Interview with Ren Wanding (on April 25, 2014 in an apartment in Paris)

Here you find the Chinese text of the interview.

Interviewer (Helmut Opletal): When you look back on that period now, more than thirty years later, how do you feel?

Ren Wanding: China’s pro-democracy movement began in the 1950s, and the so-called rightists flourished in 1957.This was the beginning of a democratic movement in China after 1949. Although many people at that time were fond of communism and liked the Communist Party, many leading personalities pursued the idea of democracy. They followed the model of modern democracy and freedom and were opposed to the one-party system. Although they used the “rectification movement” of the Communist Party to put forward some of their demands and principles, we still regard them as the first democratic movement in China. Then came the April 5th Movement in 1976. This was not a strictly democratic movement in the modern sense. It was a mass reaction to the power struggle between two or even three factions within the CCP. At that point, people were not very open-minded yet. They still pursued “true Marxism” and “true socialism” and did not understand the concept of modern democracy. Of course, there were also those who opposed Mao Zedong and “Qin Shihuang” [an authocratic emperor in the third century BC and idol of Mao]. But this was very rare. The main manifestation of the movement was that people participated in the power struggles within the CCP.

The April 5th Movement [mourning Zhou Enlai] was considered to mark the end of the Cultural Revolution. It was not very clear when to put the end, so this April 5th Movement of 1976 could serve as a signal. At the end of 1978, the Democracy Wall Movement started, and according to our perception it incorporated strict liberal democratic ideas in a modern sense: democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, subordination of the military under the state, etc. It was a watershed and a new distinction. That Democracy Wall Movement became an epoch-making event in Chinese history. I saw it at that time as a new beginning for Chinese political culture and as an ideological emancipation which also influenced the reformists and the liberals within the Communist Party. But, as we could see, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP in 1978 [the big reform congress that year] did not propose the four words “reform and opening up”. No, these were proposed by us! At that point, they just said that they would end class struggle and focus on economic development. They still wanted to strengthen the people's communes for example. What’s strange is that some Chinese websites still put things like “reform and opening up” into the communiqué of the Third Plenary Session. That’s fake! But websites are written like that.

Reform and opening up is what we proposed at the Democracy Wall, and that was of great significance at that time. By 2000, democracy advocates in mainland China had a saying: Where China's democratic movement stands, is still unclear. It 2000, the Democracy Wall was 20 years ago. Including the previous rightist movement [or 1957], it had been 30 or 40 years, even longer. They said the movement needed to be re-enlightened and start over. I said no, this is wrong! China's democratic movement has its origins and its development process, which cannot be done away. Otherwise we wouldn’t have our historic inspirations and references. The Democracy Wall Movement was a new beginning. For example, I wrote the "Chinese Declaration of Human Rights", Wei Jingsheng's "The Fifth Modernization", Xu Wenli "On Reform" [originally: "The Gengshen Reform Proposal"], Hu Ping "On Freedom of Speech", and my friend Gu Shuhua [?] "What is Socialism", and "What is the Historical Task of China's Democracy Movement". These six or seven major documents prove that the history of China’s democratic movement is very transparent. We all needed to move forward and develop on the basis of these previous resources and ideas. Without recognizing or understanding our own past, how could we move forward?

This was my main job over the years. In the past, there was an online world in the West, but no online world in China. Many things about the Democracy Wall were still not well known. With today’s online world, we can easily spread information from the past for everyone. Through my work and writing in the past few years, people could obtain a clearer idea of what kind of movement the Democracy Wall was. Western observers raised the important issue that China’s Democracy Movement had no accumulated experience. In fact, no one knew what we had done in the past, what documents there were, who were the representative figures. That’s what we wanted to tell. So I invented the notion "Historical View of China's Democracy Movement", a viewpoint, a statement, a theory on the history of China's democratic movements, and a theory on its history. This has been basically accepted.

