A recent collection edited by Diane Ravitch and Abigail Thernstrom reminds us of how universal the desire for freedom is. There are writings by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel. Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa talk about the importance of democracy for the future of Latin America. Wei sees democracy as a system of self-criticism, adjustment and renewal, and without it, he believes, the other modernizations will never succeed. One of the most moving answers to the shallow and self-serving arguments of governments that deny the universality of the desire for freedom and democracy comes from Chinese scientist Fang Lizhe.
Chinese people are no different from any other.
Like all members of the human race, the Chinese are born with a body and a brain, with passions and with a soul. The feudal aristocracy of 200 years ago opposed the notion of an astronomy based on science. They refused to acknowledge the universal applicability of modern astronomy, or even that it might be of some use in formulating the Chinese calendar. It says that the universe has no center, that it has the same properties throughout. Every place in the universe has, in this sense, equal rights.