HELP SAVE A RIGHTEOUS MAN

Please read the following op-ed about a brave man and my friend, Dr. Wang Bingzhang, who is serving a life sentence in a prison in China. He has committed no crime, other than having spent most of his adult life advocating for democracy for China.

I have known Dr. Wang since 1983, when I joined the movement he founded, the Chinese Alliance for Democracy. The CAFD was the first overseas Chinese democracy movement.

My many years as a China scholar tell me that the Chinese government will succumb to international opinion and release a political prisoner only when there is much international publicity and outrage about that individual. Only then will Beijing decide that it's simply not worth it to continue incarcerating that individual.

Given that, I would be most grateful if you would:
(1) Forward this op-ed to as many people as possible who are on your e-mail list;
(2) After you've read the op-ed, please help secure Dr. Wang's release by writing your representatives in Congress at https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml. You need only to copy & paste this op-ed as your letter.

As Americans, we take our freedom for granted. It does not cost us anything to expend a few minutes of our time to do the above.

Thank you.

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Fighting for My Father's Freedom
By Ti-Anna Wang
Washington Post
Sunday, January 11, 2009; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/09/AR2009010903166.html

When I was born in 1989, my parents named me Ti-Anna in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Most of my friends started their first year of college last fall, but, instead of beginning my studies, I have taken a year off from school and moved to Washington. My father is a political prisoner serving a life sentence in China for opposing communism, and I am spending this year advocating for his freedom.

My father, Wang Bingzhang, founded the Chinese overseas democracy movement. He went to Canada in 1979 to pursue graduate studies at McGill University. Having lived through the Chinese Communist Party's Cultural Revolution and other political campaigns and purges, he was convinced that the Chinese people deserved a democracy ruled by law. Compelled by that ideal and his love of country, my father gave up a promising career in medicine to devote his life to the democratic transformation of China. He moved to New York in 1982 to gain the support of and to work with like-minded Chinese immigrants and expatriates in constructing the overseas Chinese democracy movement. For almost 20 years, my father dedicated himself to this cause. While he faced many challenges within and outside the movement, he was unwavering in his commitment to Chinese democracy.

In June 2002, my father traveled to Vietnam to meet with two fellow labor activists. They were conferring over lunch in a restaurant near the China-Vietnam border when several men speaking Chinese ordered them into a car. Beaten, blindfolded and gagged, my father and his two colleagues were abducted into China by boat. They were left in a Buddhist temple in Guangxi Province for the Chinese authorities.

My father was held incommunicado for six months, in contravention of China's own Criminal Procedural Law, after which he was charged with "offenses of espionage" and the "conduct of terrorism." His "trial" lasted one day and was held behind closed doors. During the proceedings, my father was not allowed to speak, nor was any evidence presented or witnesses called. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The identities of his abductors have never been discovered.

Since his imprisonment, my family, with the assistance of lawyers, fellow activists and friends, has brought his case to the international community. The United States, Canada, Taiwan, the European Union, the United Nations and Amnesty International have all called upon the Chinese government to release him. Despite our efforts, though, my father remains in prison.

In the year leading up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, we thought the world's scrutiny of China would motivate the Communist Party to demonstrate its professed modernization by addressing its problematic record on human rights. In our most misguided moments of naive optimism, we even entertained the notion that China would release people like my father to quell international criticism. Instead,the Games came and went, and the dominant theme of the world's media was China's success in the medal standings and as a world power. Forgotten were the many prisoners of conscience, such as my father, who continue to suffer in China's prisons and labor camps.

As the world celebrates the arrival of a new year, my father is beginning his seventh year of incarceration. He is no longer the young man who founded the overseas democracy movement; today, he is in his 60s, and since his imprisonment his health has deteriorated steadily. He suffers from chronic phlebitis, severe allergies and untreated depression. He has had three strokes in the past six years, all while being kept in solitary confinement. He is allowed one family visit per month that can last about 30 minutes. Our relatives have spent thousands and thousands of dollars to go halfway around the world to see him. While my father languished in prison, my grandfather passed away. My grandmother, who is unable to travel overseas, prays every day for his return, hoping against hope that she may live to see her son again.

This year, before I resume my schooling, I hope to raise awareness about my father's case and tell his story to remind people that despite China's economic success, it is still a country that has yet to embrace universally accepted values of human rights. Any government that jails its own people for political dissent still has a long way to go to become a respected member of the international community.

The values of freedom and democracy upon which America was founded are the same values that once inspired my father and are the ones to which he remains dedicated. Those values are not just every American's birthright; they are the fundamental rights of all human beings.

The writer lives in Washington. Her family maintains a Web site about her father and his imprisonment at http://www.wangbingzhang.com.

The Two Faces of Chinese Nationalism

(Published in China Briefing, Center For International Relations, August 2008, pp. 9-11.)