Briefly: The enlightenment was started by the “rightists” in 1957; the April 5th Movement in 1976 ended the Cultural Revolution period; in 1978 and 1979, the Democracy Wall broadened the movement and laid a new foundation; by the time of the national awakening, people knew that we had to take the path of democracy, and could not accept the current one-party dictatorship anymore. We had to follow a new path to democracy. For me, June 4, 1989, as I have written, was not just killing people or shooting, it was a democratic revolution. For a week, people rose up to block tanks and military vehicles. They had no weapons, they used matches, lighters, stones, and sticks, but they rose up and made a revolution. In addition to protesting corruption and corrupt officials, the mainstream slogan was "democracy, human rights, freedom." This used to be our program before. In the colleges, of course not all of them, this was the same. According to an official statistics of the Chinese Communist Party, 15 percent wanted to overthrow the Communists and the old government. That’s a government count. Although this figure of 15 percent doesn’t seem very big, it represents a trend, also for our future direction. It was not simply against corruption and corrupt officials. We also needed to strive for a change of the system, a new political system. By the time of June 4th, people were awakened. When the Democratic Party was founded in 1998, this showed that the Chinese Democracy Movement had reached and advanced to a final stage in its strategy. All the current systems, including the Western system, are based on political parties. When the Chinese Democratic Party was formed in 1998, it became a national party with great influence overseas as well. It showed that our democratic movement had reached an advanced stage, for a very long period, not necessarily with immediate success. On the one hand, this is what I do. But it is also a problem that the Chinese democratic movement has to solve. But it shows that we don’t always have to start from zero. From nothing before, we went step by step and acted step by step. By 2008 and 2009, the “Charter 08” [political reform manifesto signed by 303 intellectuals led by the future Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in December 2008] opened a new stage. What was its main meaning? The liberals among the officials woke up, and they went into the same direction as the Democracy Movement. The "Charter 08" actually incorporated many things that had started thirty years earlier at the Democracy Wall.

Interviewer: In your writings you mentioned a “Democracy Wall culture”?

Ren: That’s right. Among the nine definitions for the Democracy Wall, I am saying that the Democracy Wall Movement was a precedent for all subsequent movements. First, the Democracy Wall was supported by Deng Xiaoping then. It influenced official attitudes. This was amazing. It influenced the official liberal faction at that time, also Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping belonged to the liberal faction, but he wasn’t a reformist. Deng and Ye Jianying [revolutionary leader and elder statesman] both supported the Democracy Wall then. But Wei Jingsheng's opposition to Deng Xiaoping alerted him. Deng feared and arrested Wei Jingsheng. Second, during the 1989 June 4th Movement, I gave speeches in colleges to talk about the Democracy Wall. Many students knew about it. I met all those student leaders, Wang Dan, Chai Ling, Feng Congde and many, many more. I know them all. They had asked me to give lectures to them. I also took the initiative to go to colleges, and I visited all major universities. Later I got arrested and sentenced to several years. At the Democracy Wall we had demanded our system to be changed and transformed. This influenced the reformists in the Party and affected all subsequent movements. As for the "Charter 08", its first sentence says that in that year it would be the 10th anniversary of June 4th; the second sentence speaks of the 30th anniversary of the Democracy Wall. This shows the impact of the Democracy Wall on the “Charter 08”. Liu Xiaobo is a very arrogant person, and he will not easily recognize somebody else’s accomplishments. So when he mentioned the 30th anniversary of the Democracy Wall, he recognized its impact on the "Charter 08". Third, the international community links the Democracy Wall to some episodes in Eastern European countries, for example, what happened in Poland or in Hungary in 1956. The fourth is Czechoslovakia, when we speak about the Democracy Wall and the Beijing Spring. The Beijing Spring and the Prague Spring [of 1968] are closely connected. People also mention that our old fighters from the Democracy Wall are still active: Wei Jingsheng, Xu Wenli or me. That’s why it is said that the Democracy Wall people were more influential than those from the June 4th.

Interviewer: Were there conflicts within the Democracy Wall Movement, situations where the ideas were not so unified? Weren’t there various organizations, people and factions?

