Wei Jingsheng’s essay on the need for democracy in China first appeared on the “Democracy Wall” in Beijing in 1978. It was written in response to Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping’s address to the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, which initiated the leader’s “Four Modernizations” as a national policy. (The paramount leader is the supreme political figure in China.) The Four Modernizations were conceived by Deng in the late 1950s and drew the suspicion of Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976) as being too “capitalist.” They called for sweeping reforms in industry, agriculture, science and technology, and national defense.