Zheng Yi

Zheng Yi "an award winning novelist and essayist from Shanxi province, happened to arrive in Beijing for a literary conference on April 15, 1989, the day that Hu Yaobang died. Zheng worked with other intellectuals to craft statements of support for the students including the famous “Declaration of May 16.” That document, referring to Deng Xiaoping as a “senile and fatuous autocrat,” featured a stinging critique of corrupt central leadership. Zheng also acted as an advisor to the students, but was not in Beijing when the crackdown began, having gone home for a change of clothes and some cash.

"Within days of June 4, Zheng was on the run, spending the next three years moving from place to place to escape arrest. But he never stopped writing. Red Memorialis an account of the ways the Communist Party rewarded violence and even cannibalism during the Cultural Revolution. A Part of History, also about the Cultural Revolution, is an autobiographical work. Zheng talks about the books as the story of “someone who was brainwashed by the Communist Party, someone who sat through a Marxist education, but ended up criticizing Marxism and the Party.”

"Zheng left China in March 1992. He continues to write on the problems facing contemporary China from his home near Washington, D.C. His books are banned in China." 

He is on the editorial board of Beijing Spring and is a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center.


 * Member, Princeton China Initiative
 * Member, Global Coalition To Bring Jiang To Justice