Interview with Hu Ping (May 27, 2014 at the Asiatic Hotel in Flushing, New York)

Here you find the Chinese text of the interview.

Hu Ping: … None of the Peking University students at that time had participated in an election before; they had never experienced a real electoral movement. They have not even seen movies or TV pictures about elections. In other words, they have not had any experience in elections and this was their first time. But they did very well right away, which shows the essence of this issue. I have always stressed that the Democracy Movement in the 1970s and 80s was born from inside China. At that time, there was still very little opening to the outside world. Not many students went out, and few people from abroad were able to come in. Therefore, this time was different from our historic predecessors, whether it is Hu Shi, Liang Qichao, or Kang Youwei [reform advocates in the late 19th and early 20th century] because their understanding of liberal democracy was only formed after they had traveled to the West and come into contact with the West. They had no idea of ​​it before.

Our generation had obtained this knowledge by itself before opening up to the outside world. Therefore, the Democracy Movement in China in the 1970s and 80s was not the result of the later opening up. The movement that emerged in China from the late 1970s to the 1980s grew from within and was not entirely the result of an external input. Most of it was based on our own reading and thinking, especially on our own personal experiences, the painful experience of living under the Communist dictatorship. This answers an important question. People often say that liberal democracy is of course a good thing, but after all, it comes from the West, so it cannot take roots easily in China. Can it be something “Chinese”? According to our explanation, this question does not arise because it has sprung up from China.

In fact, the situation in Eastern Europe was similar. In 1990 and 1989, even Mongolia ended the dictatorship of the Communist Party and adopted democracy. You may say that Mongolia had no democratic tradition in its history, their culture had nothing to do with democracy, and it had always been Communist. At that time, they had not opened up to the West, but suddenly launched a democratic movement which proved successful all of a sudden and functioned very well without any problems.

So this matter is not as complicated as many people think. To a large extent, in China the dictatorship of the Communist Party has allowed many people to understand democracy from the negative side. The realization of democracy required many conditions, so if you look at them, they have done very well, with millions of people taking to the streets. In Chinese history, there has been a tradition of violent uprisings. Those students who participated in the pro-democracy movement in 1989 had no training in non-violence, but still they adopted non-violent resistance, and they did it very beautifully from beginning to end. It came from their proper experience, as simple as that. Later, many explained this incorrectly, but it had to do with their own experience.

Interviewer (Helmut Opletal): How did you come into contact with democratic ideas, and how did you decide to participate in the Democracy Movement in 1979 and 1980?

Hu: Developing this idea at first has of course been a long process. Around 1970, I had a very clear view that the system we lived in was a very bad system, an authoritarian system worse than many other bad systems in history. At that time, I had a clear concept of liberal democracy, and then I thought hard about how we could change this society. My strongest desire was not getting suppressed in such a society. And I definitely wanted to express this desire.

Interviewer: In 1970 the Cultural Revolution was at its climax?

Hu: I belonged to the “educated youth sent to the countryside” then. I was not alone at that time; there were many young people around me...

Interviewer: Did you discuss these issues among each other?

Hu: There was little discussion, because the controls were very strict at that time, and many people got arrested, executed, or sentenced to death. When I secretly wrote some letters, this was discovered and an investigation was started, I was considered a counterrevolutionary and I was to be arrested. We had no books at that time. There were very few books we could read. When we saw some good books, we sometimes didn’t understand them, so we had to think for ourselves what the author meant. Sometimes Communists criticized certain Western ideas and quoted a few sentences. But they didn’t give us the original book to read, so we had just to think hard what these sentences meant, what the author's overall idea was. This is how we learned about some Western ideas. What we read was not the original work, because we could not get hold of it. For example, when we read a political economics textbook that criticized bourgeois economics and quoted some economists' words in one or two sentences, these quotes revealed very little. But we wondered what did they mean? Reflecting about them for a long time, we later developed our own ideas. Many years later, when we read the original books, we felt that they confirmed pretty much what we had imagined. So the process of acquiring knowledge was partly inspired by an earlier generation, but a large part of it was thought up and explored by myself. The Communist Party's ideological system is an all-encompassing ideological system, and it does not allow you to oppose any part of it.

Interviewer: Were there intellectuals in your family?

Hu: My family was not intellectuals. My biological father was an officer of the Kuomintang army. Later his army division collectively joined the Communist army. But when the Communists in the early 1950s started a campaign against counterrevolutionaries, they executed him as a “historical counterrevolutionary”. So my father died very young and I had never met him and had no impression of him. My stepfather had only graduated from middle school, so I was basically by myself to watch and think about things. That environment was very harsh. I don’t think there was any environment in history as harsh as ours at that time. First of all, we had no books to read, and to read books secretly was very dangerous. Even reading books by Karl Marx could be dangerous. When I was an “educated youth in the countryside,” the commune once organized a meeting to criticize me for my bourgeois reactionary ideas. How did all this happen? We were sent from Sichuan’s capital Chengdu to a rural place in the south of Sichuan. From there we went to Chengdu to visit relatives, and then returned to the place in the countryside we were assigned to.

Exactly during the days when we were in Chengdu, a bank robbery occurred there. The government used this incident as a pretext to start investigations against all kinds of people who already were politically suspicious. Several youngsters in our production team were in Chengdu at that time, so the police sent officers to our team to ask each of us what we were doing that day. In fact, it could not be imagined that we had robbed a bank, but all of us were asked questions and one answer lead to the next issue, and they continued to interrogate us. One classmate talked about me and alleged that I liked to read Marx's books and so on.

