China’s Democracy Wall movement’s most prominent activist was Wei Jingsheng. A lesser-known dissident was Zhu Jianbin of Wuhan, whose name I first came across in a New York Times article by Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof. His articles and others led me to focus on the “disappeared”… .
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Democracy Wall in Beijing, August 20, 1979. Source: Internet
I was nearing the end of my one-year term as president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong in 1990 when an article appeared in The New York Times about an obscure Democracy Wall activist by the name of Zhu Jianbin (朱建斌). The author of the piece, which appeared on December 5, 1990, was Nicholas Kristof, the paper’s Beijing bureau chief, who had traveled to Zhu’s hometown of Wuhan to seek information on Zhu. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, were to win the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Zhu Jianbin had organized workers at the Wuhan Steel Works and edited an underground journal on worker grievances and worker rights, a samizdat known as The Bell Tolls. Zhu, a keen analyst of social and political trends, had authored an important article that argued that China was an anomalous society caught between feudalism, capitalism, and socialism. Only workers could resolve the contradictions arising from the realities of life in contemporary China.
In the Times article, Kristof had written: “[Zhu’s] very existence has been virtually obliterated, for most democracy advocates here and abroad have never heard of him, and even in this city where he worked and dreamed of democracy, people shake their heads and say they have never heard his name.”
New York-based human rights activist Sharon Lee followed up the Kristof article by recounting what she had learned about Zhu from a mutual friend in Wuhan. The friend was a teacher who had heard that Zhu was in prison. He set about trying to get more information and eventually went to the security department of the factory to ask them what had happened to Zhu.
Not such a good idea. The teacher was suspected of being a member of a counterrevolutionary group under the control of a foreign power. He was placed under round the clock surveillance and turned down for a scholarship to study in the United States.
The writings of Kristof and Lee led, in part, to my focus on obscure political and religious prisoners, the “disappeared.” I resolved to find out what had happened to Zhu Jianbin by directly approaching the Chinese government.
What little was known about Zhu came from media and NGO accounts from the early 1980s. Born in 1957, he was one of more than 100,000 workers employed at Wuhan Steel Works, China’s first giant steel factory. He edited a journal about democracy, “The Bell Tolls,” and in the summer of 1980, attempted to form the All-China Association of the Democratic Press. He signed a petition calling for the release of Liu Qing, an editor of the April Fifth Forum, who was to go on to serve as chairman of Human Rights in China, soon after his arrival in the United States in 1992.
Police detained Zhu in April 1981, then tried and sentenced him to prison for counterrevolutionary crimes. He wound up serving 11 years in prison.
I didn’t get a chance to ask about Zhu Jianbin until May 1992, after I had met with Politburo Standing Committee Member Li Ruihuan in November 1991 and Vice Minister of Justice Jin Jian in April 1992. I added Zhu’s name to a prisoner list and asked about him in face-to-face meetings with senior officials of the State Council Information Office and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). These officials agreed to look into the case.
I returned to Beijing three months later and was again received by Deputy Director Wang at the MOJ headquarters on a lane off the highway to the airport. Zhu had been sentenced to six years in prison in 1981 but had had his sentence extended by five years for getting into a fight with another inmate. Zhu “had changed his attitude,” and had recently been released prior to my trip to Beijing in September. I was told that Zhu had gone back to Wuhan where he got a job and had resumed working. Deputy Director Wang said Zhu had not been sent to a re-education through labor camp.
I asked Deputy Director Wang where Zhu lived and where he worked. With a dismissive wave of the hand he replied that he didn’t know: “My fingers do not extend that far.”
Zhu’s case was the first of several Democracy Wall dissidents and labor leaders whose cases I worked on in the 1980s and 1990s after the events of June 4, 1989. One by one, the most prominent Democracy Wall prisoners were granted early release, including Wang Xizhe in February 1993, Xu Wenli in May 1993, and finally Wei Jingsheng in September 1993. I helped secure the release of and safe passage to Hong Kong of Tiananmen Square worker leader Han Dongfang in 1992. He has continued his work while based in Hong Kong.
In 2007, I traveled to Hubei Province with a colleague. We visited Wuhan and Yichang. One of our goals was to obtain information on imprisoned dissident Qin Yongmin (秦永敏). Like Zhu Jianbin, Qin was active in the Democracy Wall movement in Wuhan. He was convicted of counterrevolution and served eight years in prison. My colleague and I were unable to get basic information on Qin. Our interlocutors refused to answer our questions, nor would they accept a list with Qin’s name on it. Like Zhu Jianbin, Qin, it seemed, had been disappeared.
We later learned that Qin was released at the end of his sentence in 2010. There is no record of his being granted clemency. He was put back in prison to serve a 13-year sentence for subversion in 2015. He is currently serving his fourth sentence in Guanghua Prison in Hubei. Qin’s wife, Zhao Suli, a member of a house church, was reported missing alongside him. She was later released in 2018 and able to return to her home in Wuhan but under strict surveillance.
Dui Hua’s advocacy on behalf of Qin has continued. To date, the foundation has placed his name on 22 lists submitted to the Chinese government. We have received 25 responses.
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