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SCMP Reporter

WANG Dan, the famous Tiananmen Square student leader who was released from a Chinese jail last February, has launched a career as a freelance writer.

  He writes a daily column for a Hongkong paper and another for a Hongkong weekly, as well as occasional essays for other media in Hongkong and Taiwan.

  ''The authorities are aware of what I am writing, but they have made no effort to stop me,'' Wang said.

  The 23-year-old former history major at Beijing University said he had no other source of income.

  But because of his widespread recognition, he was getting relatively good fees.

  For example, the Hongkong weekly is reportedly paying him $1 per word.

  ''I am gathering material for a book called In Search of Freedom,'' he said. ''But I fear that as the book is not sensationalist in nature, it might not fetch high royalties''.

  Mr Wang said he had no qualms about bargaining for higher rates because a freelance writer was not dissimilar to an individual entrepreneur, and ''the trend of doing business is propelling China towards not just economic, but political reform''.

  The former student leader said the authorities had largely left him alone.

  But he had to call up the local security unit to apply to leave the capital.

  He had done so four times, and was only rejected once when he had wanted to go to Guangzhou with another student dissident.

  Mr Wang, who is sometimes still considered a potential leader for the ''next round'' of the democracy movement, said he had no plans to leave the country.

  He was afraid the authorities might not allow him to return, he said.

  When asked whether the ''new class'' of entrepreneurs, on whom Mr Wang had pinned his hopes for political reform, might have become too involved with making money to care for democracy, Mr Wang said: ''Many of the dissidents-turned-businessmen I know retain an avid interest in democracy.

  ''Even if they have forgotten about our crusade, it does not matter,'' he said.

  ''A law abiding businessman is also doing his share to help the country modernise''.

  Mr Wang said that compared with his classmates in 1989, today's students were much more preoccupied with personal interests such as finding a good job.

  That was why it was improbable that college students would spearhead the next wave of the democracy movement, he said.



Wang makes a living as freelance writer