On May 12, 2008, China’s Sichuan province was struck by a massive 7.9 earthquake. In the aftermath, Chinese people rallied together in an unprecedented show of national solidarity and fellowship. Many volunteered to excavate victims still buried in the rubble; others donated money to help survivors; still others offered to adopt the children whom the quake had made orphans. A week after the disaster on May 19 at 2:28 p.m., people all across China mourned in silence for three minutes. All of which led outside observers to remark that we might be witnessing the beginning of a genuine civil society in China. As longtime Sinologist Ross Terrill put it, “A new China could be glimpsed after the earthquake.”

But a month before the quake, the world had seen an uglier face of Chinese nationalism. As human rights protesters dogged the Beijing Olympics’ torch relay around the world, Chinese convulsed in collective outrage against international criticisms of their government’s violent crackdown in Tibet and support of the genocidal regime in Sudan. In online forums and chat rooms, Chinese youth blasted their leaders in Beijing for not being tougher against the Tibetan “separatists.” Some 20 million signed an online petition calling for a boycott against Western businesses, such as the American chains McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Chinese ire especially targeted the French retailer Carrefour—protests and demonstrations in front of its outlets in Wuhan drew thousands.

Chinese nationalist anger even spread to college campuses in the United States. At the University of Southern California, Chinese students harassed a visiting Tibetan monk. At the University of Washington, hundreds protested outside during a speech by the Tibetan spiritual leader-in-exile, the Dalai Lama. At Duke University, a Chinese student who had tried to mediate between pro-China and pro-Tibet protesters was branded a traitor by her compatriots. Her photo was posted on the Internet, together with her contact information and her parents’ address in China.

These incidents are a reminder of Chinese nationalism’s volatile mix of prickly pride and smoldering resentment. The same nationalism exploded into anti-Japan riots across China in 2005, against Japanese school textbooks that minimized Imperial Japan’s World War II atrocities. The visiting Japanese national soccer team was brutally attacked; Japanese missions and businesses were trashed. The same Chinese nationalism also burst into violent anti-American protests in 1999 after NATO’s accidental bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. And when the United States was attacked by Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, some Chinese exulted over America’s pain. One student told pollsters that “When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, I really felt very delighted.”

Nationalism may be defined as the sentiments of affinity and love for one’s national group. China’s thorny nationalism was birthed out of the turmoil of what Chinese still call their “hundred years of humiliation.” That century began with Great Britain’s trouncing of Imperial China in the Opium War (1840-42), which opened the floodgates to more defeats, unequal treaties, economic turmoil, territorial losses, a massive rebellion, dynastic collapse, revolution, warlords, Japan’s colonization and invasion, and a ruinous civil war from which the Communist Party emerged as victor in 1949.

Unlike organic nations that are formed naturally over time, the Chinese nation is a product of the Chinese people’s experience of being abused and humiliated by outside groups. Their shared suffering at the hands of common enemies transformed Chinese from being “a tray of loose sand” into a nation. In effect, Chinese nationalism from its very beginning has been reactive and xenophobic.

After its bloody suppression of the pro-democracy movement in 1989, the Chinese government initiated a patriotic education campaign, using nationalism to shore up its legitimacy. School textbooks focus on China’s past humiliations, while the state media, such as the People's Daily, highlight contemporary China’s perceived mistreatment at the hands of the United States and other powers. As Hong Kong legislator Christine Loh observed, “If you don’t bear a grudge against China’s historical oppressors, then you don’t ai guo (love your country) enough.”

At the same time as it encourages reactive nationalism, the Chinese government also fears that runaway nationalist passions may harm the economy by alienating foreign investors or, worse yet, mutate into unrest and insurrection against Beijing. Thus far, Beijing has been able to douse the fire of populist nationalism when it became excessive. As an example, in 2005, although Beijing initially had stoked popular anti-Japan resentments, it later brought out riot-control police to restore order in the cities.

Today, on the eve of the opening of the Olympics in Beijing, the true face of Chinese nationalism remains an open question. Is it the peaceable face of herbivorous nationalism, wherein love of one’s own nation does not require hating others, or is Chinese nationalism carnivorous, wherein love of one’s own is intertwined with hatred and aggression towards other groups?

Whatever precedents there are in history are not encouraging. Recall that the nationalisms of both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were of the reactive carnivorous variety. Both saw themselves as having been victimized by others; both turned to grandiose dreams of empire in compensation; and in both cases, voices of reason and moderation were silenced by the authoritarian governments.

As China takes its place as a newly arrived member among the world’s great powers, which face of nationalism it wears carries serious implications for regional peace and security. So long as Chinese continue to overreact to international criticisms with hypersensitivity and rage, the world has reason to be wary. For the mark of a truly great power is the ability to undertake critical self-examination and to admit to flaws and mistakes when warranted.

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For an extensive treatment of Chinese nationalism, see Maria Hsia Chang, Return of the Dragon: China's Wounded Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001).