AFP
I have never met Gao Yu, although I have been deeply impressed by her. Perhaps it was fate, but on a number of occasions, we were going to meet, but then just missed each other.
I remember when I was on parole in 1993, [reform-minded Communist Party writer] He Jiadong told me I had been cooped up in jail too long, and didn't know enough about what was going on in the wider world, and that I needed a news assistant to help me formulate a correct and timely response to world events without making mistakes.
I said that I had been in jail for more than 10 years, and basically didn't know anyone any more, and that it would be troublesome to hire someone, and that I wouldn't be any good at it.
The old gentleman persisted, saying that I should get someone to pick them out for me, a veteran journalist of great courage and conscience, and while there were a good deal of journalists with the latter, the former was pretty scarce. What's more, she had a very good understanding of both the Chinese Communist Party and the pro-democracy movement. The only downside would be that she was no spring chicken; otherwise she would suit the bill admirably.
Naturally, I was very happy, and said that if she was a bit older, then that would be even better, because I would be able to learn from her. I thanked Mr He and waited for Ms Gao, who didn't show up. I didn't know why.
Later, it turned out that she had gone to jail for "leaking state secrets." That's why I nominated Gao Yu when a French human rights organization approached me for a nomination for its human rights award.
The Chinese media certainly doesn't lack conscience, but having been under the yoke of the Communist Party for several decades, it does lack courage. In my experience, journalists and editors of conscience are 10 a penny, and there are plenty who are pretty daring when it comes to speaking the truth. However, it takes real courage to speak those truths that the Communist Party wants hushed up, and they are as rare as hen's teeth.
The second time I ran across Gao Yu was last year, more than 20 years after the first near-encounter. Mr He had long since passed away, and Gao Yu's name was known around the world. She came to the United States along with [political commentator] Li Weidong and [writer-scholar] Yao Jianfu, and we had arranged to meet in Washington, DC. But then something bad happened to Mr Yao, and he needed Gao Yu to stick around, and so she rushed back to China, another opportunity missed.
I heard her friends were all warning her that President Xi Jinping had launched a crackdown on universal values, and that he was arresting dissidents, and it would be better to delay her return to China. But Gao was full of confidence and said people shouldn't worry about her safety, that everything would be fine. Apart from courage, she perhaps believed that the margin of safety was wider than it was. But, after more than two decades, people should take a more mature view and look at a problem from all possible angles, which is probably why her friends didn't really insist, but expected things would stay the same as before.
A lot of dissidents inside China who are able to continue their activities freely, even leave and return to the country freely, have some kind of protective umbrella. The fiercer the factional struggle at the heart of the Communist Party, the more the opposition faction seeks to make allies. It is a step in the direction of democracy; one might say a rehearsal for it.
But Gao Yu was detained, and eventually handed a heavy prison sentence, following nearly a year of debate, on what were pretty much trumped-up charges. It wasn't about whether or not the charges stood up; they were extremely simple, and yet they waited nearly a year to proceed. Something must have gone wrong behind the scenes, unbeknown to outsiders.
It reminds me of my own trial, 35 years ago, which also dragged on for a long time over a very simple charge. They even dropped a few of the charges against me at the last minute. I don't think that was because of the eloquence of my defense statement. When it comes to political trials, the Communist Party doesn't really do reasoned argument. I later learned that there was disagreement within the Communist Party Central Committee and the Politburo, and that this was why my life was
saved.
Clearly, something similar happened with Gao Yu's trial, and with the case of Xu Xiao last year. Both Xu and Gao are outspoken journalists, both women, who had been able to travel in and out of China freely. It's clear they each had a protective umbrella. The difference is that Xu operated under the auspices of the famous journalist Hu Shuli, who is clearly in the same political faction as [Politburo standing committee member and party discipline inspection chief] Wang Qishan.
So, the detention of Xu Xiao was a warning to Wang Qishan, and the inevitable result was that she was released just a few days later, because, while somebody clearly had the guts to annoy Wang Qishan, they weren't going to take it too far. The warning was sent, and then the matter was dropped.
But for Gao, things were different. Either she didn't have a protective umbrella, or if she did, it wasn't strong enough. And so, for her, the end result was different.
Twenty years ago, Gao would have been considered a member of the liberal faction. Back then, as today, it was very hard to draw a line between liberals within the party system and outside it.
In recent years, the liberal faction has become much weaker on politics and much stronger on economics.
Xi Jinping's faction has recently been banging the drum for the perfection of the market economy, which is probably why Gao Yu and her friends felt fairly safe.
But they were probably wrong about that.
Xi Jinping is no champion of the free market; his recent endorsement of the Singapore model of development shows us that ... a model that combines a dictatorial government with market economics.
The case of Gao Yu was a warning to the proponents of a free market economy, and a sign of what is to come.
We have all been fooled, because Xi Jinping has had no intention of allowing a free market in the Western sense, still less attacking the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. What he wants to perfect is the bureaucratic bourgeoisie's share of state-owned assets ... of assets that belong to the taxpayer.
The concept of ownership by the people has shifted to the concept of state ownership, under which the bureaucratic classes use every excuse they can think of to appropriate the wealth of the nation.
Gao Yu's case has shown us that the direction of reforms won't be towards a market economy, but in the direction of strengthening the one-party dictatorship. Such reforms are a sham, and they are Xi Jinping's road-map for the future.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
Wei Jingsheng is a U.S.-based veteran democracy activist who has served a total of 18 years in Chinese prisons for "counterrevolutionary" activities.
