The Quiet Afterlife of a Chinese Dissident

By Andreas Lorenz | Der Spiegel (Germany)
September 03, 2008

Bao Tong, a former member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, fell out of favor and wound up in prison. Now he lives under house arrest in Beijing, watched by the government because he continues to push for more democratic freedom.

Nowadays, it isn't easy to visit the old man who, less than 20 years ago, was one of China's most influential politicians. His former friends and colleagues now try to prevent him from meeting foreigners. They also try to keep him from talking to Chinese journalists and historians. Not even his friend, philosopher Liu Xiaobo, is permitted to see Bao Tong, who is considered a threat.

An army of agents from the Chinese Ministry of State Security forms a highly visible presence around the 24-story building where Bao Tong lives. They ask for identification, and a uniformed officer records the names of visitors in a notebook. He is polite and asks visitors to take a seat in the lobby. Electronic devices are assembled on his desk, an array of cameras hangs on the wall and a woman in a blue-and-white polo shirt runs the elevator.

A thin man with large glasses and wearing a blue shirt opens the door to apartment six, on the sixth floor. Bao Tong, 76, was a member of the Central Committee. In the 1980s he was in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the Chinese State Council, a position similar to that of the head of the German Chancellery. Bao wrote speeches for party chief Zhao Ziyang, who trusted him. The Communist Party leadership also asked him to think about ways to reform the political system. Bao's basic concept was that the party should withdraw from the business of governing and give up its omnipresent control. If Bao Tong's ideas had been accepted, the totalitarian communist system would have become more liberalized. Unfortunately, they were not.

When students, who favored such ideas, took to the streets of Beijing in the spring of 1989 to stage protests against corruption and demanded more democracy in sit-ins and rallies, Bao and Zhao begged the party's aging leaders not to use the army against the young idealists.

Instead of listening to Bao, patriarch Deng Xiaoping and his associates remembered Mao's famous statement that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." The tanks from the People's Liberation Army wheeled up to a position not far from Bao Tong's current apartment, and the soldiers were ordered to shoot into the crowd. Hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians -- most of them students -- died in those first few days of June 1989.

Zhao was held responsible for the "counterrevolution" and lost all his positions. He was placed under house arrest until his death in January 2005.

Bao Tong, accused of "betraying state secrets and spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda," spent seven years in solitary confinement at Qincheng Prison outside Beijing. After his release, he was periodically placed under house arrest and was, of course, under constant surveillance.

But none of this kept him from voicing his opinions. In August 2007, he was one of 42 intellectuals to write an open letter to the Communist Party leadership demanding the observance of "universal human rights" and public scrutiny of funding for the Beijing Olympics.

Today he lives in a bright, orderly apartment, the walls decorated with watercolor paintings and a family photograph with his granddaughter. The old Jingxi Hotel, the meeting place of the Central Committee, to which he once belonged, is around the corner.

"I would like to see the Olympic spirit of fair play spread into Chinese society," Bao says elaborately. China's market economy, he adds, is "not real, because it is still controlled by the government." And while China may call itself a "people's republic," says Bao, it has no "democratic elections of freedom of opinion." Bao believes that if the country turns into a "true republic" and a real "market economy," then "the Olympic Games in our country will not have been for nothing."

But the aging Marxist is not very optimistic. In his view, the country's new middle class, which is satisfied with condominiums, cars and laptops and is unwilling to challenge one-party rule, is "short-sighted." This, says Bao, is because the stability that these people seek and that the Communist Party wishes to guarantee them, cannot be preserved "if the rights of ordinary people are constantly being violated." According to Bao, the police are quick to clamp down as soon as anyone demands his rights. "I too favor stability, but it should be stability on the basis of fairness and the constitution."

>> Read complete report