Times Wang, human rights lawyer and the son of Chinese democracy pioneer, Dr. Wang Bingzhang, who has been imprisoned since 2002, addressed the 17th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on February 18th, 2025.
Full Remarks:
I remember the message from my aunt like it was yesterday: “Your father is dead.” We’d been dreading this day for a while.
My father, Wang Bingzhang, was the PRC’s longest-serving political prisoner and had, at that point, spent the last 17 years in solitary confinement. He’d had numerous health problems and had several strokes in prison. So, the news of his death was hardly surprising.
It also wasn’t true, as I found out myself, after a 30-hour trip from Virginia to Guangdong Province. I’d emailed the Canadian & American embassies with my itinerary and a clear message: “I’m going to China to investigate my father’s death. Please make sure the CCP lets me come home.” My family was scared, my wife was scared. I was scared! But when I finally walked through those prison doors I discovered that, yes, he was old, but he was very much alive.
Truth and falsehood are notoriously hard to figure out in a dictatorship.
Like many Chinese people of his generation, my father and his family endured unspeakable suffering under Mao. In the 1950s, the regime seized their humble dairy farm, leaving them penniless. Several of their relatives died in a famine caused by the regime’s policies. And when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, my father was nearly beaten to death after a jealous classmate falsely accused him of being a counterrevolutionary.
Today, some 50 years later, Mao’s portrait still hangs over Tiananmen Square. As for stories like my family’s, which are very common, they can still only really be talked about in private.
But like all tyrants, Mao was just a man, and he eventually died. When he did, China opened back up to the world, and my father got a scholarship to study at McGill University in Montreal.
There, he witnessed an election. It was a referendum that asked whether “the citizens of Quebec wished to be sovereign, or whether they wished to remain part of Canada.”
He was deeply moved. Sovereignty was a question of the highest political importance and yet Canada trusted ordinary citizens to make that decision.
As a patriot, my father believed that Chinese people were no less capable and no less intelligent. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to weigh in on similar questions affecting their country?
And so, when my father finished his studies at McGill, he gave up a promising medical career to devote his life to securing democratic rights for his compatriots.
“Medicine can cure the disease of an individual,” he said, “but it cannot cure the disease of a nation.”
He’d spend the next two decades doing everything in his power to advancing Chinese democracy.
He founded an influential magazine called China Spring and several pro-democracy organizations. He traveled the world to drum up support for the movement, especially among young Chinese people.
He even snuck back into China on a fake passport to help set up an opposition party.
In retaliation, the PRC revoked his citizenship. But he refused to ever become the citizen of any other country, maintaining that he was and always would be a Chinese patriot.
In 2002, he went to Vietnam to meet with people he believed were Chinese labor activists. It was a setup. He was kidnapped, taken across the border, and rushed through a sham trial.
In that trial, the regime fabricated the evidence against him. But at the end of the trial though, it issued a very real sentence: life imprisonment.
I was 17 at the time and we didn’t have much of a relationship, because my parents had separated when I was a kid.
But I knew that an enormous injustice had been done to him, and to my family—especially when I saw my beloved grandmother cry until she had no more tears left to cry, something she did every day for the rest of her life.
And so, I decided I should at least try to understand him better, as well as the regime that had done this to him. I began by visiting him in prison, which was also the first time I’d ever gone to China.
When I saw him being brought to the meeting room with chains around his feet, my heart dropped.
Then we sat down, separated by thick glass and steel bars.
When he picked up the phone to speak, the very first thing he said was: “Times, do NOT believe what the regime says about me.”
I told him I didn’t.
Since then, I’ve visited my father in prison more than a dozen times. And I’ve come to understand that his message to me that day, to not believe what the regime says about him, carries broader significance.
You see, my father understood from deep personal experience that the CCP is and always would be an oppressive, totalitarian regime held together by a web of lies.
And he understood viscerally that the only way the CCP still holds power is through brutality.
But the human conscience will always find brutality shocking.
So the regime’s only option is to lie.
They lied about the June 4 Massacre.
They lied about concentration camps in Xinjiang.
And if you ask them about why my father is being held in solitary confinement, as I have, they’ll tell you: “Oh, we’re not holding him in solitary confinement. We just group prisoners based on offense, and it so happens that your dad’s case is unique.”
How convenient.
I’ve also come to realize that one thing that separates people like my father from regimes like the CCP is precisely how willing or unwilling they are to lie.
For my father, and I would imagine for many of my fellow speakers, being truthful is a matter self-respect
I once asked him during a prison visit: “Dad, do you think the Chinese government was behind your kidnapping?”
You know what he said to me? “It’s possible, but we don’t have enough evidence to say for sure.”
Imagine that. Imagine that,
Your oppressor’s lies have landed you in prison but you still insist on evidence before pointing the finger at them.
And finally, I’ve also come to realize that the true meaning of his life is that the pursuit of truth and justice is a profound reward unto itself.
And so, inspired by him, I’ve chosen to represent, in my career, victims of human trafficking, forced labor, and political oppression—often in opposition to the CCP.
My father is nearly 80 now. I don’t know how much time he has left. What I do know is that he’s used his time well and that his commitment to principle, to truth, and to justice, have helped me stay strong when I otherwise might have wavered. May it help you do so too.
Thank you.
17th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, U.N. Opening, Monday, February 17, 2025
Key Quotes:
“The Chinese Communist Party is and always will be an oppressive, totalitarian regime held together by a web of lies.”
“The only way the CCP still holds onto power is brutality.”
“[My father] gave up a promising medical career to devote his life to advancing Chinese democracy.”
“The PRC revoked [my father’s] citizenship. But he refused to become the citizen of any other country, maintaining that he was and always would be a Chinese patriot.”
“In 2002, [he] went to Vietnam to meet with people he had been led to believe were Chinese labor activists. But it was a setup. He was kidnapped, taken across the border, and rushed through a sham trial. In that trial, the regime fabricated the evidence —but the sentence was very real: life imprisonment.”
“But the true meaning of my father’s life is that the pursuit of justice is a reward unto itself. Stay committed to principle, to justice, and to the truth, and I hope it will help you stay strong as well.”