Ren: Of course. To tell the truth, theoretically, this is the issue I just mentioned. Some say that it is not clear what the pro-democracy movement stands for. This is a debate, and I think we need to solve this problem. Others say, don’t politicize human rights. This was brought up by Ding Zilin [mother of a student killed in the Tian’anmen events of 1989]. Human rights have two meanings. Without talking about its intrinsic meaning, they are apolitical and political at the same time. We need to analyze them from two aspects. Why do the West, the United States and Europe talk about human rights and democracy at the same time? This shows that human rights are depoliticized, while democracy is politicized. But human rights are not entirely apolitical. In China, for example, many prisoners of conscience are arrested and beaten up. This is a simple humanitarian issue. But when we go back to the roots of it, it is not only a depoliticized issue, but caused by the system that has generated all those prisoners of conscience and people being sentenced and sent to re-education through labor. Going back to the roots, to the system, is political. You cannot simply say, we call on the Chinese government not to arrest political prisoners or persecute them. We also need to point out that they are persecuting these people because there is something wrong with our system, and we want to change it.

Interviewer: How did the Democracy Wall Movement influence the reformists within the Party?

Ren: There is one thing that more and more people now get to know. It was Deng Xiaoping who ordered the arrest of Wei Jingsheng. And Deng Xiaoping removed my name from the list of people to be detained that had been sent by the Public Security Ministry to the Politburo. So he protected me.

Interviewer: Do you know why?

Ren: Yes, very clearly. Bei Dao was the first to tell me, and I also learned about it from my classmates. It was because my "Declaration of Human Rights" also contained rights for various factions within the Communist Party, even rights for the so-called “capitalist roaders” [as Deng Xiaoping was labeled during the Cultural Revolution, and again briefly in 1976]. It was an issue that those persecuted during the Cultural Revolution should also have human rights as well as the “capitalist roaders” persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

Interviewer: Do you know if Deng Xiaoping had actually said something like that in internal debates?

Ren: It is my own analysis.

Interviewer: You didn’t receive any inside information?

Ren:  No. I heard at the time that Deng Pufang [Deng’s son paralyzed after an attack by Red Guards] has said that they also had human rights, that Communists also had human rights. This is what Deng's son has said. Another reason was that in my "Declaration of Human Rights" I mentioned Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, the Gang of Four. I criticized them as being ultra-leftist. Of course Deng Xiaoping was happy. In another clause I proposed to make the borders more open, because this would also comprise economic and political openness. This was also in line with Deng Xiaoping's ideas. In June 1979, when I had already been arrested, he told the editor-in-chief of Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper that China should open up. This was the first time he mentioned the need for openness. I remember it very clearly. I was in prison at that time and read the newspapers every day. The "openness" of the Declaration of Human Rights was consistent with his thoughts. So I did not oppose Deng Xiaoping. And he thought that I was rather moderate.

Interviewer: Then why were you arrested again?

Ren: On April 4th [1979], I went with a few others to the Democracy Wall to put up big-character posters. Wei Jingsheng had been arrested on March 29, together with Chen Lu, the number two in my organization, the Human Rights Alliance. So why me then? On April 4, when I took some people to put up big-character posters, they had to arrest me. Later, after being released, I heard that the Municipal Public Security assembled in the Hong Bin Lou, a large restaurant opposite the Democracy Wall. From there they used binoculars to direct plainclothes police to arrest me and a few others of us.

Interviewer: I have seen this photo.

Ren: This photo has been taken by Zhou [?]. It is very important. I told him the night before that we were going to post dazibao on the Democracy Wall on April 4th, criticizing the Beijing Municipal Government. He asked may I come with you? I said come if you want. That's the photo he took from not far away. I am responsible for whole thing myself. When I went to post this dazibao, they had no choice but to arrest me. Because the next day was April 5th [the anniversary of the 1976 Tian’anmen crackdown], they were afraid of a big action. This incident also proofs that Deng Xiaoping did not want to arrest me.

Interviewer: When you got arrested, did they specify why?

