Yang Ge

4-5 Forum Issue 28 Yang Ge

"4-5 Forum" (or "April 5th Forum" by meaning was the first non-governmental funded periodical in Democracy Wall era. The first issue was published on Nov. 26, 1978. Mr. Xu Wenli, the founder of the magazine, literally physically self-published 17 issues of the periodical from 1978 to 1980 when it was forced closed by the government. Mr. Xu Wenli, the then editor-in-chief, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment as a result of running this magazine. Although all the members of this magazine editting group were unsalaried for their work, the team managed to maintain it a regularly released magazine. It was priced RMB0.30 at that time, which was really expensive considering ordinary workers lived on RMB17.00 monthly wages, Mr.. Xu Wenli had to take great effort to maintain the queues of readers trying to obtain a copy. "4-5 Forum" specialized on theoretical research and review on constructing democratic institutions and constitutionalism, while scrutinizing current events from perspective of rule of law. The editing team take every effort to contribute genuine insights and interpretations to the theoretcial formation of democracy and constituionalism in Chinese current cultural and political contexts. As a reward to our readers, the coming issue will enclose the photo of the cover of the first issue back on November 26, 1978.