Wall Street Journal - April 30, 2008
Leslie Hook

One such man is Ye Tingfang, a 71-year-old scholar of German literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Mr. Ye became famous here last year for submitting a proposal to one of China's legislative bodies to end the one-child policy. His proposal wasn't voted on or formally debated, but it garnered three million signatures of support online.

There are others like him û elderly citizens who are empowered by their age and by the status they've achieved at the end of long careers. When the SARS epidemic broke in 2003, it was Jiang Yanyong, a military doctor and Communist Party member, who was 71 at the time, who publicized the fact that the government was underreporting the number of people infected. In Henan province, doctors Gui Xien and Gao Yaojie (born in 1937 and 1927 respectively) were the first to conduct testing that revealed AIDS was responsible for thousands of mysterious deaths. They went public with the results, and the ensuing outcry forced the government to adopt more proactive HIV/AIDS policies.

Mr. Ye's personal story is in many ways representative of this generation. They've lived through the twin terrors of the Japanese invasion and the Cultural Revolution. They've been "re-educated" by working in the fields, or seen loved ones die of starvation. They grew up in large families that were torn apart by war and civil unrest. And they're private citizens who speak up when they see something amiss û something that can be difficult for the vast majority of people in China, who have to be careful to preserve their livelihoods and protect their families.

Born to a poor family in the countryside of Zhejiang province, Mr. Ye lost his left arm at the age of eight, when it became so infected after a fall that the limb fell off above the elbow. Unable to work in the fields, he went to school û and became the only one of his four siblings to graduate from high school.

He says this childhood tragedy was part of the reason he was drawn to the writing of Franz Kafka, which he first read covertly during the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Ye likens himself to Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" who wakes up one morning to discover he has turned into a bug. In a society where people with physical handicaps are marginalized, Mr. Ye was initially disqualified from attending university or studying abroad û obstacles he eventually got around.

He was accepted into the foreign languages department at Peking University in the 1950s, and joined the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1964. Two years later the Cultural Revolution began, and in 1968 his entire department was sent to work the fields in Henan province.

It wasn't until after the Cultural Revolution that Mr. Ye was able to write about the literary subjects he really loved û Kafka, and Friedrich Durrenmatt. In keeping with China's tradition of public intellectuals, Mr. Ye began serving on the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee in 1998. One of his earliest submissions to the CPPCC, which meets annually and functions as an advisory body to China's rubber-stamp legislature, was a proposal opposing the government's plan to restore the Old Summer Palace, currently in ruins. "The history of the Old Summer Palace contains the history of the foreign invasions of China," he explains, referring to the fact that the palace was burned and looted by soldiers during the British invasion in 1860.

During his 10 years as a member of the CPPCC, he submitted several proposals a year, ranging from academic reform to the minutiae of road repairs. He waited until his last year as delegate to submit his proposal to end the one-child policy. Even though his proposal was relatively mild û replacing the one-child policy with a two-child policy, instead of eliminating the restriction altogether û it immediately made headlines in Chinese media, and he garnered the signatures of 28 other CPPCC members.

"Since it's a matter of national policy, I knew it wouldn't be accepted," he says. "I knew it wouldn't make them happy. But it's my duty as a delegate." Mr. Ye opposes the one-child policy primarily because of what he sees as the negative social impact of having children grow up as "little emperors" with no siblings or cousins their age. "It's really damaging and unnatural," he says. "It changes people's personality for the worse."

The Population and Family Planning Commission wasn't pleased. Once the CPPCC session was over, Mr. Ye was invited to visit the bureau's headquarters, where the staff explained their version of the one-child policy to him. He doesn't elaborate on the visit. "They were very friendly, very polite, but they're not going to change the policy," he says, and leaves it at that.

Since then, Beijing's leaders have only solidified their determination to continue the one-child policy, despite warnings from demographers world-wide. Still, it's hard not to hope that actions like Mr. Ye's will slowly add up.

In many ways, Mr. Ye's story is a reminder that political action and civic engagement can take many different forms. The simple exercise of speaking one's mind can become a civic contribution in an authoritarian state. As our interview wraps up, we start talking about the Olympics. Mr. Ye is not impressed by his neighborhood's pre-Olympics cleanup, comparing its new face to "a young girl who doesn't know how to put on make-up." Such honesty is something his country could use more of.

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