Then the Public Security agents became very nervous saying that this was a very serious issue. It was said at that time that people who read Marx did so to oppose Mao Zedong. If you read Marx's books, it meant that there was something wrong with your thinking. Because Lin Biao [Mao’s deputy and designed successor] had said - Lin Biao had not yet been deposed at that time – that when studying Marxism-Leninism, one should read Mao Zedong's works 99 percent of the time. If you didn't recite Mao Zedong's quotations every day, but read Marx instead, then your thinking was problematic and it meant you were dissatisfied with Mao. There was some truth in what he said. We were indeed not satisfied with Mao Zedong and thought his words were too simple. We wanted to know what Marx himself had said. You see now, why it was dangerous to read Marx’s writings at that time, let alone other books.

Also, many people were arrested at that time just for writing letters, corresponding with each other and exchanging ideas. Letters were regularly checked. When they found something, they would arrest you and label you a counterrevolutionary. You could not deny what was clearly written. I have had my letters inspected several times. One letter to a classmate contained a lot of so-called reactionary things. Just two days before, this classmate had told me that he had found out that his letters were being examined by the commune authorities. I got very nervous and thought it would be terrible if this letter were discovered, so I hurriedly made a long-distance call. At that time, long-distance calls were not really allowed in China. But I made a lot of effort to contact some people and tell them to go to the post office in advance and take my letter out. I just didn’t want the postman to pick it up, but nothing happened. If something had happened, it would have been in big trouble and probably wouldn't sit here now. So at that time, pressure was very strong and it was a terrible environment.

In addition, there were no books to read, and as I said, it was close to impossible to communicate with each other. In this regard, the harm caused by the Cultural Revolution was more serious than by the World War and the Anti-Japanese War. The latter just interrupted normal life. During wars and chaos, people could still read and exchange ideas with each other, and some could still write. But now these had all become very dangerous. It was because of this, that we had a very strong pursuit of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. I felt that these were the most important things, freedom of thought and freedom of speech was fundamental. But the Communist Party’s dictatorship controlled all this, in a more powerful and comprehensive way than any other system. This was the bad reality-

But I also discovered that if we were to make a breakthrough in this field, the entire system would collapse. Then I kept thinking how we could undermine this system. But we also saw plenty of people dying while fighting the system, being caught in jail, getting executed. And no one got to know their ideas, they just got lost. When one was shot, they just posted a notice about a certain Zhang, telling he was a counterrevolutionary who had committed heinous crimes, who had viciously attacked the Great Leader Chairman Mao etc. But what on earth were his ideas? He couldn't say a word anymore, so he had died in vain. His thoughts were not spread and no one got to know about them. So I wanted to find another way to resist. We could not let Mao Zedong suppress our whole generation, without having a voice of our own. I wanted to criticize and resist, but at the same time not let them eat me up. I had seen too many being eaten.

We had to find a way so that they wouldn’t be able just to eat us as they liked. About this I had very strong thoughts from the beginning. I had to oppose them and openly resist, but at the same time not giving them a pretext to arrest me. This system, after all, was based on individual persons. It couldn’t be perfect; it would have its weaknesses and weak points. So if we attacked it from these weak points, it would definitely not be able to sustain. This is the freedom of speech I talked about. If I use it to criticize you, it is difficult for you to catch me. You know this, I know this too; this is the most vulnerable point of this system. So this was the key question we posed to ourselves. How we could express our ideas, and even more important, which methods could we use to do this.

At that time Internet did not exist yet in China. Nowadays it would be easier and we could communicate through the Net. But that didn’t exist yet. We could only write big-character posters and stick them on the walls. Many people could read them, but they wouldn’t last for long. The difficulty at that time was that even if you wanted to become a hero or a martyr, and you were willing to sacrifice yourself for an idea, there was no place or way to do it. As I just said, many people were arrested and sentenced to death just because they had written a letter and this letter was discovered by the Public Security Bureau, but no one got to know what was written in the letter. For me, this was the most terrifying thing at that time.

No matter how abominable China was in the more distant past, when the literary inquisition was extreme and killed many people, but they all had written their books, got them printed and circulated before being arrested. So the ancients were still very lucky. Their books could be banned and destroyed, but that meant they already did have books that were published. For ours it was impossible to be published during Mao era. That’s why I always like to tell this example. When traditional authoritarian systems suppressed thought and speech, it was better than killing people and killing their children. When the children were born, they lived on, they only killed you. What the Chinese Communist Party did though was contraception. Whatever you did, the child would never be born, and they would just kill you.

Interviewer: When did you leave the countryside?

Hu: I returned to Chengdu in 1973. When I was in Sichuan, I wanted to find out fundamental weaknesses that allowed attacking this system. But at the same time, I didn’t want to be eaten by it. During the Peking University election, this point also remained very clear for me.

Interviewer: In 1973, did you participate in any activities in Chengdu?

Hu: In Chengdu not really, very little actually.

Interviewer: Did you write anything? What kind of books did you read?

Hu: There were very few books to read at that time. After Zhou Enlai passed away in 1976, the April 5th Movement happened in Beijing, and a similar movement took place in Chengdu. I also participated, but it was very short-lived. When the Gang of Four [the radical Maoists] was overthrown at the end of 1976, I wrote a big-character poster on the issue of freedom of speech and posted it on a wall. But that one quickly disappeared. Those large sheets of paper on a wall get easily damaged. I also mimeographed my article on freedom of speech and produced a few hundred copies in the form of a small brochure. All this happened in 1976 and 1977, before I went to Peking University in 1978. There I became quickly interested in the Democracy Wall Movement. The election in 1980 was actually to a large extent an occasion for me to express my thoughts on freedom of speech, as I knew that being a representative would be quite meaningless, I would just be a very small and powerless deputy.

Interviewer: Did you participate in the Democracy Wall Movement?

Hu: Yes, I was at the Democracy Wall. There were several larger publications in Beijing, including “Wotu” (Fertile Soil), and I worked with them. My article on freedom of speech was published in Fertile Soil at that time.

Interviewer: Did you publish it under your real name?

Hu: No, I used a pseudonym. At that time, everyone in Fertile Soil used pseudonyms. They asked me to use a pseudonym too. When Fertile Soil reprinted this article on freedom of speech, it was the first time it has been published on a relatively large scale. In the past, only a few people could read the mimeographed articles.

