By Editorial Board September 14
THEY KEPT him in a cell so small he could walk barely two steps in any direction. There was no sunlight, no ventilation; just one five-watt bulb, burning dimly 24 hours a day. He was allowed nothing to read and no one to speak with, not even the guards. They fed him one piece of bread and one bowl of watery cabbage a day.
When they let Gao Zhisheng out of prison last month after nearly five years, he had dropped from 175 pounds to 137. Half of his teeth were gone or rotten. At age 50, his hair had turned white; his relatives thought they saw a ghost or some alien creature. Mr. Gao himself could not believe his reflection in the mirror. Since his release, he has barely been able to carry on a telephone conversation with his wife, Geng He, who lives in the United States with their two children.
Is this the product of a rising, confident China — the “China Dream” that President Xi Jinping likes to present to the world? Mr. Gao committed no crime and never questioned Communist Party rule. He was something more dangerous: a lawyer who sought to uphold the law and the constitution that the Communist Party claims to live by. At one time a successful establishment attorney, he began to work pro bono for people he thought were getting a raw deal: practitioners in the Falun Gong spiritual community; peasants pushed off their land by developers with connections. Likely it was his very moderation that Mr. Xi and his cronies found so threatening. Mr. Gao was part of a movement that sought to reform China gradually, peacefully, through the rule of law. Its existence challenged the party’s claim to be the only alternative to chaos. Given the party’s diminishing legitimacy, due to corruption, pollution and other ills, Mr. Gao posed too much of a risk.