ABSTRACT
Despite Fang Lizhi's open letter demanding the release of Wei Jingsheng and respect for the human rights, explicit human rights rhetoric did not figure much during the democracy movement that broke out in April 1989 after the death of Hu Yaobang, the disgraced former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This said, however, it is still true that demands for the freedom of speech and the publication constituted some of the central ideas of the movement. In some cases human rights ideas were also discussed. The drafters lamented the ignorance and neglect of the human rights in the Chinese society, a view shared by Xu Bing, writing around the same time in a more academic context. Many speakers and demonstrators made the quite conscious references to the spirit of May Fourth and its ideals of the human rights, democracy, and modernization.
