The Science Of Human Rights

By DAVID AIKMAN CAMBRIDGE

Q. Why does China's leader Deng Xiaoping seem to dislike you so much?

A. Maybe it's an honor that he chose me. My family name is very simple: it has just four strokes, and it comes high up on all Chinese name lists ((laughs)). I think, too, he remembers me from the end of 1986 and the student movement at Hefei Institute of Science and Technology. At that time I was vice president ((of the institute)), so he thought I should take the chop for those demonstrations. The second time, he probably said, "Here he comes again, so we should hit him" ((laughs)).

Q. You yourself were a catalyst for the 1986 demonstrations. Why did you stay away from them in 1989?

A. The government was already accusing me in April and May of being part of a handful of people who controlled the movement, because I have a long record ((of human-rights activism)). So I stayed away. Of course, I knew many of the student leaders before the protests began, including at least three among the 21 on the most-wanted list. They often came to my home in the days before the movement began. But afterward, they didn't want to have contact with me, because they wanted to show that their ideas were their own and not simply given to them by Fang Lizhi.

Q. You have been compared with Andrei Sakharov. What is it about the higher sciences, in your case astrophysics, that leads some people to passionate advocacy of human rights?

A. In socialist regimes many famous physicists or natural scientists have been involved in human rights because science always requires independent thought. Even if you are an important man and you say something, nobody just believes it. If a scientist submits a paper to a journal, it goes to a referee for comments. But in the Communist Party they always say they are correct. This is very difficult to reconcile with the scientific approach.

Q. With hindsight, do you think the leaders of the democracy movement in China last year should have acted any differently?

A. They should perhaps have limited their demands and asked to have dialogue with the government. But in the last weeks the movement was completely out of control. The whole movement was spontaneous, so it was very difficult to limit its demands.

Q. You have said that sooner or later democracy will come to China. But don't you find many episodes in the past 200 years of Chinese history when periods of openness to the outside world have been followed by isolation and xenophobia?

A. Certainly. Last year I published a paper, "The Beijing Observatory and Chinese Democracy," about this. You know, modern science was imported into China from the West. There were periods when we completely accepted modern science, and others when for decades we rejected it. Three centuries ago, we used modern astronomy for a short period to establish the Chinese calendar, but suddenly some emperor opposed it, and astronomers were even killed. Only at the beginning of this century did we completely accept modern science. It is the same with democracy. Sometimes we have been open and pro-democracy; sometimes for decades we have been completely closed and isolated and under a dictatorship. This fluctuating cycle is over as far as science is concerned, but not yet in the case of democracy. That is why, looking at the analogy of scientific development in China, I am optimistic.

Q. Have the democratic revolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had any impact on China?

A. The influence of events in the Soviet Union has been stronger because we + and the Soviets have had a similar type of system. In the past several months, the actions of the Soviet Communist Party at conferences and congresses have been watched very carefully by the Chinese people, because the Soviets have passed laws on the development of multiparty democracy.

Q. What is your prediction for China in the next five years?

A. The old generation of the party will die. A generation of younger leaders will emerge, and they will be better on average. I say on average because some individual leaders in the new generation could even be worse than those in the old one.

Q. The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski has said he believes the desire for freedom may be a genetic characteristic of the human race, and I believe you agree. Why, then, have some civilizations been slower to implement freedom than others?

A. That is a question for the historians. It depends on many factors of tradition and history. If you compare the development of democracy with the whole history of China, it may arrive several decades later than in the West -- but in view of our history of thousands of years, that is almost nothing. Of course, when I tell young men that 20 years is not too long, they don't agree, since for them it's an entire lifetime.

Q. Until your sudden departure for England two months ago, you and your family were given refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing for 386 days. What was it like?

A. We stayed in a two-bedroom temporary apartment on the main floor of the ambassador's residence. The door was always locked, and they put wooden boards on the windows. You couldn't open them, and no light came in or went out. From morning until 5 or 6 at night, we stayed in the apartment. After that, we could leave the apartment, and we could see the sky from other windows, but we could never go outside. In the winter, because it was dark by 5 p.m., we never saw daylight.

Q. What contacts did you have with anyone else?

A. The ambassador saw us quite often, and there was a political officer who came almost every day. Also a nurse came every day. We had a telephone, but even when it rang we never picked it up. We could send letters outside through the diplomatic pouch. That was quite safe but very, very slow.

Q. Has the British or American government placed any restrictions on your activities?

A. Originally, the Chinese government demanded that the Americans supervise my | political activity. But the U.S. government refused absolutely. People in the embassy told me that this would be a violation of your constitution.

Q. What would your advice be to Chinese students in the U.S.?

A. They should study, be proficient, but also be concerned with Chinese life. Democracy is a long-term project. It is not something accomplished in a day, but step by step.