Party boss Xi Jinping speaks at the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in the “Great Hall of the People,” October 18, 2017. (Aly Song / Reuters)

China is a nation of 1.4 billion people. It’s hard to think of 1.4 billion people. Let’s think about one, just for a second.

His name was Wang Meiyu, and you can read about him through Radio Free Asia, here. He was 38 years old. He had a wife and two young children. He wanted democracy in his country. Two months ago, he held up a sign calling on Xi Jinping, the PRC’s “president for life,” to step down. And for free elections to be held.


Can you imagine holding up such a sign? In China?

Now he has been tortured to death, of course. His widow, Cao Shuxia, said that his body was unrecognizable. That’s how bad it was.

Wang could not say he hadn’t been warned. He had campaigned for democracy before, and had been tortured for it — “until I was spitting blood,” he said. But he kept going.


I hear a lot of pooh-poohing of democracy — always from people who are lucky enough to live in a democracy. But some people, in unfree countries, value democracy so much, they are willing to die for it. To be tortured to death for it.

Obviously, Wang Meiyu was such a person. People like him uphold Chinese honor, and human honor.