Kai Chen, possibly the best forward in China’s national basketball team in the late 1970s, quit the team at the peak of his career to break free of the Chinese authorities’ manipulation. However, his love for basketball never diminished.
In 1981, after his marriage in Beijing to Susan, an American exchange student, Chen moved to Los Angeles. He had yearned to visit the U.S. ever since he had played against the American team in Mexico in the summer of 1975.
“Before I knew there was a country called America, America had already saved me, because America invented basketball. So I am always grateful to America. My connection to America started with basketball,” he said.
He graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles with a bachelor in Political Science and published an autobiography about his life in China, “One in a Billion—Journey Toward Freedom”
“I really wanted to rethink and reinterpret the entire struggle I went through in China,” said Chen, now a real estate investor with two grown daughters.
In August 2007, Chen launched the Global Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement in Taipei, Taiwan, to “express the true spirit of the Olympics—the spirit of freedom.” Between then and the start of the Beijing Games a year later, he ran in ten cities on four continents, including New York, Berlin, Sydney, and Vancouver.
“The Chinese regime wanted to use the Beijing Olympics to legitimize themselves. The Chinese torch was an offensive by the regime onto the world’s conscience, basically to confuse the world and to intimidate the world. And at the same time to unite Chinese nationalists around the world, which is what they did.”
After reaching the stadium in Berlin where Hitler held his 1936 Olympics, Chen ran six miles from there to the Berlin Wall to symbolize freedom from tyranny.
When the Chinese regime crumbles just like that of East Germany, said Chen, he hopes a “Chinese Holocaust Memorial” can be built to remember those who have been “persecuted and murdered” by the regime, just like the one to commemorate the Jews beside the stadium in Berlin.
“I want all people in the world to know: One day, human beings will eventually progress from despotism and tyranny to reach freedom. When that day comes, I will go back to a free China and also run a freedom run. I believe that day will come—and it will come soon.”
In the run-up to the Beijing Games, Chen also took part in the Human Rights Torch Relay, a global grassroots campaign that began in Athens and covered more than150 cities.
Chen has now set his sights on Mao’s Kitchen, a restaurant with locations in Venice and in Los Angeles. Mao’s Kitchen sells T-shirts with Mao’s image and inside the restaurant symbols of the Cultural Revolution, a flag of the red guards and slogans such as “Down with Americans” are displayed.
On December 26, the anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birthday, Chen has planned a protest against Mao’s Kitchen.
“I think it’s a very important issue to be addressed, because I think Mao’s image in China now is what the Chinese communist regime depends upon to survive. They think Mao’s image represents power—the power to kill, the power to do anything the regime wants.”
Chen said that while the Holocaust has been well documented and the Nazi regime discredited, the “many atrocities” committed since the communist regime took power in China are not widely known in the world.
“Land Reform, the Anti-Rightist movement, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the first Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1976, and the second Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.... These atrocities and crimes, which led to millions upon millions of lives lost, have never been fully documented.”
The regime’s ongoing crimes today include the persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong and the illicit harvesting of their organs, the imprisonment and torturing of Christians and the suppression and killing of Tibetan Buddhists, Chen said.
“But the worst harm the Chinese communist regime has done to human beings was not physical, but moral and spiritual.”
Chen said he will never stop striving to make a difference with his abilities and talents. He hopes to inspire people with the sense of freedom and conscience that he has come to understand through his own experiences.
“I hope people will never give up their struggle for freedom, will never give up their yearning for a better future. Pursue your own dream with courage, and don’t be afraid of paying the necessary price. You will not be disappointed when you have achieved your dream.”
Read Part I here: Lighting the Path to Freedom: An Athlete Runs for Human Rights