Interviewer: What pen name did you use then?

Hu: I used "Hebian" (riverside). But there was also some disappointment after the article had been published. I had hoped that it would attract more attention, as for me this was the key issue, and other current issues didn't matter so much for me, such as the question of the standards for truth, the opposition to the personality cult, or the issue of humanitarianism. I had thought about these, but if you looked at the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, they had all dealt with these questions, but not in a very successful way. Therefore I thought discussing these was not very interesting.

Freedom of speech seemed the most important question for me. With it, everything else could be easily discussed. But most people neglected this issue and talked about other things. But for me this was our most fundamental issue, and it was the best time to talk about it. We had just come out of the Cultural Revolution where many people had been persecuted because of their thoughts, including some leaders of the Communist Party, who were persecuted because they had different views. Everyone was disgusted with what had happened, with the control of speech. So when we forwarded the idea of freedom of speech at that time, it was easy for everyone to accept. And it would have been difficult to suppress or attack us because of this.

Interviewer: How could you work and study in the Philosophy Department of Peking University if you opposed the Communist system and this kind of ideology?

Hu: The main thing was studying, and for a student who went to graduate school, it didn’t matter so much. For example, in the exams, I knew everything they asked me. What did Marx say? I could answer what Marx had said. What did Engels say? I told them what Engels had said. I did very well in the exams. And we were already after the Cultural Revolution. Before, people like me would have never been admitted. My major was Western Philosophy. When I took the entry exam at Peking University, I came first in our major, with the best results. But then they found out about my family and my background, including the fact that I had been publicly criticized for reactionary ideas when I was in the countryside. They thought that my views constituted a problem. Most of the students accepted by the Philosophy Department were members of the Party or the Youth League, but I was none of those. Therefore many in the school opposed my admission and didn’t want to accept me. But some professors had different opinions. There were hot debates whether to accept me as a student or not. Some teachers pointed out that I had come on top in the exams. 1978 was the first year after the Cultural Revolution when they started recruiting graduate students. Because there was a large number who had applied, they actually held two exams. After the first test, the ones with poor scores were eliminated, and then there was another test among those with better scores. So eventually I was admitted to the History of Western Philosophy major in the Philosophy Department of Peking University. There had been dozens of applicants across the country, ten or twenty times more than the five or six that could be accepted. Ten were invited to go to Beijing and meet with all the teachers. I was also the best in the second exam.

Maybe because of the large number of applicants, it was impossible for them to understand their backgrounds from the beginning. They would only find out when they decided to accept someone. In the past that had been different. Before looking at your grades, they would check your files to know what your family situation and your own background were like. Only then they would accept you. And if you were rejected, you wouldn’t even know why.

But later the situation changed. I had already taken my entry exams and received my results. I knew I was the best in the tests. When I arrived at Peking University, I was admitted to the second exam. And I also knew that the teachers liked me very much. But then they started investigating me again. Knowing about my problems in the past, one teacher said, if you don't accept Hu Ping now, he will know why you rejected him, and you will not be able to explain it. If you don't accept him although he came first in both exams, you shouldn’t have let him take the exam first. So what to do? They had a big argument. Finally, the department sent two teachers to Sichuan to investigate me. They asked my former teachers and neighbors, and they all had good words for me. I was the last of the batch of Peking University graduate students to receive a positive response. When I went to the Graduate School Office to report, a teacher said, oh, you are Hu Ping. The majors we take exams for are very simple. I think so too. It’s just an exam, questions of knowledge, he said. If I don't agree with your views, I still shouldn’t criticize you during the exam.

Interviewer: Did any political issues arise during your studies? Did you have conflicts with the teachers or the university leadership?

Hu: Not really. Studying by itself was very simple. I participated in the Democracy Wall Movement, but only when I took part in the election, this became a difficulty. For a student this was not considered a problem, teachers knew that it was normal that in ordinary conversations, people might speak critically about the Communist Party. It had no importance, because people's ideas at that time were already quite different from those during the Cultural Revolution. In fact, after the Cultural Revolution, many of my classmates criticized the Communist Party during conversations.

Interviewer: Thoughts at that time had already begun [opening up]...

Hu: You know, everyone had experienced the Cultural Revolution and was very disgusted with that time. They were all like this, including those from “good” backgrounds and party members. Everyone was appalled by this experience. People abroad didn’t know much about that kind of situation. It was just like the 1989 Democracy Movement. Many people took to the streets, not just students, but ordinary citizens, ordinary people...

Interviewer: But 1989 was something else.

Hu: What I say is that after the Gang of Four was overthrown, the thinking of the entire society became very different and changed a lot. Everyone had suffered. Of course, most people didn't deliberate much about it, but still there was discontent with the Communist Party. It was very common to criticize the Communist Party during private conversations, so this was not a big problem at that time.

Interviewer: So you participated in the Democracy Wall Movement and you published an article in Fertile Soil magazine. Did they know that?

Hu: That was not a big problem. Maybe, they didn’t know all of it. Usually everyone used a pen name. In addition, the influence of Democracy Wall publications was still very small at that time. They printed at most a few hundred copies at a time, and the school was far away from there. At most, one of the students would post it on the wall by the dining hall. Some students would possess one or two copies and pass them around. Therefore, among the many students at Peking University, very few only would have come into contact with these articles. Of course, poems published in the journal "Today" were easily remembered, but not so the long articles. Moreover, the printing was difficult to read. Eyes would quickly become tired when they read mimeographed texts. And after the papers had passed through three or five hands, texts became blurred, so reading was limited.

Many people knew that there was a Democracy Wall; that some people were running their own publications, and they criticized the Communist Party in them. But exactly what kind of articles, they did not know. Only very few people had read them one by one. But of course some people read them. We couldn’t go there every day, maybe once a week, or once in two weeks. For example, when a student from the university went to the Democracy Wall on a free Sunday to read the posters, he would only be able to read those posted on that day. He would not be able to see those from the next day, and dazibao that were posted two days before could already be covered by newer postings. Therefore, most people’s understanding of the Democracy Wall was very general, very unspecific, not very detailed, and it was difficult to fully understand it. Conditions for communication were very poor at that time.

Interviewer: How did you come to write articles in the Fertile Ground magazine? Did you know some people there?

Hu: I didn’t know anyone, not a single person when I came from Sichuan. They were all old friends. When I observed some of them posting a copy of the journal "Today" at the University campus, I wrote a brief note below, saying I wanted to obtain a copy, and I wrote my address, which dormitory I was from, in which room I lived. Two days later, Bei Dao [one of the editors] himself showed up at my dorm. He had been told that I was a graduate student, and he thought it was worth getting to know me. That's how we met. We started chatting, and I said I also wanted to participate. Bei Dao said that Today only published poetry and novels. I had written texts before, they knew it. But he told me that they didn’t fit their journal. But he had friends, who were also preparing to launch a publication, and I should contact them. That was how he introduced me to the people of “Fertile Soil" he was familiar with.

Interviewer: Later, how did you decide to participate in the Peking University election?

Hu: This is all documented. Originally, I had no plans to present myself in the election, but I wanted Wang Juntao to come forward to participate. Two, three months before the election, I met Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao - all three of us had participated in the Democracy Wall – to talk about the upcoming elections at various universities in Beijing. We thought this was a good opportunity to express our ideas. We would not necessarily become deputies, this seemed meaningless to us, but it would be an opportunity to speak out publicly. In past elections in China, there had never been an opportunity to discuss. Without any forums, there was no such opportunity. During the Democracy Wall time, people could express themselves to others by printing publications. When they were shut down later, they had no place anymore to talk. So we thought this democratic election movement would mainly be important as an opportunity to discuss and speak to the public and to other students, so we thought we should participate. I originally wanted to encourage Wang Juntao to participate, but as there were two seats up for election at Beida [short for “Peking University”], I also agreed to take part. Originally we supported Wang Juntao and helped him write articles to get elected. But it was impossible for me to express my views as clearly as I would have liked, so I thought it would be better for me to come out on my own. So that is how I got to participate.

Most people who actively participated in the Beida election had similar thoughts as me. They all knew that the district deputies had nothing to say at all, that did not make sense. But why were they still interested? Because they all knew that this was an opportunity to express their ideas. And they also knew that casting a vote was an idea of our generation to express ourselves. So everybody supported me and expressed hope that I would get elected. They wanted to prove that the idea of liberalization was a common objective of our generation. The Communist Party had always emphasized in the 1970s and 80s that although bourgeois liberalization ideas had some influence among students, a majority of the students rejected these and wanted to follow the Party. That’s why many students said they wanted to vote for us to prove that liberal ideas were a common choice of this generation. At that time, I thought, I should win this election although it was not interesting to become a deputy. If I were not elected, the Communist Party could say that during the election campaign, a few students had advocated bourgeois ideas, but the majority did not accept them, and this would be seen as proof of the superiority of Communism. So I had to win. This would silence them. If those who choose liberalization were supported by a majority of the students from the best universities in the country, what could the Communist Party do then? If I were elected by everyone, they couldn’t just arrest me, they wouldn't dare. And I was sure to win. Otherwise we would have failed to prove it. I wanted to prove to everyone that China’s new generation was the most intelligent one, electing this one and not the other one.

Interviewer: Did you have any hope at that time that this electoral system could continue to develop and be expanded further?

Hu: Of course, many people had this hope that this would happen at least step by step. This year it would be at district level, next year maybe at city level, and the year after that at provincial level. Of course many people had such hope. It was just at the beginning that we thought it was not so important to run to be elected. We all thought that once Chinese democracy made a breakthrough, there would be elections everywhere the next day. Without such breakthrough, there would never be elections at higher levels. Now, thirty years later you can see, there have not been elections at higher levels. You can see, in Eastern Europe or Mongolia the situation has advanced step by step, they all have achieved these. The communist countries are all the same, they all have the same problem.

Interviewer: There were two kinds of people at that time. Some people were still within the system. And others who seemed to be a minority, wanted to do away with all socialist ideas and Marxism-Leninism. When you look back on this debate now, how do you see it?

Hu: This distinction was not so obvious. People who opposed the Communist Party generally did not clearly say so. They usually talked about freedom or democracy and criticized the system. At that time just everyone was calling for reform, and everyone thought there was something wrong with the system. Everyone acknowledged this. Well, some people wanted more changes, and some wanted less, still under the leadership of the Communist Party. This was also true for what I proposed. Therefore more conservative people could accept it, this seemed reasonable. People had gone through the Cultural Revolution and thought they should control their speech and not say what they liked. One should not control others and they would not control you. So they also accepted this view.

For a book on the Peking University election campaign, students were asked which type of people they chose, the more radical or the more moderate ones. Like Zhang Wei, who received the votes from the more moderate people; or like Wang Juntao, for whom more radical people voted. I probably got votes from both sides, so I received more than each of the two. At that time, many people regarded me as less radical and Wang Juntao as more radical than me. But students who were a bit older knew that I was in fact more radical because my ideas were clearer from the beginning. This looks very moderate, but it is just reasoning, very simple, but in fact the most important thing. Some views may seem pointed and radical, but in fact they were not very important to reforming the system. Questions like how many people were shot during the Cultural Revolution? Who opposed Mao’s dictatorship, was killed. It's not that important to raise this point. Later, the Communist Party was able to acknowledge this fact, but still maintained its system. So many people died despite this point of view. So putting forward a very sharp view of something was not so important, I thought. What was important for me was the necessity for freedom of speech so that no ruler could control speech at any time. This is what was important. So I didn't agree with that point from the beginning.

