Born May 20, 1950
Beijing, China
Chinese prodemocracy and human-rights activist
Wei Jingsheng was raised to believe in the communist system and to support China’s Communist Party leaders. (Communism is a theory of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, overseen by a centralized government.) He studied the teachings of communist thinkers during his youth. As a teenager he joined the Red Guard—the youth wing of the national forces charged with ensuring allegiance to communist principles and to party chairman Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976).
After witnessing poverty in the countryside, however, Wei became disillusioned with government policies. He became an outspoken critic of China’s leaders and a forceful advocate for democracy, for which he spent a total of seventeen years in prison. In 1997 Wei was set free and left the country on a plane bound for the United States.
Wei Jingsheng was born on May 20, 1959, in Beijing, China. He was the oldest of four children born to Communist Party officials. Wei’s family lived in a compound, together with the families of several high-ranking party officials, in the center of Beijing. Wei’s father, Wei Zilin, was a director of a leading construction agency, and Wei’s mother, Du Peijun, was a government official.
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