Wei’s Release and Chinese Democracy

It is Jim Mann’s expectation (International Outlook, Nov. 19) of the release of China’s top dissident that “it will be Wei Jingsheng’s task to make sure he does not fall into the comfortable irrelevance of the exiles who preceded him. The betting here is that Wei can meet the challenge.” I will put the betting on the opposite side. Wei has the perfect idea of democracy for China, but I am afraid he is on the wrong side of Chinese history. As stated by Mann, “The Chinese dissidents who have come here . . . have had trouble attracting a following even among overseas Chinese, much less in China itself.” We all know what China was, during the period of the earlier democratic movement led by Sun Yat-sen. How the overseas Chinese were treated is still vividly remembered.

Today, we may not like the one-party system in China, but China is a united country with a rapidly growing economy and gaining the respect of other countries. The majority of Chinese people and overseas Chinese do understand that Western democracy has its prerequisite and China is changing and working toward that goal gradually. Just as former CIA director Robert M. Gates, quoted in Tom Plate’s Nov. 18 commentary, stated, “The dynamism and drama of what is going on there politically is simply not reflected in the American press or understood, in my view, by most American politicians.”

WYMAN WUN

Rancho Palos Verdes