Wang Dan

Wang Dan (born February 26, 1969) is a leader of the Chinese democracy movement and was one of the most visible student leaders in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Wang Dan was born in 1969.

He was a politically active student at the Peking University department of history, organizing "Democracy Salons" at his school.

When he participated in the student movement that led to the 1989 protests, he joined the movement's organizing body as the representative from Peking University.

As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, he immediately became the "most wanted" on the list of 21 fugitives issued.

Imprisoned on July 2, 1989, Wang spent nearly two years in custody before his trial in 1991.

Wang was charged with spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement.

He was sentenced to 4 years in prison; a relatively mild sentence compared to other political prisoners in China at this time.

This short sentence was thought to be caused by two things: the government was unsure of what to do with so many students, and felt pressure due to their high-profile nature.

While incarcerated, Wang spent two years at Qincheng Prison, known for its high number of political prisoners.

Despite the usual cramped conditions, because of his high-profile case, Wang was given his own cell.

Wang went into hiding but was arrested on July 2 the same year, and sentenced to four years imprisonment in 1991.

After being released on parole in 1993, he continued to write publicly (to publications outside of mainland China) and was re-arrested in 1995 for conspiring to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party and was sentenced in 1996 to 11 years.

However he was released early and exiled to the United States of America (see below).

Wang was released in 1993, just months before the end of his sentence.

Wang Dan himself has noted this was most likely related to China’s first bid for the Olympic Games since he and 19 other political prisoners were released only a month before the International Olympic Committee was to visit.

Almost immediately after his release in 1993 Wang began to promote democracy in China and contacted exiled political activists in the United States.

He was arrested for a second time in May 1995, two months after an interview with the US based anti-communist periodical Beijing Spring.

In this interview he states: "We should clear a new path and devote ourselves to building a civil society by focusing our efforts on social movements, not political movements, self-consciously maintaining a distance from political power and political organs."

(document 3) Wang was held in custody for 17 months before receiving the charge of "plotting to overthrow the government", and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Wang resumed his university studies, starting school at Harvard University in 1998 and completing his master's in East Asian history in 2001 and a Ph.D. in 2008.

Instead of serving his entire sentence, he was released in 1998, ostensibly for "medical reasons" and was sent immediately to the US where he was examined in hospital, and quickly released to live in the United States as an exiled political activist.

His release and move to the United States followed an agreement between the United States and China whereby the United States removed its support for a resolution criticizing China at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and in return China released political prisoners such as Wang.

Not long after Wang arrived in the United States, he began to criticize the Chinese government once again.

Wang believes the CCP must change its ways, and in an interview with the US magazine The Weekly Standard he states: "The key to democracy in China is independence. My country needs independent intellectuals, independent economic actors, independent spirits."

He was banned from setting foot on mainland China with his passport expiring in 2003.

He attempted to visit Hong Kong in 2004, but was rejected.

Wang received his PhD from Harvard University in 2008, and continues to be actively involved in fighting for change in China.

He holds a PhD in history from Harvard University, and from August 2009 to February 2010, Wang taught cross-strait history at Taiwan's National Chengchi University as a visiting scholar.

He also performed research on the development of democracy in Taiwan at Oxford University in 2009.

He is currently the chairman of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association.

Wang was interviewed and appeared in the documentary The Beijing Crackdown and the movie Moving the Mountain, about the Tiananmen Square protests.

He also featured prominently in Shen Tong's book Almost a Revolution.

Due to a typhoon, Wang finally landed in Hong Kong for the first time in 2012, though he was confined to the airport's restricted zone as he had no Hong Kong visa.

Following the People's Liberation Army's crackdown on the protests, Wang Dan was placed on a list of the 21 most wanted student leaders of the protests.

He then taught at National Tsing Hua University until 2015.

Besides conducting research on related topics, Wang is an activist promoting democracy in China.

Based in the United States, he travels the world to garner support from Overseas Chinese communities as well as from the public at large.

He is a friend of fellow activists Wang Juntao and Liu Gang.

At that time, he was invited by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China to talk about politics ahead of the 15th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown.