Jiang occupies an increasingly rare position in China, holding a key position in a country where opposition voices are often silenced while questioning authorities about their crackdown on dissent and restrictions on freedom of expression. I found a way.
“More and more people are genuinely interested in the fate of China’s rule of law,” Jiang said. He also acknowledged that the Chinese state has often moved in the opposite direction, including President Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on power.
Mr. Jiang had personal interests. In the 1980s, as China was emerging from the purges and persecution of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, Jiang helped draft China’s first modern civil rights code, which set out fundamental legal principles such as due process in law.4 He was one of the great jurists. system. However, there were clear boundaries. For example, citizens still could not sue the Communist Party.
Mr. Jiang also helped lay the foundations for China’s future rapid economic growth, including by creating a legal framework covering property rights, contracts, and corporate regulations. This work established Jiang’s reputation as China’s leading legal expert and a leader for generations of rights activists and reformers. “Bow only to the truth” was one of his often-quoted maxims.
Jiang indirectly rebuked Chinese leaders by condemning censorship and insisting that China’s economic modernization cannot come at the expense of human rights and judicial accountability. Yet he never portrayed himself as an impatient rebel. He believed that young Chinese and future generations would eventually urge leaders to embrace democracy and strengthen the rule of law.
“We should have a spirit of tolerance and consider how far we can compromise with reality,” Jiang said. “You don’t have to feel bad about compromising. Time slowly changes everything.”
His ability to rebuke the establishment without incurring its full wrath further increased his mystique in the eyes of his supporters. During the Tiananmen Square protests, Jiang was one of 10 university presidents who signed an open letter calling on authorities to show restraint and open dialogue with student demonstrators.
He held a personal sit-in at the campus gate in solidarity with the Tiananmen crowd. In his oral memoir published in 2010, Jiang described two traits that he believed were essential for Chinese intellectuals. “One is an independent spirit that dares to think independently without bowing to any political pressure,” he says. “The other thing is a critical spirit.”
Chinese authorities sent tanks and troops to Tiananmen Square in early June 1989 to suppress the pro-democracy movement. In February of the following year, Jiang was removed as president of China University of Political Science and Law, one of the centers of student protest organizing. Other university leaders seen as sympathetic to the Tiananmen crowd were also expelled.
Even after Jiang was forced from office as president and allowed to remain as a law professor, he was careful not to make any public comments. However, a friend told the Washington Post of Jiang’s comments at the time: “I maintain my views,” Jiang was quoted as saying. “China must move towards democracy and the rule of law. …It’s bound to come.”
Jiang Weilian was born on December 28, 1930 in Dalian, northeast China. His father was a bank clerk. His mother was a housewife.
He changed his name to Jiangping to protect his family from possible reprisals during the Chinese civil war fought between Mao Zedong’s communist forces and the rival Kuomintang that ruled China. Jiang dropped out of university and joined the communist side at the end of the war in the late 1940s.
When the Communist Party took over in 1949, Jiang and other students were sent to the Soviet Union to continue their studies. Jiang was sent to Moscow in 1951 to study law. He spoke of a pivotal moment in shaping his political outlook. That’s when he heard news of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech condemning Joseph Stalin’s earlier purges and mass persecution. For Jiang, his changing views on Stalin were evidence that power could be challenged and reevaluated. (In 1981, Chinese leaders blamed some of Mao’s atrocities, but declared that Mao’s “contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweighed his mistakes.”)
Jiang returned to China in 1956 and took up a teaching position at Beijing Academy of Political Science and Law (now China University of Political Science and Law). But he soon became embroiled in Mao Zedong’s thorough enforcement of strict communist orthodoxy. Jiang, like many professors and writers, was assigned to a labor unit for political “re-education.” His classmate’s wife, whom he met in Moscow, divorced him due to political pressure.
While walking across the railroad tracks carrying a large quantity of steel pipes, he was hit by a train and one of his legs was amputated. He was fitted with his prosthetic leg and continued to wear it for the rest of his life.
In the late 1970s, as China began its expansion into the West, Jiang returned to university teaching and subsequently helped craft the Civil Code and other laws aimed at supporting China’s new market-driven vision. I was chosen as the person to do it.
He became increasingly critical of what he called the “rule of law,” which was being overshadowed by political leadership that used the courts as a lever of power.
“The judicial system is tied to the political system, so without real political reform, judicial system reform cannot be fully realized,” Jiang told Reuters in 2014.
Jiang’s second wife, Choi Ki, passed away in July. Her survivors include her son; daughter; sister and two grandchildren.
Despite China’s rise to become a global economic power, Mr. Jiang said the leadership was highly unstable and, when faced with demands for greater freedom during the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Hong Kong riots, resorted to force rather than dialogue. He said he was relying on him.
“Democracy is best at oversight,” he told an interviewer. “We are constantly talking about improving our oversight mechanisms. The best oversight mechanism is freedom of the press. … You can say whatever you want to say, and the leaders can’t suppress it. Freedom of speech is fundamental. It’s a problem.”