Jianli Yang is well familiar to readers of National Review. He is my latest guest on Q&A — here. We talk about China, naturally, and, in particular, the protests that have swept the country.
Jianli has experience with this sort of thing. He was at Tiananmen Square, in 1989. He has been many things in his busy, challenging life: a scholar, a poet, a democracy leader, a human-rights activist — a political prisoner. He has two Ph.D.s from American universities: one in math from Berkeley and one in political economy from Harvard.
He was a prisoner of the PRC from 2002 to 2007. I wrote about him soon after he came out.
Let me quote a little from that piece:
It was in 2001 that Yang visited the offices of National Review. He had organized a conference on interethnic conflict in China, and wished to talk about it. He had enlisted the help of the Dalai Lama and many others, prominent and not. In our offices, he was remarkable for his cheerfulness, intellect, and what you might call natural, easy leadership. I asked him what book best described the situation of Chinese intellectuals. He answered, quick as a flash, “The Captive Mind, by Czeslaw Milosz” (the great Polish poet and anti-Communist). Thus we see the commonality of Communist, and anti-Communist, experiences.
In our new podcast, Jianli and I address several questions: What is the nature of the protests we have seen in the last few days? What are the differences, and similarities, between these protests and 1989’s? What should the United States and other democracies do?
Other subjects include Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, former leaders who have been in the news for different reasons: one was spectacularly ushered off the stage at a party conference; the other has died.
A tough question: Do Han Chinese — i.e., the great majority — give a damn about the Uyghurs, and the persecution of them?
We further talk about Taiwan, a nation that proves — if proof is necessary — that there can be a Chinese democracy. In a column on Wednesday, I noted a news story: “Taiwan president resigns as party leader after election loss.” Jianli points out that Taiwan not only provides a model for mainland Chinese, it also sets an example for established democracies, where losing candidates may not do the elementary thing of conceding their loss.
At the end of our podcast, we talk about what people characterize as a great superpower competition between China and the United States. The PRC has a lot of money, sure, and money talks, everywhere. But will people around the world be attracted to Chinese Communist values and ideals, such as they are?
Jianli Yang is obviously a very bright man, and a brave man. He is also a great man, as I see it, and you will enjoy getting to know him, if you don’t already. Again, our Q&A is here.