Ren: The arrest warrant was only issued a few days later. After being detained, I was interrogated for seven days and seven nights every day. I tried to ignore them, just not pay attention to them. I asked them to clearly explain why there was no investigation or trial. Why they accused me of being a counter-revolutionary. They should come up with evidence first, and the matter would stop there. But it lasted seven days and seven nights. Then they did not take notice of me for three years. Only during the third year, they called me to talk to them. They made it very clear. Ren Wanding, they said, your case is not easy to handle. The Public Security Bureau and the prosecutor’s office quarreled many times in their meetings. The prosecutor bluntly did not approve the demands. Another officer asked me, what should I do about your problem? Three years of detention? Tell me. The verdict was originally scheduled for thirteen years. They wanted to imprison me for thirteen years, and also Wei Jingsheng for thirteen years, thirteen or fifteen years.

Interviewer: It was fifteen years in prison for Wei.

Ren: I received thirteen years. But at that point, they didn’t plan any more to detain me for thirteen years, but for three years. I didn't quite understand this at the time. They told me it had not been decided yet whether it would be thirteen or three years. In fact, they had already decided, and they tried to give me a signal that it would be three years of re-education through labor. But I didn’t know yet. When I was about to be released in the third year, they added another year. The labor camp said that I had been agitating inside, that’s why I got another year added. It was like that, three years plus one, eventually made four years of “re-education”. I think what Deng Xiaoping had said about me was completely true. It’s not just my own analysis. Bei Dao has given me this information.

Interviewer:  How did Bei Dao know?

Ren: He was very well-informed. He said that he had got this information from some senior cadres’ children. Later, I got it confirmed by a classmate’s mother who worked in the Ministry of Public Security. There was no problem with this. They treated me very favorably and well in prison. Normally I would have had my head shaved, but I wasn’t shaved. That policeman was very polite to me, just like that. He didn't ask for instructions or something written, he simply removed my name from that list. This is very interesting, because our organization, the China Human Rights League, should have been fully dismantled by the Public Security Bureau. Some people just left. With Chen Lu, I had a loud argument.

Interviewer: The Democracy Wall started at the end of November 1978. When did you start discussing the Democracy Wall and the issue of democracy?

Ren: At the end of 1978, I went to the Democracy Wall. In November I started writing small-character posters proposing to rehabilitation of the participants of the April 5 Movement.

Interviewer: What were your intentions? What did you do? And why?

Ren: I have also been a Red Guard and persecuted others. And others have harassed me. I wanted to go to Vietnam to fight against the United States at that time, and to Burma to join the Communist Party guerrilla there. We had already traveled far, taking the train to Guilin and Guangzhou. After returning to Beijing, they locked us up. They kept me in an office. In detention in 1968, I was handcuffed in an "airplane" position and beaten like this every day for half a year. It was said that the Chinese did not understand human rights, had never heard of human rights, and no one had ever discussed human rights. We were asked why we had raised the issue of human rights all of a sudden. In fact, human rights was said to be a bourgeois issue in China. When I was in middle school, my classmates joked that my human rights had been violated. That was still the 1960s. After the Cultural Revolution, people no longer dared to talk about human rights. But "human rights" was actually a common term, and it was not regarded as a word with serious meaning. I often used it for fun. In the 1970s, after the Cultural Revolution, I got to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Beijing Library. It was a publication from the Kuomintang period. As I was doing propaganda work in my unit then, I had obtained a letter of introduction that allowed me to read older newspapers.

Interviewer: What institution did you work for then?

Ren: An industrial company. Although I was not a member of the Communist Party, I was assigned to their propaganda work. And as a propaganda officer, with a letter of introduction, I could read internal publications, internal books and newspapers. Reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought me into contact with human rights issues, especially reading the “Reference News” [classified selected translations from the international press] about Zbigniew Brzezinski, the security adviser to US President Jimmy Carter. I clearly remember one of his sentences then, that human rights were the foreign policy of the Carter administration. Because I had endured the Cultural Revolution, I felt that human rights were very important for China, that Chinese people did not enjoy human rights. At that time, I already began to write my "Chinese Declaration of Human Rights"; it took me several nights to write. That was in December 1978. I then asked friends at the Democracy Wall if they would like to come and listen to this "Declaration of Human Rights". Immediately several people came to listen and read it, and they all thought it was good and ok. And I asked them what I should do.

