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Exile for a Chinese Hero

WEI JINGSHENG, though tired and ill, is as upbeat and good-humored as ever, according to those who have had contact with the just-released Chinese dissident. This is a pretty remarkable condition for a man who has spent all but about half a year of the past 18 years in prison -- tortured, malnourished, in isolation -- and who has now been forced into exile. But it's been clear for a long time, despite all the barriers China's government tried to erect between Mr. Wei and the world, that he is a man of uncommon courage and temperament.

Mr. Wei first attracted attention in 1978, when he posted on Democracy Wall an article arguing that China needed to become more democratic in order to achieve full prosperity. For this he received a 15-year sentence. China's rulers released him in 1993, when they were trying to curry world favor in order to win their bid to host the Olympics; it was then that Mr. Wei refused to leave his cell unless his jailers gave him copies of the correspondence he had been writing -- and they had not been sending -- all those years. Once free, Mr. Wei continued to speak out for liberty, and he was soon imprisoned again. Now he has been freed "on parole for medical treatment," apparently on condition that he leave China.

It's impossible not to rejoice in this brave man's freedom. It's also important to remember that his release doesn't indicate any general easing of Chinese internal controls, any more than Leonid Brezhnev was ready to loosen up when he sent Alexander Solzhenitsyn into exile more than two decades before the Soviet Union collapsed. Thousands of prisoners of conscience remain behind: Wang Dan, the student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstration; Li Hai, sentenced to nine years for compiling a list of other Tiananmen protesters still behind bars; 77-year-old Catholic Bishop Zeng Jingmu; Tibetan abbot Chadrel Rinpoche, and so many more.

Mr. Wei's release clearly resulted from outside pressure; President Clinton raised his case in discussions with President Jiang Zemin. Some will now argue the pressure succeeded because it was quiet and deferential; others will say even more could have been achieved if more had been sought. Whichever view is correct, Mr. Wei's release reaffirms the importance of keeping human rights high on the U.S.-China agenda, both for systemic reform and for individual cases. And his release raises again the question Mr. Wei himself has asked in the past: Why is the Chinese regime so afraid of a single person peacefully advocating democracy that it must keep him in jail or half a world away?