Wei Jingsheng Quotes

I have waited decades for this chance to exercise my right to free speech, but the Chinese people have been waiting for centuries.

If you want to speak the truth, you will definitely pay a price. It's the same everywhere, but speaking out under communism comes with an especially heavy price. Many people have tried to speak out in China, and the price they've paid is even greater than I -- they lost their lives.

Many Western experts are beginning to think about a dictatorial system being more efficient and functional than democracy, and economic performance in such systems being better than in Western democracies. This strange trend began about 10 years ago, and today many academics and politicians in the West are talking about the retreat of democracy on a global scale. And I say to them that the global retreat of democracy is not a reality but an ideology. This says something about the intellectual degradation of these Western scholars. It’s the result of a simple fact: they get money from people who have made lots of money in China thanks to the regime in place there. Then, these businesspeople pay entities who spread these ideas.

What is true democracy? It means the right of the people to choose their own representatives to work according to their will and in their interests. Only this can be called democracy. Furthermore, the people must also have the power to replace their representatives anytime so that these representatives cannot go on deceiving theirs in the name of the people. This is the kind of democracy enjoyed by people in European and American countries. In accordance with their will, they could run such people as Nixon, de Gaulle, and Tanaka out of office. They can reinstate them if they want, and nobody can interfere with their democratic rights. In China, however, if a person even comments on the already dead Great Helmsman Mao Zedong or the Great Man without peers in history, jail will be ready for him with open door and various unpredictable calamities may befall him. What a vast different will it be if we compare the socialist system of centralized democracy with the system of capitalist "exploiting class!"

If you really want to write well, the most important thing is allowing people to believe you. If you want people to believe you, you have to say things exactly the way you think them. You shouldn't deceive people. This is the only way you can gain people's trust. But, I think the hardest thing in the world is to be able to tell the truth. In China, if you tell the truth, you can go to prison. In America, while you won't necessarily go to prison for telling the truth, you might sometimes lose your job. The situation is just as difficult.

I think there are few opportunities for one person to really influence history. The opportunity is very rare. I think that even if you become a president, you won't necessarily be able to change history. But if you give people a new, important way of thinking, this thought itself can change the world. And if you want people to heed your thought and believe in it, you should practice it yourself. Also your character, personality, and ability are central to people's belief and trust. A liar will never win anyone's trust.

What road is this? It is called the "socialist road." According to the definition of the Marxist ancestors, socialism means that the people, or the proletariat, are their own masters. Let me ask the Chinese workers and peasants: With the meager wages you get every month, whose master and what kind of master can you be? Sad to relate, you are "mastered" by somebody else when in the matter of matrimony. Socialism guarantees the producers' rights to the surplus production from their labor over what is needed as a service to the society. But this service is limitless. So are you not getting only that miserable little wage "necessary for maintaining the labor force for production?" Socialism guarantees many rights, such as the right of a citizen to receive educations, to use this ability to the best advantage, and so forth. But none of these rights can be seen in our daily life. What we can see is only "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and "a variation of Russian autocracy" - Chinese socialist autocracy. Is this kind of socialist road what people want? Can it be claimed that autocracy means the people's happiness. Is this the socialist road depicted by Marx and hoped for by the people? Obviously not. Then what is it? Funny as it may sound, it is like the feudal socialism mentioned in the "Manifesto," or a feudal monarchy disguised as socialism.

Why must human history take the road toward prosperity and modernization? The reason is that people need prosperity so that real goods are available, and so that there is a full opportunity to pursue their first goal of happiness, namely freedom. Democracy means the maximum attainable freedom so far known by human beings. It is quite obvious that democracy has become the goal in contemporary human struggles.

What the communists fear most is the Chinese people's understanding where their interests are and where their power lies. Once the people understand this and unite, the government won't be able to oppress them.

People in Hong Kong learned their lesson from the protests in Beijing in 1989 and understand that they cannot expect any help or the Communist Party to play a positive role, that they must rely only on themselves and must be prepared to sacrifice everything to achieve their objective of maintaining the rule of law so that the rights of all individuals are protected.

People seem to have a lot of demands of leaders, but realistically, most leaders cannot accomplish all the demands. But I think each leader should examine the conditions of each request. Under certain conditions, a good leader may not act as well as under other circumstances. This may not be the same in each case, however.

People have tightened their belts for decades since liberation. They have worked as hard as they could and actually produced much wealth. But where has all the wealth gone? Some say that it has gone to fatten some comparatively small autocratic regimes like Vietnam.

The most important thing I learned from my parents is how to conduct myself. Maybe this expression does not exist in English. Chinese are very focused on this "conduct" concept, or what you call "creating oneself," according to Western thought. This is very important. My parents taught me that in order to conduct oneself well, the most important thing is to be responsible toward your friends. If you are not responsible, then you should not make friends. My mother's motto was that the people's interests are more important than anything else. Even if you have great friends, you should not put your friends' interests above the people's or betray people.

In ancient China, there were such maxims as "A cake in the picture can appease hunger" and "Watching the plums can quench the thirst." These witty and ironic remarks were quite popular in ancient times, but today, after a long and continuous development of history, people should never take such stupid remarks seriously. Yet some people not only believe in them but also carry them out in practice.

When I was living in China, people don't have anything to eat. There's people living in such poverty that it's impossible not to develop human rights in China. When I was in China many years ago, I saw many people starving to death. I saw people standing at train stations, not wearing any clothes, begging for money. Seeing people who had such terrible lives made a real impression on me—it was simple. At that time, I decided my life's present course, supporting human rights.