From Subversity Archives: Chinese Democracy Activist Wang Dan at UCI in 2006

UCI comes together to memorialize those killed in the
Tiananmen Massacre of 4 June 1989.
Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 1989.

To listen to the KUCI Subversity Online podcast with Wang Dan's 2006 UCI lecture, click on :

Wang Dan with fellow students in 1989

In the wake of the June 4 commemorations worldwide, we bring you a 2006 talk at UC Irvine given by Wang Dan, who in 1989 was a key student leader of the Tianamen protests in Beijing.  He was subsequently put on a most-wanted student activist list, arrested and imprisoned, and on his release went to the United States.

He obtained his Ph.D at Harvard, where his dissertation in 2008 compared state violence under Mao and Chiang (Kai Shek on Taiwan) in the 1950s.

He now is an academic in Taiwan. He is banned from China (and Hong Kong as well).  His memoir, in Chinese, 王丹回憶錄 : 從六四到流亡, came out last fall in Taiwan.

Cover of Hong Kong publication

Listening to his 2006 talk here, I am struck by how he relevant his talk still is, given that China still faces many of the same problems he talked about.  Wang Dan explains how corruption in China moved the Peking University and other protesting students to seek democratization and discusses the challenges China still faces.

Wang Dan's talk first aired on KUCI's Subversity show on June 19, 2006.  Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy in the School of Social Sciences at UC Irvine, Wang Dan spoke on May 25, 2006 on the topic: "Rethinking the Past and Looking to the Future of China."  The audio includes a Q&A.