Jianli Yang

Dissident, co-author of a Democratic Constitution for China and President of Initiatives for China. He witnessed the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and escaped to the United States afterwards. In 2002, he returned to China to help the labor movement with non-violent struggle strategies, was arrested and sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for “spying”. He was released in 2007. Mr. Yang is a signatory of the Charter 08 – a manifesto of Chinese Intellectuals calling for political reform in China. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Political Economy from Harvard University.