TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082090/0820510.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.8 KB | 170 lines

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                                                              INTERVIEW, Page 12

The Science Of Human Rights


Now safely in the West, China's most famous dissident,
astrophysicist FANG LIZHI, takes a long-range view of
democratic revolution

By DAVID AIKMAN/CAMBRIDGE and Fang Lizhi


    Q. Why does China's leader Deng Xiaoping seem to dislike you
so much?

    A. Maybe it's an honor that he chose me. My family name is
very simple: it has just four strokes, and it comes high up on
all Chinese name lists [laughs]. I think, too, he remembers me
from the end of 1986 and the student movement at Hefei
Institute of Science and Technology. At that time I was vice
president [of the institute], so he thought I should take the
chop for those demonstrations. The second time, he probably
said, "Here he comes again, so we should hit him" [laughs].


    Q. You yourself were a catalyst for the 1986 demonstrations.
Why did you stay away from them in 1989?

    A. The government was already accusing me in April and May
of being part of a handful of people who controlled the
movement, because I have a long record [of human-rights
activism]. So I stayed away. Of course, I knew many of the
student leaders before the protests began, including at least
three among the 21 on the most-wanted list. They often came to
my home in the days before the movement began. But afterward,
they didn't want to have contact with me, because they wanted
to show that their ideas were their own and not simply given
to them by Fang Lizhi.


    Q. You have been compared with Andrei Sakharov. What is it
about the higher sciences, in your case astrophysics, that
leads some people to passionate advocacy of human rights?

    A. In socialist regimes many famous physicists or natural
scientists have been involved in human rights because science
always requires independent thought. Even if you are an
important man and you say something, nobody just believes it.
If a scientist submits a paper to a journal, it goes to a
referee for comments. But in the Communist Party they always
say they are correct. This is very difficult to reconcile with
the scientific approach.


    Q. With hindsight, do you think the leaders of the democracy
movement in China last year should have acted any differently?

    A. They should perhaps have limited their demands and asked
to have dialogue with the government. But in the last weeks the
movement was completely out of control. The whole movement was
spontaneous, so it was very difficult to limit its demands.


    Q. You have said that sooner or later democracy will come
to China. But don't you find many episodes in the past 200
years of Chinese history when periods of openness to the
outside world have been followed by isolation and xenophobia?

    A. Certainly. Last year I published a paper, "The Beijing
Observatory and Chinese Democracy," about this. You know,
modern science was imported into China from the West. There
were periods when we completely accepted modern science, and
others when for decades we rejected it. Three centuries ago,
we used modern astronomy for a short period to establish the
Chinese calendar, but suddenly some emperor opposed it, and
astronomers were even killed. Only at the beginning of this
century did we completely accept modern science. It is the same
with democracy. Sometimes we have been open and pro-democracy;
sometimes for decades we have been completely closed and
isolated and under a dictatorship. This fluctuating cycle is
over as far as science is concerned, but not yet in the case
of democracy. That is why, looking at the analogy of scientific
development in China, I am optimistic.


    Q. Have the democratic revolutions in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe had any impact on China?

    A. The influence of events in the Soviet Union has been
stronger because we and the Soviets have had a similar type of
system. In the past several months, the actions of the Soviet
Communist Party at conferences and congresses have been watched
very carefully by the Chinese people, because the Soviets have
passed laws on the development of multiparty democracy.


    Q. What is your prediction for China in the next five years?

    A. The old generation of the party will die. A generation
of younger leaders will emerge, and they will be better on
average. I say on average because some individual leaders in
the new generation could even be worse than those in the old
one.


    Q. The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski has said he
believes the desire for freedom may be a genetic characteristic
of the human race, and I believe you agree. Why, then, have
some civilizations been slower to implement freedom than
others?

    A. That is a question for the historians. It depends on many
factors of tradition and history. If you compare the
development of democracy with the whole history of China, it
may arrive several decades later than in the West -- but in
view of our history of thousands of years, that is almost
nothing. Of course, when I tell young men that 20 years is not
too long, they don't agree, since for them it's an entire
lifetime.


    Q. Until your sudden departure for England two months ago,
you and your family were given refuge in the U.S. embassy in
Beijing for 386 days. What was it like?

    A. We stayed in a two-bedroom temporary apartment on the
main floor of the ambassador's residence. The door was always
locked, and they put wooden boards on the windows. You couldn't
open them, and no light came in or went out. From morning until
5 or 6 at night, we stayed in the apartment. After that, we
could leave the apartment, and we could see the sky from other
windows, but we could never go outside. In the winter, because
it was dark by 5 p.m., we never saw daylight.


    Q. What contacts did you have with anyone else?

    A. The ambassador saw us quite often, and there was a
political officer who came almost every day. Also a nurse came
every day. We had a telephone, but even when it rang we never
picked it up. We could send letters outside through the
diplomatic pouch. That was quite safe but very, very slow.


    Q. Has the British or American government placed any
restrictions on your activities?

    A. Originally, the Chinese government demanded that the
Americans supervise my political activity. But the U.S.
government refused absolutely. People in the embassy told me
that this would be a violation of your constitution.


    Q. What would your advice be to Chinese students in the
U.S.?

    A. They should study, be proficient, but also be concerned
with Chinese life. Democracy is a long-term project. It is not
something accomplished in a day, but step by step.