Interviewer: Didn’t they make any comments?

Ren: Yes, but very few. I was 35 years old then, that seemed very old. Those people were all in their twenties. They had not been able to go to school during the Cultural Revolution, and they could not really contribute much. At this point, I planned to set up a human rights association, in an academic sense. But some said that instead of an academic association, we should form a political organization, the "China Human Rights Alliance". I didn't agree first as I didn't want to politicize human rights. But when two or three of them insisted on doing it, I said, forget it, let’s just form this Human Rights Alliance. In the end, there was a young chap who worked for the Academy of Sciences as a general clerk who went to get their copy machine to produce copies. There were very few photocopiers at that time, so when some foreign reporters saw our copies, they thought that the Japanese were supporting us as we were using a Japanese copier. Others believed that we got Soviet help because I had written about Sino-Soviet friendship.

China and Japan, China and the United States, China and the Soviet Union should all be friendly. But some reporters believed that the Soviets supported us. That chap who was working at the Academy of Sciences was using their Academy's photocopier. At that time, China only imported Japanese copiers. We turned these copies into big-character posters to be put up on the Democracy Wall. I didn’t care about the specifics. I let my friends do the concrete work like notifying journalists and so on. The Alliance was established on January 1st, and a public announcement was to be made on January 5th. There were journalists from the British “Daily Telegraph” as well as correspondent from Canada, from the “Globe and Mail”, who immediately sent out the news. The impact of our announcement was huge at that time. The Voice of America aired it. Reporters wanted to interview me. I had never imagined that what we were doing could result in such an outcome. People sometimes have the same experience. They don't foresee the consequences of what they are doing. I felt that human rights problems were very common in China, and very personal, nothing exceptional. I didn’t think this would have so much impact. We just wanted to write about it. Of course I wrote with a lot of passion, and the words also carried a lot of passion. It was a manifesto, a declaration of thoughts and of emotions.

Interviewer: When the Democracy Wall started in late November, as you said, you already began putting up big-character posters. How did you find out about the Wall? How did you know?

Ren: We often passed that place on our bicycles when we went shopping or seeing friends, but not when I went to work. I noticed it while passing by, and I regularly saw people putting up big-character posters. Some people thought I just liked the place because it was so lively. But going there, I read many dazibao that were talking about the same issues that we were discussing. At the beginning, it was people who demanded to redress past injustices and to be rehabilitated after unjust accusations and persecutions. Later, some called for the rehabilitation of the April 5th Movement [protests of 1976]. Some participants arrested during the April 5th Movement were still in prison, only a few had been released. I had also participated in this movement, but my work unit protected me. A secretary shielded me so that I would not get arrested by the Public Security. During the protests in April, my throat had become hoarse and I couldn't speak, and I didn't dare to go to work for a week. The Security Bureau was investigating, but the secretary from our unit bailed me out.

Interviewer: So when you discovered the Democracy Wall and read the big-character posters there, weren’t you afraid that it was something that the Security Ministry would definitely monitor?

Ren: That’s right. In December, it was reported that the Beijing Government and the Municipal Party Committee wanted to rehabilitate the April 5 Movement. This rehabilitation was important news. At that time, the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee was held, probably starting on December 9. The rumor was that they were going to rehabilitate the April 5th people which was very important news. I don’t know about others, but my judgment was that if we put up big-character posters and expressed our opinions, it would not be considered a capital crime. I felt many people thought the same. That’s why we started to demand the rehabilitation April 5th events.

