NO MORE HEROES

Americana What appeals to Chinese youth

Taiwan Taipei is not amused

Viewpoint How Southeast Asia sees the visit

WEI JINGSHENG STRETCHES, lets out a contented sigh and drags on his cigarette. He has smoked four over the last hour, taking each from a slim black-and-gold case. Sitting in a small conference room at Columbia University, he taps his leg manically and speaks in the dogmatic phrases befitting a former Red Guard.

Wei holds forth on what he considers the grim situation in China. He talks about a newfound unity among exiled dissidents, long known for back-biting and bitterness. He laughs easily, revealing dark-yellow front teeth, held in place by dental supports - a souvenir from prison. Wei's New York dentist wants to yank all the teeth and install dentures but won't touch them until Wei gets clearance from his cardiologist. And that isn't happening because Wei is constantly traveling and talking.

Wei, 48, is not convalescing. Perhaps aware that his celebrity is fleeting, he is making express stops, mostly at world capitals, where he meets officials, journalists and concerned citizens. Tuesday morning: depart Brussels to Paris. 2:30 p.m.: Le Figaro magazine. Sunday: Depart Paris to Oslo. Monday: speech at the Norwegian parliament. Thursday: depart Oslo to Stockholm; meet with parliamentary president.

Not bad for someone whose list of putative ailments after his release included afflictions of the heart, back, prostate, lungs, stomach and teeth. "I have not been able to get much rest," Wei says, "but I'm also at the point where I'm realizing I must, so I'm trying to find a middle road between these two extremes." A day later he's on a plane again, back to Europe.

The life of the celebrity dissident can be a heady one. Shortly after Wei flew to the United States he won a short audience with President Bill Clinton. That sort of access didn't last. Soon Wei was lashing out because other government heads, including Helmut Kohl and Tony Blair, didn't show the same interest. "I've been warned by my friends in the American Congress and European parliaments that there seems to be a plot brewing among Western leaders to diminish my influence," he says.

Part of this may reflect a reluctance in Western capitals to scuttle commercial opportunities in China. But, in truth, Wei's message is anything but nuanced. He rejects gains China has made in recent years, and ignores the fact that his country is a far less monolithic state that it once was. It is understandable that Wei is out of touch; he spent 18 of the last 20 years behind bars.

Yet Wei and other Chinese dissidents are routinely sought out by the American media for their views. China-bashers in Congress echo their soundbites. While China's human-rights record is far from unblemished, middle America nonetheless receives a distorted picture of the mainland. This is due in part to the fact that some of the stories are filtered through dissidents who seem to spend more time on self-promotion and petty bickering than on meaningful activism. Perhaps that explains why Wang Dan, the Tiananmen activist who was released in April, has decided to forgo politics for language and history studies at Harvard.

Whatever Wei says about newfound amity, the dissident community is fractured. The disagreements range from how best to achieve change in China to which human-rights issues deserve the most attention. Petty disputes further complicate the splits. "The American public doesn't understand the dissidents are privileged people," says Wang Ling-chi, of the University of California at Berkeley. "There is little separation between intellectuals and the people who run the government, so for the media to single them out and portray them as spokesmen for the common people isn't right."

Moreover, the exiles are becoming increasingly irrelevant as China opens up - and Clinton's appearances on mainland television are sure to accelerate that perception. The upshot is less funding for the dissidents. As they quarrel and sharpen their knives for a return to the motherland, backers in Taiwan and Hong Kong are no longer so keen to pay the bills. Erstwhile Chinese-American supporters cringe whenever some exiles open their mouths.

ROMANCING THE AMERICANS

Wang Juntao spent some five years in Chinese prisons for his work as philosophical adviser to the protesters in Tiananmen. Now 40, he is finishing a PhD in political science at Columbia. Wang could give lessons on becoming a celebrity dissident in the U.S. "American people expect a hero's story," he says. "They prefer to listen to a story about a guy who suffered but still opposed the government. Some Chinese dissidents try to make themselves into the story Americans expect to hear." Trouble is, says Wang, Chinese people don't like this - and that's bad because it is the Chinese diaspora that supports exiled activists.

No dissident perhaps has stirred resentment among overseas Chinese more than Li Lu, a student leader from Tiananmen. Having raced through three degrees at Columbia, including law and business, Li wrote a book about his life, which became the foundation of a documentary, Moving the Mountain, produced in 1994 by Trudie Styler, wife of the rock star Sting. Later Li went to work on Wall Street, and is now managing his own stock fund, Himalaya Capital Partners.

"What is your article about?" Li wants to know when I ask to meet. "I'm sorry," he says, having possibly got wind that Iam asking difficult questions, "but I have a policy of not giving interviews." Four days later, the New York Observer is out, and on the cover is a story about Li Lu. "From Tiananmen to Wall Street: Li Lu Hits the New York Jackpot." The Observer is a narrowly read weekly, aimed mainly at Manhattan's literary and moneyed classes. Li's discussion in the magazine about stocks - and, of course, his fund - is inspired. "The traditional Chinese sentiment is that the woman has the capacity to climax 15 times," he says. "The market is turning into the traditional description of the woman's sex drive. My girlfriend is around that number."

