Topic: Wei Jing

Wei Jingsheng (Chinese: 魏京生; pinyin: Wèi Jīngshēng; born May 20, 1950) is an activist in the Chinese democracy movement, most prominent for authoring the document Fifth Modernization on the "Democracy Wall" in Beijing in 1978.

He had joined the Red Guards as a sixteen-year-old student during the Cultural Revolution. When Deng Xiaoping came to power and repudiated the Cultural Revolution, Wei Jingsheng, then a twenty-eight-year-old electrician in Beijing's Zoo, attacked the government of the Communist Party of China, becoming one of the first few daring to denounce Deng. Wei's and others' public dissent worried Deng who was anxious to consolidate his power. Apart from the Fifth Modernization ("第五个现代化") authorship, Wei Jingsheng is known for his editorial work in a short-lived magazine Exploration (《探索》) in 1979.

Wei Jingsheng was arrested March 29, 1979 for passing military secrets, and was condemned to 15 years of prison. He had also published a letter under his name in March 1979 denouncing the inhuman conditions of the Chinese Qincheng Prison, where the 10th Panchen Lama was imprisoned. However, there have been unsubstantiated claims that a major part of Wei's essay came from other anonymous authors with personal experiences involving Qincheng.