Why must human history take the road toward prosperity and modernization? The reason is that people need prosperity so that real goods are available,… - Wei Jingsheng

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.

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!"

My overall impression is that politicians really like to change their positions and really like to forget about some things. But ordinary people have better memories. As we Chinese people say, ordinary people have conscience, unlike politicians. I think that every nation has a conscience. And good writers express it very well, and those who express the conscience of the nation in their work, those are exceptional writers. I’ve noticed that in every country people don’t like politicians. When people talk about me as a politician, I object immediately, I just say I write books.