But most people considered that a more radical point of view, and thought I was relatively moderate. However, many students who read my articles thought that my point of view was the most fundamental and that other things were not so important. So I got my votes from both sides. Some radical people voted for me, and so did some moderate people. And that’s what I originally thought, that it didn’t matter whether one believed in Marxism or not. What mattered was one’s attitude, whether he could tolerate different ideas, whether he was willing to protect other people’s rights. If one could be like this, it would be great, other things were not important. So for me this had to be a basic consensus, like in Western democracies. Freedom of speech is not just a point of view, but a foundation of an entire free society recognized by everybody. I made this very clear to everyone. Only those who insisted on authoritarianism would refuse this, but with most people this was not the case.

Interviewer: To what extent did people within the system, like cadres and officials, support you?

Hu: They were different. But experts on political theory and academic circles often supported our view, although not entirely. Some of them still could not analyze clearly. They were still like intellectuals in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe who thought the issues of “humanism” and “alienation” were very important. That was not my view but those experts did not really agree with my point, although they couldn’t just reject it. A few party theoreticians did though approve my views. I don’t know how many officials really supported my opinion, but no one opposed it at that time, because this did not seem appropriate. I listened to what they said. After Hu Qiaomu [Politburo member and Party theoretician] had read my article, he didn’t say much, just that the article was written in a very detailed, thoughtful and watertight way, and you couldn't refute it. They clearly sensed that this was a challenge to their system, but they won't say it.

So, in the early days of the Democracy Wall, when the Central Government issued a document criticizing the bourgeois ideas at the Democracy Wall, they did not mention my article at all. This confirmed what I thought, that it was the best time to raise this point. Although the Communist Party still was stubbornly authoritarian, they could not point to me or condemn me. It was very safe at that time. So that’s why I say that this time was the best, everyone could accept this, and it would not just attract oppression.

Interviewer: Did leaders of the University come up to you, discuss with you, listen to your opinions, or tell you not to do this or that?

Hu: It happened during the election. This is also written in my book. The leadership sent four investigation teams to Peking University. They came from the Ministry of Education, the Youth League Central Committee, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, so maybe it was three. It turned out that the investigation team from the Youth League was more supportive of the electoral process. The team from the Ministry of Civil Affairs was also quite sympathetic. Those who were most opposed was the team from the Ministry of Education.

Interviewer: What did they do? Did they come to you and talk to you, or did they just read the big-character posters?

Hu: They didn’t talk at all; they just attended the public meetings. People from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the investigation team of the Youth League Central Committee interviewed me and Wang Juntao. They talked to us because they held sympathies for us. People from the Ministry of Education didn’t talk to us; they just took notes which they reported to the top. We knew this because before, when the elections had just started and some friends who worked somewhere else came to see me at Peking University I mentioned to them that in the upcoming election I had good chances to get elected.

I thought that if I were elected, the Communist Party would definitely not be happy. Of course, they would have to cope with me; they could not just punish or arrest me. The only thing they could do was giving me a hard time after my graduation, when I should be assigned to work. At that time, the allocation of graduates and postgraduates was still centrally controlled by the government. If they didn't like you, they could give you a bad job. But I was in the first bunch of graduate students, when there were still very few, and I was the best one at Peking University. My major Western Philosophy was very specific, they couldn't just randomly assign me somewhere, send me to a rural commune for example. The first graduates with a master's degree in Western Philosophy couldn’t be assigned to any small county town. This would be difficult for them. Later, they stopped giving me grades. In fact, I finished my studies in 1981, but for two years they didn’t give me points, until 1983.

Interviewer: So how do you look back now at this Democracy Movement and the Peking University campaign?

Hu: When you live in such a society, the most important is that you openly express your dissatisfaction with the system. Your pursuit of what you thought was good, is the most important thing. Because the worst about communist dictatorship is that it doesn’t let you express yourself.

Interviewer: I now understand how you were thinking at that time. But I don’t really know about later. Do you believe the movement has failed or are there still some leftovers? Looking at it again today, what is your judgment?

Hu: The main thing in China was the 1989 events [on Tian’anmen Square]. And you can see that this 1989 movement had a lot to do with the previous movements. That the student organizations marched at the forefront was because of our elections, when the students became very important in China. This was not the case yet at the time of the Democracy Wall. The Democracy Wall consisted mainly of big-character posters in the streets. Only a few people from the campus would read them. But the election campaign allowed all students to participate, something that was remembered later. From the university elections in 1980 to the Democracy Movement of 1989, all the large-scale mass movements in China have been started by students. Therefore, a base had already been created when college students could actively take part in political activities and started to play an important role.

Of course, after June 4th, when the CCP opened fire, repression started. The whole situation changed again. Many of today's problems started after June 4th. The original course was changed after June 4th; the whole of China changed its direction. The problems caused by the events of June 4th were huge.

Interviewer: June 4th was only ten years after. The time span was not very big.

Hu: Before June 4th, things were different. The students of the 1989 pro-democracy movement could become pioneers because they were influenced by our electoral movement. You may ask Wang Dan [a leader of the 1989 movement] for example, the Peking University students [in 1989] were all aware of what we had done. They all knew that we had laid a foundation. Those student leaders knew it. I arrived to the US in 1987. In 1986, I was still very active in China. My "Freedom of Speech" article was printed as an official publication in 1986. A large-scale discussion was immediately organized. Three publishing houses, including the People's Publishing House, printed my book "Freedom of Speech". At that time, I participated in various forums to discuss political reform, including the Central Propaganda Department and the Youth League Central Committee. They had all asked me to take part. So from the Democracy Wall to the election campaigns to 1986, when I went abroad, was an uninterrupted period. People were very much aware of what had happened before. After 1981, there had not been any large-scale movement where students took to the streets, but some of the ideas spread from the Democracy Wall and the election campaigns through 1986 and 1987 all the way to 1989. The connection is very clear. In 1986, my "Freedom of Speech" was printed by the "Youth Forum" magazine in Wuhan. It had a great impact at that time. Then in September, a discussion was held in Beijing. Young and old were taking part, including some old professors in their 60s or 70s. They all came to discuss my article. The impact was huge at that time.

