As Beijing fetes Deng on the 10th anniversary of his death on Feb. 19 with paeans to reforms that have made China a global economic power, Wei Jingsheng still champions the bold ideas that made him Deng’s enemy and cost Wei nearly three decades in prison and forced exile.

Deng-led reformers in the 1980s “took a relatively pragmatic course of improving the economy and stabilizing society, but they remained unwilling to let go of communism and the dictatorial style of Mao Zedong,” said Wei, 56, who now runs a foundation in the Washington area.

“When they faced the reality that political reforms would undercut the dictatorial system that maintained their power, they retreated,” he said in a telephone interview.

Twenty years later in a China that has sped ahead economically, “expression is suppressed more and more and political controls remain as strict as ever,” Wei said.

In contrast to Wei’s youth, when all Chinese were poor, now the gap between rich and poor in China is wider than ever before — and growing, much to Beijing’s concern.

The former electrician shot to fame during the late 1970s Democracy Wall movement in Beijing, when he put up a poster that challenged Deng to add a “Fifth Modernization” — political freedom — to plans to modernize China by upgrading agriculture, industry, defense and science.

His essays, signed with his real name and address, landed him in jail from 1979 to 1993, a stretch that included eight months on death row and five years in solitary confinement.

Wei was released in 1993 as part of China’s effort to host the 2000 Olympics, but continued to speak out and was jailed again after Beijing’s bid failed. He was given medical parole and deported to the United States in 1997.

The winner of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and numerous human rights awards summed up Deng as “indeed a major figure, but a figure of a special kind in a special era.”

“He only did one part of what he needed to do,” said Wei.

“Economically, partial reforms have allowed the powerful to expropriate public wealth on a large scale and to command most economic opportunities, so inequality and other ill effects of this unfair system are now surfacing,” he said of frequent reported protests by displaced farmers and laid-off workers.

“If the reforms merely produced unequal outcomes, ordinary Chinese would be dissatisfied, but their anger would not be as severe as it is now at inequality of opportunity that has allowed connected people to get rich illegally,” said Wei.

Wei also has tough words for the West, which he said played a key role in promoting democratization in Eastern Europe and Latin America but is now in thrall to the Chinese market.

“The success of China’s economic diplomacy has created a peculiar situation in which the West doesn’t promote Chinese democratization any more,” he said.

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