A Beijing court sentenced Wei Jingsheng, a young electrician turned dissident writer, to fifteen years in prison for counterrevolutionary activity after he posted essays on the capital's 'Democracy Wall' demanding political liberalization alongside Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. His trial marked an early crackdown on dissent under China's post-Mao leadership.
In late 1978, ordinary Beijing residents began pasting handwritten posters, poems, and essays onto a long brick wall on Xidan Street, venting grievances against the Cultural Revolution and calling for democratic reform. The movement, soon dubbed the 'Democracy Wall,' briefly seemed to have official tolerance as Deng Xiaoping consolidated power against Maoist rivals.
Wei Jingsheng, a 28-year-old electrician at the Beijing Zoo, became its most fearless voice. His essay 'The Fifth Modernization' argued that Deng's push for modernization in agriculture, industry, science, and defense meant nothing without a fifth: democracy. He was arrested in March 1979 after publishing information about China's border war with Vietnam, and a court sentenced him to fifteen years for 'counterrevolutionary agitation' and leaking state secrets.
His conviction signaled that Deng's tolerance for dissent had limits. Wei would spend most of the next two decades in and out of Chinese prisons, becoming an internationally recognized symbol of resistance to Communist Party authoritarianism, eventually exiled to the United States in 1997.