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...years ago that activists in Beijing posted signs on a Democracy Wall calling for political reform, including electrician Wei Jingsheng's declaration that Deng Xiaoping's campaign for Four Modernizations in agriculture, defense, industry and technology was meaningless without a fifth modernization, democracy. "It's quite a moving document ... as far as setting out clearly the aspirations for China's future in a way that is highly principled and idealistic, [but] doing so in a way that's not attacking the current government and not attacking the Communist Party," says Rosenzweig. Though, he admits, "there's always a danger that...
...English translation by China scholar Perry Link was subsequently posted on the website of the New York Review of Books. In his introduction, Link notes that the document takes its title and inspiration from Charter 77, which was issued in January 1977 by Czech and Slovak intellectuals calling for human rights in Czechoslovakia and abroad. Like its historical predecessor, Charter O8 recalls moments throughout Chinese history when intellectuals felt an obligation to speak out against shortcomings of the state, such as the 100 Days Reform of 1898, when scholars pressed the crumbling Qing dynasty to reform...
Many of the rights it calls for are already included in China's constitution, but they are widely ignored and abused, and advocating them in public can be seen as a perilous challenge to the Communist Party. The document calls for an entirely new constitution for China, as well an independent judiciary, direct elections, freedom of religion, speech and assembly, and the right to form independent political parties...
...government reacts to the document - and the people who signed it - remains to be seen. Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent human-rights attorney in Beijing, says he signed the charter because he supports its emphasis on freedom and democracy. "Not only do I approve these ideas, I believe the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government have no reason not to approve them," Pu says. "These are not bad ideologies. The charter does not advocate violence, nor does it aim to destroy the current social order...
More than 500 people joined Pu in signing the document. Bao Tong, a deputy to Communist Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was purged from the government for his support of the 1989 pro-democracy protesters, is the most prominent former official on the list. It also includes activists such as Liu Xiaobo and Ding Zilin, who co-founded the Tiananmen Mothers group after her teenage son was killed in the 1989 crackdown. Several prominent lawyers and writers who are actively working and publishing also signed, giving Charter 08 more clout than it would carry if it were the work...