Gao Peiqi

Gao Peiqi was born in China in 1949 and arrived in Britain in 1992. He talks about how, since coming to Britain, he has dedicated his life to promoting the democratic movement in China.

Listen to Gao (in Mandarin, mp3, 782kb)

Transcript

Read transcript in Mandarin (pdf, 66kb)

'From the perspective of the overseas democratic movement itself, it has a voice of its own. We, people in exile, look at this movement in a normal way. People in mainland China see it as a hope, a different voice from the government.

'To some extent the movement stands for truth and justice, some positive direction Chinese society is taking. This is a very encouraging thought. It upholds a high moral ideal. That’s what people like us can do to help overseas – giving a voice to people in China who think like us but do not have the freedom to say what they think or do what they want to do. 

'But we have our limitations too. The democratic movement in China cannot completely be removed from the environment from which it emerged. The problem facing today’s overseas democratic movement is that it is not rooted in the environment that gave it life in the first place. You can imagine, a lot of students come here and want to study and make lots of money. Very few of them come here to be involved in the democratic movement. They want to leave China; we want to return to China. Very different ways of thinking indeed. That’s why I’d say the real democratic movement has to take place in China. We face a lot of limitations doing this overseas. 

'But for now it is still very necessary. Without what we are doing overseas, there would be an even slimmer hope for people in China, the communist government in China could do even more bad things. We are at least expressing a different voice, telling governments of other countries, through human rights organisations, that it is important to monitor the human rights situation in China to make sure the situation does not get out of hand.'

Copyright Evelyn Oldfield Unit