The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings [Hardcover]

Jingsheng Wei (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997

Wei Jingsheng is a fearless fighter for individual rights in China, and has spent nearly all of the last 17 years in prison. From his solitary confinement cell, he has written defiant letters to Deng Xiaoping and other communist leaders expressing his views on economic reform, foreign investment, Tibet and other urgent social and political concerns. This book also contains letters to family and friends and a selection of political essays and his moving defence statement from his first trial.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For some writers, publication is an achievement; for Wei Jingsheng it is closer to a miracle. The letters Wei wrote during his first 15 years as a political prisoner in China are addressed to his family, to various officials, and even to Deng Xiaoping. They relate ambitious ideas regarding the environment, human rights, Hong Kong, and the Tiananmen Square massacre, among others; and they are undeniably critical of the regime. So how did these provocative epistles get published? In 1995 China wanted to release Wei as a public relations gambit in its bid for the 2000 Olympics. Wei wanted the file of letters he knew prison officials kept. He and the government swapped amnesty for the letters, which Wei hoped to use for a planned autobiography. Six months later, he was sentenced to another 14-year term for speaking out, and he has disappeared into silence once more. The Courage to Stand Alone, edited and translated by Kristina M. Torgeson, is the voice he left behind.

What inner strength allows a human being to withstand years of torture, deprivation, and neglect? These amazing letters give some indication of the fierce, intelligent mind that persevered when all hope was gone. By the time he is released in 2009--assuming he survives this second imprisonment--Wei will have spent half his life in prison. The Courage to Stand Alone makes clear just what China has lost.

From Library Journal

Wei is one of the most outspoken and courageous political dissidents in contemporary China. Since his arrest in 1978, he has spent 17 years in prison and is now serving another 14-year term and has become a symbol of the Chinese democracy movement. Through these moving letters to his brother and sister and the powerful and eloquent articles addressed to the leaders of the Communist Party, one glimpses the inhuman treatment of political prisoners in China; more important, one is made to understand why such a bright and intelligent young man would choose to spend his life fighting a totalitarian government regardless of the cost. The book also includes an autobiographical essay and excerpts of his trial statement. The translation conveys the poignancy of the original. This collection will prove to be a major contribution to the course of human rights in the world. Highly recommended.?Mark Meng, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 283 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670872490
• ISBN-13: 978-0670872497
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,744,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forbidden reading in China, required reading everywhere else, October 18, 1998

By 

Timothy Ritter (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings (Hardcover)

The lack of heroes these days has become a truism. Our political leaders are beset by satyriasis and mendacity. Our sports icons gobble steroids, routinely violate the terms of their parole, and sometimes even behead their wives.

That makes it surprising to encounter a genuine hero, which the author of The Courage To Stand Alone certainly is. It is doubly strange that he should emerge from China, the land of groupthink and hyperconformity. Who would have thought that a child of the Cultural Revolution would become a major force for decency and dignity even as those qualities were being rendered quaint and passe by the rush for market share in the New Global Economy?

When Wei Jingsheng was first put into prison and began writing the letters that make up the bulk of To Stand Alone, Mandela had been in prison for 17 years, Solzhenitsyn had just published Gulag in English, and the concept of dissent was unknown in China. When Wei was released in 1997 and flew to the US after having served 18 years in China's gulag (known there as laogai), Mandela was president of South Africa, Solzhenitsyn had returned to a free Russia, and Deng had transformed China from a socialist police state to a plutocratic police state. With all the stuff in our hardware stores and clothing shops bearing the Made in China tag, you might even think China had been transformed into a free society. You would be mistaken to think that, however. Wei was imprisoned for exercising one of the simplest and most basic rights, that of free speech. He published a magazine. In it, he urged the Chinese Communist Party to honor all the grand promises it made in the constitutions it churned out from time to time, promises like "The People have the right to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write dazibao (large character posters posted on walls in public places for all to read)".

Wei had begun his career as a dissident by putting up one such dazibao: his essay "Democracy: The Fifth Modernization". This document (included in To Stand Alone) is a piece of impassioned logic which a Jefferson or Hancock would be proud to sign. He wrote it and posted it the same night on Beijing's Democracy Wall. Unlike the others who posted writings there, Wei left his name and number. That wasn't safe, but Wei believed the Chinese were getting a worldwide reputation for spinelessness, thanks to people like Deng and Lin Biao who, during the reign of Mao Zedong, had taken the craft of brown-nosing and sycophancy to new depths.

In 1979 Deng was just beginning his reign, and many thought he was a new kind of leader, which he was, in some ways. In other ways he was the oldest kind of leader there is: a tyrant. In his magazine, Wei identified him as dictator-in-the-making a full 10 years before Deng ordered the murder of hundreds of students in Tiananmen Square. That prediction put Wei in prison, the special Chinese kind of prison where you are expected to confess your "errors" and "crimes".

There was a certain amount of international pressure on China, so Wei probably could have gotten out early for confessing his "crimes". But he had that thing about backbone, about standing upright for what you believe in. He was, it must be noted, a little stubborn. Actually, more than a little stubborn. Actually, you know nothing about stubborn until you read this book. Picture David Niven going into the oven in Bridge On The River Kwai for insisting on being treated like an officer according to the Geneva Convention. Now picture him doing that every day for 18 years, and you have some idea of what Wei went through. Not an oven, but a box without windows, very little food, very little heat in a region bordering Tibet, no medical care, sleep made impossible, beatings, solitary confinement for months on end...All these measures notwithstanding, Wei would not confess to a crime he had not committed. He wouldn't even get impolite. In his letters from prison, he demands the basic rights he's been stripped of in a tone less harsh than I use on my neighbor's barking dog. Reading these letters one occasionally gets the feeling he's been detained through some silly bureaucratic mix-up. Of course, he wasn't. He was thrown into the largest system of concentration camps that yet exists on the planet, just like millions of his compatriots. He's out now, but the others are still there, doing slave labor, starving, being executed by the score, involuntarily donating their organs to international markets...

When the Chinese Communist Party falls, as all brutal, sadistic regimes inevitably do, this book of letters and one landmark essay will be remembered as one of the chief causes of its demise.

Wei, if you read this, I would urge you to post Democracy: The Fifth Modernization on this site. It's common for authors to put excerpts of their books here, and that essay would be a perfect sample. I doubt the Party will be able to have it removed.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nobody who studies Chinese politics can ignore Wei's ideas., February 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings (Hardcover)

"Don't give the Chinese communists too much pressure, otherwise they cannot afford to provide food for the people." That is a pretext used by many countries or people to delay the democratization of China. Wei's counter-argument was: It is the people who provide food for the communists. Why did you reverse the order? Wei's political analysis is better than a lot of people with Ph.D. degrees. He is willing to tell the obvious even in face of personal danger. From now on, people who talk about contemporary Chinese politics should start from Wei's ideas. If they do not, they should at least explain why they are avoiding them.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wei: dissident and intellectual, April 19, 2001

By 

David Reid (Earth) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings (Paperback)

Wei Jingsheng is well known as China's leading dissident, but this book also establishes him as one of China's leading intellectuals. He has the courage to see and to say what others in China cannot. His letter to Deng Xiaoping about Tibet is an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing. It is worth buying the book for this alone.