This kind of analysis does not seem likely to generate confidence among sophisticates. Yet the fund is not for the common man - the minimum investment is a million dollars. Li, 32 and not long out of business school, names some of his key investors, each of whom was willing to suspend disbelief and pony up that much and more. They include Jerome Kohlberg, a founding partner of the New York investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts; Robert Bernstein, a vocal human-rights activist and former chief at Random House publishing; Bernstein's son Tom; and - here he comes again - Sting.

What investment moxy did Li use to convince a money guru such as Kohlberg to risk so much cash with a neophyte? Li says he invests in stocks that are "undervalued, in his estimation." He adds: "It's what I'm all about. It's revolutionary. It's about trusting yourself. It's about challenging the conventional wisdom. That's what we did in Tiananmen."

His market expertise aside, Li's pop-psych analysis of June 4, 1989 is one reason many overseas Chinese dislike him. While the U.S. media embrace Li as a democracy hero and a shining example of the plucky immigrant in America, his peers say he has fictionalized his life and exaggerated his democratic credentials. At Columbia recently, a local Chinese artist asked Li a particularly pointed set of questions about Li's claims to being an orphan; a brawl ensued.

Most profoundly, Li's critics say he has never acknowledged that his own rigid stance in 1989 may have led to the deaths of many people. Ding Zelin, the mother of a student killed in Tiananmen, is one who says that Li has advanced his career by cynically invoking the carnage. "Many feel that the people who died in 1989 are the real heroes," says Wang Juntao. "They say [some student leaders] use the blood of the 1989 heroes to make up their own political story."

Liu Binyan, a former People's Daily journalist who incurred official wrath in the 1980s with his stories on corruption, went to America in 1988. Unlike more retiring dissidents, he is happy to speak about Li. "Did you see this movie Li Lu made about his life?" he asks. "It's very bad, built on lies and self-exaggeration. Li Lu is not an honest person."

Moving the Mountain is indeed bad. Shot in America, years later, it features such student leaders as Li, Chai Ling and Wu'er Kaixi sitting around glorifying their roles in Tiananmen. Their discussions account for much of the film's analysis. Throughout, the subjects speak English - and it is abundantly clear for what audience the documentary was intended.

Other scenes recount Li's version of his early life and his passionate belief that things were wrong in China. During footage of the Tiananmen protests, Li marries his sweetheart in ostentatious fashion; later, after the bloodshed, she goes back to girlfriend status. He says he considered trying to find her, but decided not to risk it. He cites mystical indicators, in the form of a lizard, that he will return to be a key player in China's affairs. "I have always had the sense," he says, "that once again I will be summoned by history."

A man with such a grand perception of himself jealously guards his image. When film-maker Carma Hinton was set to release her ground-breaking 1995 Tiananmen documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace, she says Li got worried. "Li Lu and Chai Ling got upset at what might come out," Hinton recalls, "and said if necessary [they] would take legal action." Nothing ever came of it, and the film was widely praised.

Li and Chai Ling, a telegenic Tiananmen commander who earned a Harvard MBA this year, are among those lionized in American newspapers and television; they aren't accorded the same respect by either dissidents or overseas Chinese. The heroes for the Chinese tend toward more thoughtful voices, such as Liu Binyan and Wang Dan. Wang Juntao, well-known among Chinese, is relatively obscure among Americans. "If you want to be an honest person," he says, "you'll suffer in this country. The people won't trust you."

Harry Wu, the former prisoner who now lobbies against China's most-favored-nation trading status and tries to uncover Chinese government barbarities, is another activist widely criticized in Chinese circles, while enjoying generally positive coverage in the American press. Criticism circulates about his questionable tactics as he attempts to discredit both other dissidents and the Chinese government.

Many Chinese are offended by his calls for economic sanctions against the mainland, both because it shows that the dissident is out of touch with contemporary China, and because it rankles them when a fellow Chinese criticizes the motherland in a forum such as the U.S. Congress. "There's a Chinese saying," says Wang. "Sons never think their mothers are ugly, and dogs cannot think their family poor." Many Chinese believe their mother, in the form of the government, is ugly as sin, but woe to the exiled activist who says it too loudly in the arena of U.S. politics.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

There is no illusion among exiles that the democracy movement in the United States is moving China much. For one thing, the Chinese government's exhortations to put money above politics has won widespread cooperation on the mainland. Moreover, the dissidents are exiled mainly in the U.S., where the profit motive outweighs sanctimonious pronouncements on human rights and democracy, a fact compounded by a foreign-policy tilt toward China. Witness President Clinton's recent trip.

Then there are the self-destructive intrigues common to all political exiles who are pitted one against the other for attention and financial support. "Under such circumstances, what can they do for China, even without their split?" asks Liu Binyan, the old lion among exiles. "I don't put much hope in them. Even when they were in China, many of them didn't know China very well. The longer they are in exile, the more they become estranged."

