Wang Ruowang (; 4 February 1918 – 19 December 2001) was a Chinese author and dissident who was imprisoned various times for political reasons by both the Kuomintang and the Communist government of China for advocating reform and liberalization. His name at birth was "Shouhua" (), but he was most commonly known by his pen name, "Ruowang". He was a prolific essayist and literary critic.

Wang was a member of the Chinese Communist Party from 1937 to 1957, when he was expelled for holding "rightist views". He rejoined the party in 1979, but in 1987 he was again expelled by Deng Xiaoping for promoting "bourgeois liberalization". After his death in exile in New York City, he was widely eulogized as one of the Chinese government's most significant social and political critics.

Biography

Early life

In 1932, when Wang was fifteen years old, he was expelled from school for taking part in a student demonstration. He joined the Communist Youth League later that year. In 1933 he moved to Shanghai, where he began work at a pharmaceutical factory while operating as a low-level Communist agent. While working at this factory he founded a publication, Toilet Literature, a newspaper that was distributed by being pasted on the walls of the factory workers' bathroom area. After writing an article in which he mocked Chiang Kai-shek for allowing the Japanese to seize Manchuria, he was arrested in May 1934, and sentenced to ten years in prison. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Chiang Kai-shek declared a "united front" with the Communists against the Japanese, and Wang was released after serving only three and a half years of his sentence as part of a general amnesty. Some of the Communists imprisoned with Wang became successful officials after the Communist victory in 1949: one became the governor of Guangdong, and another became the deputy governor of Anhui.

After Wang's release, in 1937, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and traveled to the CCP's revolutionary base area in Yan'an. After arriving, Wang wrote one of the first biographical articles on Mao Zedong, and edited cultural journals intended to be circulated among peasants. He joined the CCP in order to "fight evil, autocracy and oppression", One of his friends was killed during the purge. After the purge, Wang was forced by Mao's lieutenant, Kang Sheng, to leave Yan'an and travel to Japanese-occupied Shandong as a low-level CCP agent, where he survived only "through the kindness of peasants". After entering Japanese-occupied China, Wang was briefly imprisoned by the Japanese, but was released. After being identified as a "rightist", Wang was expelled from the Party, lost his job, and was forced to work at a forced labour camp in the countryside. His wife, Li Ming, was also persecuted for her association with him. After refusing to condemn him, she also lost her job and suffered a mental breakdown. Before she died, in 1964, Wang's wife begged him to protect his family by never writing again. Wang blamed the Communist Party for her death. and was well-received abroad. Deng personally attacked Wang for being "wildly presumptuous", and accused him of five "major mistakes", including a belief that Chinese socialism was "feudal or semi-feudal in essence". Because he was the oldest of the three protest leaders, Wang later gained a reputation as "the grandfather of Chinese dissidents". Of the three, he remained in China the longest.

Wang was one of the few senior leaders of the Tiananmen protests who did not escape China. Following his return to Shanghai, Wang was put under house arrest until he was formally charged for his involvement in the demonstrations on 8 September 1989. He was accused in the Chinese media of "listening to the Voice of America and spreading rumors based on its broadcasts, writing articles in support of the student hunger strike, giving counterrevolutionary speeches on Shanghai's People's Square... publishing articles in the Hong Kong press", and trying to "overthrow the Party's leadership" with his writing. Wang was sentenced to fourteen months in prison.

Footnotes

References

  • Cheng, Eddie. "People of 1989: Wang Ruowang". Standoff At Tiananmen. 19 December 2010. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  • Derbyshire, John. "The Single Talent Well Employ'd: Wang Ruowang 1918-2001". National Review Online. 3 January 2002. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  • Gittings, John. "Wang Ruowang: Dissident Chinese Intellectual Devoted to Exposing 'False Marxists'". The Guardian. 9 January 2002. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  • "Dalai Lama Calls Wang Ruowang a Freedom Fighter for a Liberal and Democratic China" . International Campaign for Tibet. 30 December 2001. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  • Lee, Khoon Choy. Pioneers of Modern China: Understanding the Inscrutable Chinese. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. 2005. .
  • Mirsky, Jonathan. "The Life and Death of Wang Ruowang". China Brief. Volume 2, Issue 2. Washington, DC: The Jamestown Foundation. 2002. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  • "Wang Ruowang, 83, Writer And Dissident Exiled by China". New York Times. 23 December 2001. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  • Rubin, Kyna. "Introduction: The Growth of a Nation and an Intellectual". In Wang Ruowang. The Hunger Trilogy. Trans. Kyna Rubin and Ira Kasoff. United States: East Gate. 1991. . Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  • Woo, Elaine. "Wang Ruowang, 83; Social Critic Spurned by 2 Chinese Regimes". Los Angeles Times. 22 December 2001. Retrieved 27 April 2013/
  • Wangruowang.org , a biography of Wang Ruowang.
  • A review of Wang's book, Hunger Trilogy.