Gao Zhisheng "My Fight As a Rights Lawyer in the WorldÆs Largest Communist State"

ReviewGao Zhisheng is a man who represents China's Rights Defense movement. The work of Mr. Gao and fellow rights defenders has seriously shaken the oppressive political system of the Chinese Communist Party... Their work has brought hope to distressed and poverty-stricken people in China. Reading this collection helps to better understand him and the cause of rights defenders. Wei Jingsheng, prominent democracy activist who served 18 years in Chinese prisons

Mr. Gao... is one of the most well-known dissidents in China. An outspoken government critic... he has taken on cases that many Chinese lawyers would not dare touch. The New York Times

Often it is the lawyers who are in the front line of freedom and this is the difficult position that Gao Zhisheng has occupied in China. His story is a reminder of how far China has to go to achieve some degree of justice and respect for individual freedom, and how much it will owe Gao Zhisheng and people like him when it eventually gets there. Professor Conor Gearty, Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, London School of Economics

Product Description

Attorney. Activist. Fearless. Faithful. The story of one man who has taken on the world's largest authoritarian regime... And, in the eyes of many, won.

Born and raised in a cave with only the stars to tell time, Gao Zhisheng rose from poverty to become China's most important lawyer. He has courageously sought justice for vulnerable groups such as the poor, the disabled, and the persecuted. Yet Gao's fortitude has drawn the ire of Communist authorities. Today, physical threat and police surveillance are a constant reality for both Gao and his family. Undeterred, he has responded in the nonviolent tradition of Gandhi by launching nationwide hunger strikes to intensify the call for justice and human rights in China. His undaunted resolve and generous spirit have won the hearts of millions. Whispers can be heard in China's streets, Will Gao Zhisheng become the next president?

Part memoir, part social commentary, part call to action, A China More Just is a penetrating account of contemporary China through the life of one attorney. Its selection of writings takes readers from a village in rural China to urban courtrooms, mountainside torture chambers, and the halls of a reluctant government. A China More Just is at once witty and raw, touching and wrenching, sober and playful.

About the Author

Gao Zhisheng rose from utter poverty to become one of China s most acclaimed lawyers and a leading advocate for the oppressed. Life took a most unlikely turn in 1991 when Gao happened to learn, while selling vegetables by the roadside, that the country was looking to train new lawyers. Though possessed only a middle-school education, Gao taught himself law and passed the national bar examination in 1995.

Gao made headlines in 1999 by winning the largest medical malpractice lawsuit in Chinese history. In 2001, China's Ministry of Justice named him one of the nation's top-ten attorneys. A Christian, Gao has since become known for his tenacious pursuit of justice on behalf of China's most vulnerable from exploited coal miners to democracy advocates, the poor, and victims of religious persecution.

In 2005 Gao wrote a series of open letters to China s authorities detailing his investigation into the torture of members of the Falun Gong. Thereafter he found himself besieged, as he put it, by infuriated Party rulers. Gao's Beijing law firm was soon after shut down, his family put under surveillance, and attempts made on his life. In 2006 he initiated a series of hunger strikes that involved thousands worldwide.

Gao's maltreatment by the Chinese regime has been the subject of formal resolutions by the United States Congress and the European Parliament. Rights groups such as Amnesty International have campaigned to ensure his welfare. He has been featured by The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and many other prominent media.

In 2006 Gao became the recipient of the Chinese Liberal Culture Movement's Special Human Rights Award, the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Foundation's Human Rights Champion Award, and in 2007 was awarded the American Board of Trial Advocates Courageous Advocacy Award. He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

Preface - by Gao Zhisheng

“It is our misfortune to live in the China of this historical period. No one on this earth has ever had to experience or witness the suffering that has befallen us! Yet it is also our fortune to live in the China of this historical period. For we will experience and witness how the greatest people on earth banished this suffering once and for all!”

Such were my concluding remarks on December 21, 2005, offered as stinging tears rolled down my cheeks when I addressed fellow citizens who had come to Beijing to petition the government.

I have never been a man of letters, and so it never occurred to me that I would write a book—much less in times as stifling as these.

In this time when the majority of my fellow Chinese have become numb to, or have even adapted to, the darkness and fallacies of this age, my writings have sparked hatred and fear in those despots who operate in the shadows. When the passion, the edge, and the righteous indignation that mark some of my words (in particular those exposing the infuriating wickedness of this dictatorship) at times pierce through the thick darkness enshrouding my fellow citizens, they—having long since grown acclimated to, or been forced to acclimate to, the darkness—may find the light of my words unsettling. This suggests that I have failed to “acclimate” to the national psyche of China. So be it.

This era is not just about enduring setbacks, however. We also have our share of achievements in this day. For me, someone with merely eight years of formal education, it is an achievement to have written something others want to read, and even more so to see it published in book form.

It’s really not that I am fond of heaviness. But insofar as my writing is undeniably “heavy,” it is because the weight, the burden, that I feel forces me to think and compels me to act, to pick up my pen. I must narrate this story. I am moved by an ardent hope that by articulating it, I may in some way help to relieve China of the crushing burden on her back.

Strictly speaking, I should be counted as an activist, not a thinker; much less am I the founder of some institution. I have sought in my writing a style that delights in its uninhibitedness and that speaks directly from the heart. Much of my writing is improvisational and spurred by circumstance. I myself am surprised at times by the roughness that marks. Whatever the case, these are words that tell a tale both of the people’s violent, sanguinary, bitter pain, as well as of the noble character, dignity, and resoluteness of the freedom fighters who are counted among them.

Yet no words, however strong, can possibly describe the darkness and terrible barbarity of today’s dictators in China, nor the tragic annihilation of Chinese culture that they have perpetrated. Though I have strived to convey these qualities through my writing, having attempted to unveil merely one corner of China’s darkness, I cannot help but feel the futility and frailty of language.

In today’s China, where the forces of incivility run rampant, it is common practice to mock what is beautiful and to beautify what is vile. A pathological China is not ready for what I write. But I hope such a China will soon emerge.

It is my sincerest wish that soon a China will exist where there is no need for chronicling such as mine. original report from Broad Book, Inc

Broad Press USA 2009