In 1993, the dissidents tried to unite two factions under one umbrella at the so-called Washington Convention. The meeting ended in a pitched battle. It also revealed some of the "democrats" as aspiring dictators, who readily employed such time-tested electoral tactics as vote-buying and shipping in supporters to choose new leaders. Rather than unite two factions the convention spawned a third. The unseemly power-struggle diminished the dissidents' credibility and helped scare off supporters.

It was a huge disappointment, considering the high expectations after the Tiananmen protests. "They were too optimistic," says Liu. "Many of them thought that they would be back in China in a year and take over the government. I was among those who were too optimistic."

The incessant bickering also exposed fault lines based on class. Han Dongfan, the Beijing railroad worker who was jailed for his labor activism, received a chilly reception when he visited the United States in 1992. Many dissidents hail from the elite echelons of Chinese society and are more interested in broadbrush ideological change than labor reform. They clashed with a man who focuses on conditions facing China's workers - a creditable campaign, one might think, given the layoffs of millions as the mainland downsizes its lumbering state-owned enterprises. Ironic, because the Chinese government has traditionally feared an alliance of intellectuals and labor.

Bad behavior has also alienated backers. Wu'er Kaixi, the Uighur student leader at Tiananmen, succumbed to the fast times of lush hotels and international partying, and ditched his studies at Harvard. He now lives in obscurity in Taiwan, but recently said he wanted to return to China, where he says he is willing to go to jail for his ideals.

Such a trip wouldn't be the first time a celebrity dissident has returned to China ostensibly to rally the cause - and revive his flagging image. Dissident Wang Bingzhang used a fake U.S. passport to return to China in February. He was deported by Chinese authorities, and several of the activists he visited were rounded up and interrogated. He didn't win many friends in the movement for that exploit.

For other dissidents, exile has proved to be a sad, lonely experience. Just learning enough English to get around is a huge hurdle. "Doing any little thing, including walking, required help," says Liu Qing, who as head of the group Human Rights in China is able to carry on much of his work in Chinese. "I discovered I was a mute. People see me as an adult, but the knowledge I can express is like that of a small child." After six years in New York, he still speaks very little English.

Such problems are no worse than those facing poor immigrant Chinese who go to the United States. In fact, the dissidents have it easier. They aren't working in sweatshops, or being hounded by smugglers demanding huge fees for bringing people in. But they were big shots in China, people who spoke and were listened to. In America, the situation is not the same, especially for older dissidents. "They established themselves in China," says Chen Kuede, who gave philosophical guidance to the students in Shanghai during the 1989 protests. "In America they start from zero." Chen and Liu Binyan are affiliated with the Princeton China Initiative, a group of exiles funded in part by money from Taiwan, which is now drying up.

Fang Lizhi, the astrophysicist who inspired student protests in late 1986, is now doing what he does best: astrophysics. When Fang went to the U.S., he quickly found work at the University of Arizona. Fang settled into the life of a productive scientist, conducting research into the "stochastic fluctuations in the primeval plasma of the universe," and other topics far removed from Chinese affairs.

SPIES AMONG US

Do any exile groups enjoy peer approval? Some. With qualifications. One is Human Rights in China, led by Liu Qing, a compact man with a kind demeanor who spent 11 years in prison for speaking out in support of Wei. Today he operates from an office on the 33rd floor of the Empire State Building, overlooking the Hudson River and the towers of lower Manhattan. His staff monitor the imprisonment of activists in China and lobby relentlessly for their freedom.

Human Rights in China pushed for the release of Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan, and helped organize their itineraries once they arrived. It enjoys the respect even of U.S. business. Before Clinton left for China, the activists gave the president a list of 158 dissidents still in jails from the protests of 1989, with a request to seek their release. He didn't.

Besides Liu, only six people work for the organization; the staff is kept small to insulate them from spies. "After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was discovered that half the dissidents were working for the government," says Liu. "The Chinese government has even richer experience. There are people who leave China and have money even though they don't work. And their main activity is to put out criticism. I don't have hard evidence. But we know it's happening."

Some of the criticism, from spies or not, is petty. The organization, with an annual budget of half a million dollars, is resented for its successes, and other dissidents wish they could take the helm. The group has been criticized for "controlling" Wang Dan. Another complaint is more fundamental, though, and goes like this: Elite dissidents in the United States try to help elite dissidents in China by lobbying Washington; in the process human rights takes on a narrow definition - the release of political prisoners. Broader issues, such as protection for Chinese workers, are lost. The people running Human Rights in China counter that they are successful at what they do only because they have such a limited mission.

Nine years after Tiananmen and nearly 20 years after the Democracy Wall movement, life has evolved in China and more voices there are stepping up and being heard. Meanwhile, the dissidents marooned in the United States continue to flail away at each other and against China in the same note, offering little in the way of constructive solutions.

For Liu Qing, the rumor-mongering, the back-stabbing, all of it robs the dissidents of the opportunity to be a moral example. "To demand the end of factions would not be democracy, it would be authoritarianism," he says. "But there should be certain ethics. We have to develop a democratic culture - here and in China - and the lack of this culture causes me great distress." He is not alone.