundamental human rights and freedom of
expression if they want to enjoy the Four Modernizations
promised by the Chinese Communist Party. This, of course,
will satisfy their most primary need: the modernizations
of life.
But I have never known the Chinese Communist Party to
demonstrate any sincere willingness to modernize people's
lives.
The glorified economic accomplishments of China in
recent years are actually filled with holes. China's
economy miracle is already being eaten away by a new
class of corrupt bureaucratic capitalists.
Those public enterprises are now debt ridden. To
compensate for them, the Government has delayed paying
workers' wages and used bookkeeping chicanery. Many
people have lost their jobs and rural areas are not being
economically developed.
Meanwhile, the dictatorial political system is protecting
the extraordinarily corrupt bureaucratic class. All manner
of legal and illegal means are used to soak the people dry
and deplete the resources of Chinese society as a whole.
What kind of economic miracle is this?
All this makes me feel very heavy. I would prefer that my
predictions about the four modernizations was wrong, but
unfortunately it is now a reality.
Wei Jingsheng is a visiting scholar at Columbia
University's School of International and Public Affairs.