Interviewer: Where did this happen? At Peking University?

Hu: At the Beijing Municipal Party School, the details have all been published. Many people took part, including Li Yining, now an expert on economic reform and a professor at Peking University. He also made a written contribution in which he spoke highly of my article. And He Jiadong, who passed away recently.

Interviewer: Could it it be published in China at that time? Or was it only internally?

Hu: No, it was openly published, even by the most official People's Publishing House. They also published my text on "Freedom of Speech." That only ended in late 1986, when the anti-liberalization movement took place and Hu Yaobang [reformist CCP Secretary General] had to step down. So from the Democracy Wall until 1986, everyone knew about my text, and they all wanted to publish it.

Interviewer: I also want to ask you some questions about what happened later. You came out in 1987. Why did you leave China?

Hu: I came to study abroad.

Interviewer: They didn’t arrest you during that period?

Hu: No. I was doing pretty well during that time.

Interviewer: Still it seems that a lot of people from independent journals got arrested then.

Hu: Those from the independent journals were all arrested in 1981 and 1982.

Interviewer: After you came to the United States, what did you think of the Democracy Movement in exile? Why is it so difficult?

Hu: At the beginning, most of the leaders had participated in the Democracy Movement inside China, where they had a great influence. When they came out, everyone respected them, people like Yan Jiaqi [reformist political scientist], Wu’er Kaixi [student leader in 1989] and others. The same was true for me because I had a great influence in China. People would respect me. Carrying out activities overseas and forming a unified organization, was of course met by many difficulties. In the West, the US has a two party system, but a small country like Switzerland has dozens of parties and a very different electoral system. When one congressman is elected in the United States, other parties will be completely left out. Countries like Switzerland have a proportional representation system. A constituency can elect several representatives and even small parties can hope to get elected. They don’t need to form a big party. In the United States, one constituency can only elect one representative. So third parties have no chance, they have to join forces with others. Still it is not true that Americans like unity, and Swiss people like division. But it is their electoral system that forces alliances.

If one day China opens up and everyone returns to participate in democratic elections, then they will definitely unite because they will have this need. There is no such need now, so no one is willing to join forces and unite. If I cannot convince you, you cannot convince me, right? Elections here in exile are difficult. Voting at home, the voters can decide. But who are the voters here? Difficult, all the Chinese people in the street could be voters, but they don't care. They must be members of an organization, and only inside the organization, one can participate. But who can be a member? Some take this very serious, but when it comes to meetings, they cannot take part. They might have to go to work, so then they will find some people on the street and say that they are also members, they take them to meetings and have them to vote for them. There is nothing you can do.

If you want democratic elections and unity, people will only unite if there is a political struggle. Otherwise people will not be willing to unite. You are not convinced by me, and I am not convinced by you. I think I am better than you, and you think you are better than me. The same is true in a democratic society. Electing a president, one feels he is better than others. Only the results will decide. So there are no elections here, who would be the voters? At the beginning it was relatively easy. Everyone was participating in the Democracy Movement; they could be voters and join an organization. But in exile, the members of the organizations, the real members, are scattered and do not actively participate, so it becomes difficult to tell who is a member. Therefore, results from elections have no value. For example, the two of us are members of an organization. I think I should be the chairman because I am great. But you also think you are great and should be the chairman. Then we will hold a congress that should vote. But many delegates don’t look like real delegates elected from different places. Many of them do not know who they are and have not even participated in the Democracy Movement. So the results of their voting have no weight and will not be recognized.

Interviewer: The overseas Democracy Movement has also received money from institutions and government organizations in the US and from some institutions in Taiwan. How does this influence the movement in exile?

Hu: Of course it has a huge impact, because without money, it’s difficult to carry out activities. It needs a lot of money, and whoever receives money will do better. But foundations in the United States and Taiwan find that difficult. They don't know who to give the money to. There are so many people, which one should they give it to? When there were only few people at the beginning, it was easy. When only one or two organizations existed, that was relatively clear. Later, when there were more and more, this became a big problem. In addition, they had difficulties to check whether an organization was doing well or not. Overseas this is difficult to verify. Those supervising are not people from the Democracy Movement and don’t understand much. You Westerners are usually not very good at reading Chinese. So you cannot distinguish if this one or that one is running its journal better. In China, you would be able to tell it from what the readers say. If a book is a bestseller, everyone knows it’s good. Here, it is hard to tell how the Chinese readers really react.

Interviewer: What I also mean is that money comes from the United States, Taiwan, maybe Hong Kong or some individuals...

Hu: Not from Hong Kong, mainly from the United States and Taiwan.

Interviewer: When they give you money, they want to influence your overseas movement.

Hu: They can't influence it, and in the end they haven't really influenced it.

Interviewer: From Taiwan there was also Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party with different views...

Hu: They know that they don’t have too much influence, and it is not so important for them. Our activities address mainland Chinese here, our publications and statements here speak to people who have come from the mainland, not to immigrants from Taiwan. It affects the mainland, not Taiwan. And we are concerned about mainland problems, not those in Taiwan. So they can't expect that we can help them with anything. It's irrelevant, and in fact, they don't really intervene.

Interviewer: Do they still give money today?

Hu: Very little. For example, for "Beijing Spring" [Hu Ping’s exile journal] they still give money, through the Taiwan Democracy Foundation. Initially they were quite supportive, but it has become less.

Interviewer: Why do they pay less now?