From then on, all at a sudden, more and more big-character posters appeared on the Democracy Wall, a very important development. The Chinese had been suppressed by the Communists for so long, of course they were afraid. So many people had been shot and killed, everyone was scared. But now, people who would have been shot before, seemed to be fine, they were no longer considered criminals, but even heroes. Everyone wanted to be a hero. It was very important that no one needed to fear death, as no one was executed. On the contrary, everyone wanted to become a hero. People expressed diverging opinions. Our folks had a very strong hero complex following the heroism displayed by the Communist Party. The Communists could create the new China due to the sacrifice of many heroes who had died before the People's Republic came into existance. We all wanted to become heroes, especially the boys. This is also an important reason.

Interviewer: Weren’t you afraid then that your activities could affect your lives?

Ren: We were not afraid. My family didn't know at the time. I also come from a family of Communist cadres. We didn't know much about the sufferings of those people, nothing at all. We didn’t know about the persecution of the “rightists”, only later we found out, but not at that time. This is number one. Second, as I just said, the people who had participated in the April 5th Movement were all rehabilitated. They became heroes, and we wanted to be heroes too. We had no idea how much those people had suffered in the past. So we were not afraid.

Interviewer: Didn’t you think that you could be arrested and imprisoned?

Ren: No. If the April 5th Movement was to be rehabilitated, we would not go to jail either. So we didn't expect to be arrested. But I was also mentally prepared for it, and I knew that I could be detained. When we were actually arrested then, we still felt very heroic and were not afraid. The prison rules stipulated that inmates, when they were to go out to take fresh air or bask in the sun, had to walk like this [showing strict discipline]. But I ignored it and just walked away. Our warden watched me from the balcony on the second floor. We were four people in one room, the three others also walked this way. The warden didn't dare to say anything although he had seen us. I just didn't listen to them.

Interviewer: They didn’t beat you?

Ren: No, they didn’t dare to beat us. From this I could see that Deng Xiaoping protected me. It really has a lot to do with this. They wanted to see my case file. My file was passed down, and he protected me. I didn't treat the warden seriously at all, I ignored him, so his reputation was greatly damaged. When he received the order to lock me up in a small dark room, he should have done accordingly. But he didn't. I could break their rules. After June 4th [1989] when I was imprisoned the second time, I stayed in a regular prison. When I talked to the group leader or a police officer, the police brought me to their office to talk, and I had to sit on a small stool. But when the prison captain talked to me, I didn't have to sit on that little stool. When I asked to get me a chair, they brought me a proper chair. Normally this would not have been possible. Also, at the roll call in the mornings and evenings, everybody squatting there should stand up and shout “present” when his name was called. But I remained seated when I answered "present". This was my dignity, I was not a criminal. Later, they didn't dare ask me to go to the roll call any more. Our group was not obliged to go there at all.

Interviewer: You just mentioned that when foreign correspondents came to the Democracy Wall to do interviews and report about it internationally, this was very important to you. Why that?

Ren: Because the texts we had written, the "Fifth Modernization" by Wei Jingsheng, or the "Declaration of Human Rights" written by me, was big matters. Although we didn’t know what the impact of our actions would be, but once done, we knew that it was a big thing. In particular, when we heard that Wei Jingsheng had criticized Deng Xiaoping, and Deng Xiaoping ordered his arrest. When Ren Wanding wrote his "Declaration of Human Rights", Deng removed him from the list of arrest warrants. This showed that the top leaders were watching what we did. So we knew we were on to something big. There is a saying in China called the "Qin Case", a case under the direct control of the emperor. So we were all "imperial cases" and directly under the emperor's jurisdiction. Only then did we realize that our actions were very important. This was number one. But at the same time we knew that we were just ordinary people. Although we came from families of cadres, we were very ordinary people. Wei Jingsheng was an ordinary worker, and I was an ordinary official in business management. A second reason was the support by Western public opinion. The public reporting and this support also gave us great strength. Without the support of the West and the reports in Western media, we would not have had such great power, which also was a kind of spiritual power. I hope it was clear what I said.

Interviewer: Let me ask you another question. You think that foreign reports were quite important, but wasn’t it very limited what people could know inside China? Your movement was still a very domestic affair.

