Wang Dan

Wang Dan is one of those rare figures who makes you stop and reckon with what real courage actually looks like. He was barely twenty years old, a Peking University student, when he became one of the most visible faces of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — standing up to one of the most powerful governments on earth at an age when most of us were still figuring out our majors. The Chinese government jailed him twice for it, and still he didn't fold. He eventually made his way to the United States, earned a doctorate at Harvard, and kept writing and teaching about democracy and human rights without apology. There's something quietly extraordinary about a person who pays that kind of price and keeps going anyway — no fame, no fanbase, just conviction.

Name (English)

Wang Dan

Name (Japanese)

王丹

Reading

おう・たん

Born

February 26, 1969 (age 57)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Rooster

Origin

Beijing, People's Republic of China

Occupation

human rights defender

University

Peking University

Awards & achievements

• 1989 Reebok Human Rights Award

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://www.wangdan1989.com/
• Xhttps://x.com/wangdan1989
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%8E%8B%E4%B8%B9

Tags

• human rights defender

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.