Hu: This is a global problem, not just Taiwan’s. Taiwan has undergone big changes in the more than twenty years since June 4th. At that time, they were still very anti-communist. The old Kuomintang people still wanted to unify China under the Three People's Principles [Democracy, Nationalism and People’s Livelihood, formulated by Sun Yat-sen]. But later, the Democratic Progressive Party had little interest in China. Only when Ma Ying-jeou [from KMT] came back to power, he thought again that it was important to have a good relationship with the mainland Communists. Every generation thinks differently. They were very anti-communist at first, and as soon as they saw the emergence of a democratic movement in mainland China, they were very happy and wanted to support it. They hoped to unify China under the Three People's Principles. Because they had this idea, they gave support.

Interviewer: Does it affect your work, when there is less money from outside now?

Hu: Of course it does affect our work.

Interviewer: Are there any other sources?

Hu: There are very few other sources.

​Interviewer: What about some people living in the US who used to be active in the Democracy Movement, who have become rich?

Hu: Once they get rich, they won’t care about this matter anymore. During the June 4th incident in 1989, many said, "We want to go into business and make money to support you." But they made their fortune and left, the same thing as in China. There are many rich people in China now who participated in the 1989 Democracy Movement, but few are willing now to look back and help us. There are some, but very few, including Wang Gongquan who was arrested some time ago. He was a relatively large businessman in Beijing who spent a lot of money to help Xu Zhiyong's New Citizens' Movement [an informal civil rights’ group inside China, suppressed in 2014]. But there were very few like him, because most businessmen know that they have to cooperate with the Communists in order to make money. If the Party knew that someone was supporting a pro-democracy movement, they would create trouble for him. Therefore, many of them have given up their ideals and did not dare to support them. And in exile, it’s not that they don’t dare to support the movement, they just no longer have this ideal.

Interviewer: What is the current attitude of the Chinese government towards the overseas Democracy Movement?

Hu: Of course they have their principles, but they are not always very clear because there are many other factors at play. Some relatively famous people can’t go back easily. Even if they haven't participated in pro-democracy activities for a long time, they are not allowed back. They are considered symbols. If they were allowed to go back, this could cause big reactions, and others could ask, why may this one go home, and does it mean the Communist Party is changing its policies? Therefore such persons, even if they don't currently participate in the movement, are unlikely being allowed back. For others, it depends on whether they are active or not. Some, who have been inactive for a long time, will be allowed back. Those who continue their activities will not be allowed. At the beginning they had a list of people who were prohibited to return, and for those on the list, it became very difficult. It was also a question what influence one might still have, as I just mentioned. A famous person in exile, even if he had not participated in the movement for ten years, would not be allowed back, because others would immediately know and ask questions. The Communist Party is afraid of persons turning “good”. Others might think then that things had changed for the better. They would make demands that would not be fulfilled, so things would appear worse again. You can see, and we all know, that the Communist Party will not let us go back, so we don’t count on it any more. If we learned for example, that people like Wu’er Kaixi had returned to China, or Wang Dan [another student leader of 1989], then everyone would go to the consulate to ask. Wang Juntao would ask, Xu Wenli would ask, and if they were rejected, it would make it into the newspapers, everyone would be losing face. If we don't ask, we won't be embarrassed. If we all ask, we will be even more embarrassed. The Communist Party knows that. Unlike what many people think, it deliberately prevents people from having hope. The more people have hope, the more they will become active. If you lose hope, you will do nothing. The Party will appear clean, that’s why they prefer it this way.

Interviewer: In addition, mainland spies are interested in the overseas pro-democracy movements...?

Hu: We don’t pay too much attention to this kind of thing, because everything we do is public and there are no particular secrets. If a spy comes to us to participate, it will not have any damaging effect. There usually isn’t any definite evidence that someone is a spy of the Communists. If it looks that there is something wrong with one person, we just pay a little attention to him. There is nothing else to do. In addition, pro-democracy movement groups do not have independent investigative capabilities. They cannot determine if someone is a spy or not through an investigation like the Communist Party. We cannot impose sanctions like the Communists in the past, when they were an armed revolutionary group. If they found a traitor, they might just kill him. But we cannot do this.

So if a spy joins us, he won't have any destructive effect. If he reports the contents of a conversation among us to the Communists, it won’t make a difference, because we will publish our ideas ourselves. So what impact can a spy have? He reports our discussions to the Communist Party. It doesn’t matter whether he writes it or not, we will publish it ourselves. So what can a spy do? Maybe he will report some details he has found out, but it will not be important. Because the important things we will publish ourselves, so their effect would be very limited. They cannot achieve much, because we don’t have any secret activities, so nobody needs this information. What they can do though, is telling bad things about us and creating conflicts. But when a Mr. Anybody is saying bad things, nobody will care.

If they want to technically hack or damage our website, they need not join us; they can do this from anywhere. Our website is often hacked, this is very common. It is not a big problem, we just fix it. They like to create conflicts among us and make us fight with each other. But without spies, we would still be quarreling. And spies wouldn’t have much effect either. Spies can also introduce problematic views that influence others, but these are just views, we will debate and criticize such views. And we can't be sure whether such views came from a Communist spy, or whether a person originally thought that way. So I think the role a spy can play is very limited.

In some associations spies might play now a bigger role, leading to positive comments about the Communist Party and good relations with the Communists who want to influence overseas Chinese and Western governments. But they know that they cannot influence us, and knowing that, the Communist Party does not put much effort to influence us. But in other groups, like the "Sichuan Compatriots’ Association" or the "Peking University Alumni Association," they can play a role and make these organizations support the Communist Party. On us, it has no effect.

Interviewer: Last question, what are your hopes for the future of the overseas Democratic Movement? Will it be able to play a more important role than it has done in the past?

Hu: It’s a very simple question. Twenty-five years ago, all the countries in Eastern Europe underwent a change. 1989 was a very important year in history, and an extraordinary historical transformation took place. China was experiencing the 1989 Democracy Movement and the Tian’anmen Massacre. The whole world was criticizing the Chinese Communists, and they became very isolated.