Ren: At that time, the impact was quite small in fact. But you also know that in China we talk about "turning exports into domestic sales." [a business strategy then to divert some higher quality products to the internal market]. Many people learned about us from foreign news [through foreign short wave broadcasts or translations in “internal” media]. Of course this was also quite limited, as we didn’t have a propaganda machine and [big] media of our own.

Interviewer: Another question, how do you see the role of Hu Yaobang's at that time?

Ren: In fact, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang did not support our movement. Especially Zhao Ziyang, although some people thought erroneously that Zhao supported the student unrest and the Democracy Movement [in 1989]. This was absolutely not the case. He was just a bit more tolerant than Deng Xiaoping.

Interviewer: It seems that Zhao Ziyang did not play a particularly important role in the early days of  1978 and 1979, and he did not support you. But some people say that Hu Yaobang maybe did not support you as much as you had wished, but he also did not oppose you.

Ren: He gave a speech during the time of the Democracy Wall. He demanded not to arrest people randomly. He also said that if you arrest these young people, they won't care and won't be afraid. He did not advocate arresting anyone, including Wei Jingsheng, he was against his arrest. He hoped that problems would not be solved by arresting people. We said that he was an enlightened person. But it cannot be said that he supported us. This makes the big difference. He and Zhao Ziyang, as general secretaries of the Party and communist leaders, on the one hand tolerated the Democracy Movement and did not oppress it; on the other hand, their own status, the status of Communist Party officials, allowed them to do only very little, not too much. I often say that if Zhao Ziyang had not stepped down, he would have still arrested us. Yes, that’s true. As a communist, he had to arrest us. He would not have arrested Chen Yizi [economist and party reformer] nor Yan Jiaqi [Zhao’s adviser who fled from China after 1989]. But he was definitely going to detain the rest of us. Yan Jiaqi and Chen Yizi were his subordinates. The others he wanted to capture, that's for sure.

I visited Hong Kong twice in 2007 for medical check-ups. I also went to New Zealand that year, from Hong Kong to New Zealand, and from New Zealand back to Hong Kong, then from Hong Kong to the United States, and from the United States to Europe. I originally thought I would be able to go back to China after I had gone abroad. But when I arrived in the United States, I started to feel quite relaxed and wanted to stay. But I didn’t. Only after going to Paris, I finally decided to stay there. One reason […] is because of the Communist Party. I have said a lot of things abroad, so they were definitely going to get me. Therefore I didn't want to go back in the end. Things are still very strict in China. During several months they wouldn’t let you leave the country. […] I have a daughter in China. […] I caused such negative consequences, that she often lost her job because of me. She looked for jobs, but when she went, she was told that she wouldn’t be accepted. Because of me. […] I was disobedient in the country. They [Chinese officials abroad] often chat with me, I am also willing to talk to them. But I won't listen to them when it becomes critical. They can't do anything to me. They can only use my daughter's difficulty in finding a job to pressure me, even if I live abroad. But I am active abroad, so they do this. In 2012, my daughter had a good job with a high salary. But because I had participated in activities supporting Tibet, they sacked her from her job. There is nothing I can do. My daughter never said anything, but I feel very uneasy. I am prudent here, because I don’t want to affect my daughter. So I try not to be too radical.

Interviewer: Did you know about [Czechoslovak ant-system manifesto] "Charter 77" at that time? Did the Reference News report on it?

Ren: Yes, I knew. We often read in the Reference News about the "Charter 77" in Czechoslovakia. Especially during the Democracy Wall period, in January 1979, a Czechoslovak journalist gave me a copy of the "Charter 77" in Chinese. I read it all the way through, and I had a lot of contact with this person, I met him many times. My feeling was that what we were doing was quite similar to the Charter 77. And he also hoped that it could become some guidance for us.

Interviewer: What about the Polish Free Trade Unions?

Ren: We all knew about Poland's Solidarity Union [established on August 31, 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk] that was active at the same time as the Democracy Wall. When I was in prison, I read the newspapers every day; they gave us the People's Daily and Beijing Daily to read. I had the impression that the activities of the Democracy Wall and the Solidarity Union influenced each other. At least, they had an impact on us. I don’t know whether we had an influence on them.