Wang Ruowang

Wang Ruowang ( Chinese  王若望 , Pinyin Wáng Rùowàng , W.-G. Wang Jo-wang ; * as Wang Shouhua ( Chinese  王壽華  /  王寿华 , Pinyin Wáng Shòuhuá ) 1918 in Wujin ( Jiangsu ); † December 19, 2001 in New York City ) was a Chinese author, journalist, and dissident .

Wang has been arrested several times in his life, the first time at the age of 16 when the Kuomintang police arrested him for satire writing .

Wang joined the Communist Party during the war against Japan . During his stay in the communist base region of Yan'an , he worked on a wall newspaper called “Light Cavalry”, which highlighted undesirable developments in the party. He was banished to Shandong by the CP security chief Kang Sheng .

After the establishment of the People's Republic, Wang worked as a journalist. He followed Mao Zedong's call for criticism of grievances during the Hundred Flower Movement and wrote several critical texts. He subsequently fell victim to political repression as a deviator, was expelled from the party, but rehabilitated in 1962. During the great leap forward , Wang criticized again and was attacked in the sharpest way by the Shanghai Communist Party leader Ke Qingshi ; Wang's wife died as a result of the attacks. During the Cultural Revolution , he was arrested as a counter-revolutionary. After Mao's death, Wang was rehabilitated again in 1979 and was allowed to rejoin the party. When Deng Xiaoping's judgments of the Cultural Revolution were reversed, Wang was one of the authors of the wound literature , which described people's suffering during the political turmoil. His book “Hunger Trilogy” falls into this phase, in which he describes the rule of the Communist Party as worse than that of the Kuomintang . He was later appointed editor of the Shanghai literary magazine and lectured in several locations in Shanghai.

During Deng's reform and opening-up policy , Wang was, along with Fang Lizhi and Liu Binyan, one of those intellectuals who demanded democratization alongside economic reforms. Deng rejected anything that could potentially undermine the party's authority and asked Hu Yaobang , then general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party , to expel Wang, Fang and Liu from the party. Hu was very reluctant to comply, which contributed to his loss of post in 1987. In 1987, Wang was expelled from the Communist Party for the second time. In 1989 he demonstrated for Qin Benli , whose Shanghai business magazine had been closed. He supported the demonstrations for democracy that were later bloodily suppressed in Tiananmen Square . He was arrested and spent fourteen months in prison.

In 1992, the authorities allowed Wang to travel to the United States and accept a professorship at Columbia University , while ensuring that Wang would not return to China.

literature

• Wang Ruowang, Rubin Kyna (translator): Hunger trilogy . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 1991, ISBN 0-87332-739-X .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jonathan Mirsky: The Life and Death of Wang Ruowang. In: China Brief Volume: 2 Issue: 2. The Jamestown Foundation, January 17, 2002, accessed September 2, 2019 . 
2. ^ ^{A b c} Lawrence R. Sullivan: Historical dictionary of the Chinese Communist Party . Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-7470-1 , pp. 275-276 .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine: Deng Xiaoping, a revolutionary life . Oxford University Press, New York 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-062367-8 , pp. 397-400 .
4. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 582-586 .

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Wang is the family name here, Ruowang is the first name.