Jiang may free more dissidents, says expert

PHILADELPHIA, November 19: Wie Jingsheng may be only the first of a number of jailed dissidents to be released by China as President Jiang Zemin nudges the People’s Republic toward a new era of political moderation.

So says Ku Yuhsiu, a 94-year-old retired professor who met privately with Jiang during the Chinese leader’s visit to the United States in October. Ku, who taught engineering to Jiang in Shanghai in 1946, believes his 71-year-old former pupil may have decided to release Wei in response to throngs of human rights protestors who jeered him at every stop on his US tour.

“It’s wonderful that Wei has been released. I think others will follow, from Tiananmen,” Ku told reporters in an interview. “President Jiang was impressed by his trip to the US. He had not been aware of all this public opinion in the US, in a way it’s voluntary on his part,” he said of the decision freeing Wei and exiling him to the US.

Ku’s remarks may seem like wishful thinking to some, but the University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus is no political novice. In fact, he has been advising China’s communist regime off-and-on.