At that time, few people thought that the Communist Party could survive to this day, and even less thought that it would become stronger and bigger twenty-five years on. Moreover, at that time, the entire liberal democratic West was at the height of its power. It had never been so powerful. Its wealth, its influence in the world, and its ideals were completely dominant. But twenty-five years later, it has become like this: Especially in Europe, all of you are simply building good relations with the Communists, begging them and relying on them economically. You will soon become the biggest economic entity, how could you end up like this? In just twenty-five years, the entire history has been reversed. Everyone thought that the Communists were finished. But twenty-five years later, it is the contrary. The power of an authoritarian regime has become stronger than other forces. What will happen in another twenty-five years? To which point can it continue like this?

So I say, I want to raise this issue. China's human rights issue is not a question for China, but for the whole world. The Communist Party has been able to get out of the most difficult crisis in the past twenty-five years and become so strong, but we, the people opposing, are too few, and many have left. Moreover, the West does not support these principles. Of course, Westerners are not all that bad. They are confused and cannot see clearly. They do not know what is finally going on in China. They just think, with China's economy developing and opening up to the outside world, this is a good thing. As long as the economy develops and the middle class rises, China will follow the West and gradually move toward democracy, right? That’s how the West thinks.

As a result, twenty-five years have passed, and you have the feeling now that something is going wrong. Now China is so open, there are so many economic exchanges, the middle class has become more numerous. However, China has not become more democratic, but more authoritarian and worse than before, more threatening, and not afraid of anyone anymore. In the past, when pressure was put on China, it would still give in a little bit. Today it is not afraid at all, but you in the West have to think twice what you do. If China dislikes something, there will be no discussion, you just have to retreat. The whole thing is reversed now.

To me this seem one of the biggest mistakes humans have made in thousands of years of history, allowing such a regime to become so powerful. It will have its influence on everyone in this world, and pose an enormous threat to freedom, democracy and peace in the entire world, bigger than Hitler's threat, as simple as that. When people were killed on June 4th, the whole world saw it. People took to the streets. Opposition to the government has never been so obvious. It is different from Ukraine or the Arab countries, where not everyone is opposed and some people also support these governments, and there are not so many people in the streets. But in the 1989 movement in Beijing, everyone stood up, including officials. This absolutely proves that a vast majority of Chinese people opposes this government. There is no movement in history like the one in China in 1989.

Interviewer: But then, why are so few people inside China now willing to talk about democracy, political reform, and freedom of speech?

Hu: Of course, if you think about it, the June 4 incident has shocked them so much because they saw that they were facing an army and a political party with modern weapons. That’s why many people gave up. If they want to live there, they have to give up. They also discovered that they could live well even if they gave up. If they didn’t give up, life would become very bad. Because unlike during the Mao Zedong era, you can live a good life now even if you give up. You can improve your life, go abroad, study, and discuss a lot. It’s not like in Mao’s era, when you couldn’t dare talking about anything. Nowadays the scope of what you can say is much bigger. Many people in China dare speaking very boldly, which can also become problematic. Then people think, why should they rub the Communist Party the wrong way? Everyone knows that there are red lines. As long as one doesn't cross them, it doesn't matter.

Here I have a big place to live in, and I can lead a good life, so that's fine. As long as I don't go to China myself, I'll be safe. The Communist Party is not like during the Mao era in the past. Mao Zedong wanted to control your thoughts. Now they don't control your thinking, and as long as you don't oppose them, it will be ok. But of course, the June 4th incident has shocked them a lot.

Interviewer: When you talk like that, it seems you still feel a bit disappointed?

Hu: The question is not about being disappointed or not, but this is a big issue. Under the Communist Party, especially after June 4th, the Chinese government is a government like you have never seen one in history. We have seen communism and fascism before, all kinds of “isms”, also capitalism and socialism. So what kind of “ism” is this in China now? I think, none at all, it’s just a very bizarre thing. You cannot really give it a name, it’s hard to tell. Under this circumstance, people easily deceive themselves and think that life will gradually get better despite the many problems they still have. Therefore, they will not oppose this, but see it as something never seen in history, and they don't know how to deal with it. Many people have written books on the former Soviet Union, describing it a very bad thing. These politicians or ordinary people haven't understood much, no one has told or explained clearly, but it prevented people in the world from taking a tough attitude towards Communism.

This is not just a problem for the Democracy Movement in exile, but for mankind as a whole. Just think about the past twenty-five years. The whole world was so optimistic, thinking that freedom and democracy had ushered in, and that authoritarian society, especially Communism, had passed forever. But who would have thought that it could live on until today and could become stronger than others? Now people are already discussing which day China will become the number one in the world. Western media are discussing this and ask what will happen when China rules the whole world? Everyone is talking about this. Would you have had such a debate twenty-five years ago? I don’t think so, how could it be? The big Soviet Union was finished; China seemed to be definitely finished. If you look back, people's ideas have changed a lot, and their views on the world are fundamentally different. There has rarely been a time in history when the free world, free countries fell on their own, just when they were at their strongest. There was no fight; they collapsed on their own. But an authoritarian country that was about to collapse, rose up again. This is a very strange historical phenomenon that you and I have witnessed with our own eyes. How will this be after ten or twenty-five years? That’s what I am thinking about all the time. And that’s why I am saying that China's problems are not just China's, but problems of the whole world. The troubles we encounter are not just our troubles, but everyone's troubles. People will realize this soon; it will take just a few years for everybody to know.

What we have to do is to make the whole world pay attention to China. China certainly hopes to gain a dominant position in the world. China is very clear about this. And many Chinese people think like this, hoping that China can become a dominating power. The leaders still deny this, but this is only what they keep telling. In their heart they are also hoping for this. At least, they think, the world should listen to China and stop talking as soon as China steps out. They want to set the rules of the game for the world. Don’t use the United States’ rules, use China’s. So there could be many conflicts in the future.