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| Wang Juntao |
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Juntao Wang first joined the Chinese democracy movement and was arrested when he was a 17-year-old high school student in Beijing and became well known activist in China.
In the 1980s, he was a key figure in all pro-democracy events.
He published an independent magazine, Beijing Spring, in 1979. It was the largest independent publication at the time and soon its title became the other name of democracy movement.
In 1980, he initiated a freedom election in university campuses in Beijing and was the first independent candidate in Peking University.
In the mid-1980s, he cooperated with his colleague Chen Ziming to establish the largest independent think-tank at the time in Beijing.
In the early stages of the 1989 movement, he was adviser to the student leaders. After the declaration of martial law, he organized a round- table meeting (Capital Joint Liaison Group) of all the organizations involved to coordinate action.
Accused of being the top Black Hand behind the student movement, the Beijing authorities sentenced him to 13 years in prison, the longest one in Beijing. While in prison, he went on a hunger strike on 21 different occasions to protest his situation. Upon direct intervention by President Clinton to then Chinese President Jiang Zemin in 1993, Juntao Wang was exiled to the United States in 1994.
Juntao Wang is also an influential intellectual and independent expert in China. He obtained a BS in nuclear physics from Peking University in 1982, the master in public administration from Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University in 1997, and the M. Phi. in political science from Columbia University in 2000. In mid-1980s, he was acting director of China Polling center, the vice chief editor of Economics Weekly, the board member of China Administrative Correspondence University, and the board member of Beijing Social and Economic Research Foundation. In mid-1990s, he was a visiting scholar at Fairbank Center for East Asia Research (1994-95), the Nieman Fellow for Journalist (1995-96), and the Edward Mason Fellow (1996-97) in Harvard University.
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