The internet has helped Chinese dissident Wang Dan span the
distance from his exile home in Los Angeles to Beijing, where 20
years ago he shot to fame as a top leader of the Tiananmen
democracy protests.
Wang - still youthful-looking at 40, but fleshier than when the
reedy Peking University history major rallied the masses at
Tiananmen - also believes information technology will help civil
society change China in the ways for which he fought.
"The internet has changed the meaning of exile," he said in a
wide-ranging interview days before the 20th anniversary of the
bloody crackdown in the heart of China's capital.
"I don't think we're really in exile, because I use the Internet,
MSN, Skype, Twitter, Facebook ... so I have a lot of contact with
mainlanders," said Wang.
He was jailed twice and has not been allowed back to China since
being exiled in 1998.
Now chairman of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association, with
a Harvard doctoral degree, Wang concedes that the China of today is
far richer, more powerful and influential than the country he
left.
But he insists that Communist Party rule by force and deception
remains the norm and the basic characteristic of this government
never changed.
"The government has already lost control of activities of civil
society on the internet - that's the hope," said Wang, describing
the World Wide Web as a key weapon in an ongoing struggle between
state and society.
The internet and social-networking technology means more and more
(of the) younger generation can find the truth, even though there's
a lot of censorship, he said.
Underscoring Wang's point, the media freedom watchdog group
Reporters Without Borders published a report on tests of online
censorship that found a full Chinese media and internet blackout of
the events of June 4, 1989.
A Chinese internet search of popular search engine Baidu for "4
June" images brings a warning about Chinese law, while a search for
articles produces only official Chinese statements about Tiananmen,
the report said.
Wang stresses that China's savvy surfers know their way around
Chinese censorship and says he remains optimistic about his
cause.
He finds it disappointing that many Western governments, including
the Obama administration in the United States, appear to have
accepted China as it is in recognition of its economic and
political clout.
"I hope Western governments can pay more attention to civil society
- the China of the future," said Wang.
