You’re listening to a Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China presentation on the history of human rights’ abuses in modern Communist China. To listen to other parts of this series, check the links in the description.

Chen Guangcheng: So, at that time, the people didn’t believe the CCP’s propaganda. They didn’t believe that communism would make our country better in the future. This made a lot of different things happen. One thing that happened was that the city people tried to form a party. This first happened in Shanghai.

Will Deatherage: It was a party against the Communist Party?

Chen Guangcheng: In a way. At that time, they were not against the CPP; rather, they thought that they could not let just one party control everything in our country.

Will Deatherage: Got it. Okay, that makes sense. What year was this? 

Chen Guangcheng: 1992 – 1993

Will Deatherage: So not too long after Tiananmen Square.

Chen Guangcheng: Exactly, not too long after. The party lasted until 1998, and I still remember one person named Wang Yu Tai. He lived in Shanghai, and he talked with his friend Chiyumi and discussed how to make a new party. Different cities like Guangdong, Xi’an and Chengdu, were communicating with each other. At that time, communication was difficult; they had to take old trains that were much slower. At that time, they think, we were not against the CCP. We just give them competition to make the CCP change their policy. However, the CCP did not allow anyone to form a new party. So different people from different provinces went to the CCP government to try to register their new party. But just after Tiananmen Square, the Kanpan was very scared they would lose power. So when they tried to register the new party, of course the Kanpan was very surprised. The CCP asked the police to arrest the supporters in different cities very quickly.

Will Deatherage: Wow, that’s a lot of escalation..

Chen Guangcheng: Later, they tried to register the new party at different times. Each time, the CCP said, “you want to change the state power.” So Chiyumi spent a total of 30 years in prison, and he’s still in prison now! He is very old; someone said he’s almost blind. You can see, after Tiananmen Square a lot of things happened. Around 1985, the US prepared to create Radio Free Asia. After two years, it was working.

Will Deatherage: Right. And what did they do, Guangcheng?

Chen Guangcheng: In 1997 or 1998, I was in university when my classmate bought a short feed radio and I heard Radio Free Asia for the first time. Radio Free Asia would broadcast pro-democracy messages into China. As you know, the current party propaganda was very strong in history. But Radio Free Asia would talk about why democracy was better than communism, and why the rule of law is a good system to protect the people’s rights. Radio Free Asia would host debates about democracy and the rule of law, and they would pay so Chinese people could an use the public phone on the street to call the people on radio to debate. They use different examples to prove the democracy system. The role of the law system is much better than communist authorities. People discussed how to help China to become a democratic country.

Of course, the CCP knew that. They worried this would make the Chinese people wake up, so they set up something to try to harass the radio station. And later, the CCP prepared to send the people and spend money in the US to influence the Radio Free Asia station. Later, I got a radio to listen to it, so I understand the situation a lot. In fact, before the Internet was very strong, the short radio helped a lot of Chinese people. I think it was the foundation of the human rights movement in China. It is a good example of how Western democratic countries could help the Chinese people.

Chen Guangcheng has recently published an article about the CCP’s punishment of families of human rights’ activists in communist China. The article on public discourse is titled “Zhulian: Implication by Relation”. The article can be found at humanrights.catholic.edu under our “Research and Analyses” page.