China’s oldest dissident, as far as is known, is Zhou Youguang, who turned 109 in January 2015, a revered linguist known as ‘the father of Pinyin’, the system for transliterating Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet. In an interview on his birthday he said that ‘China needs to take the path of democracy. I have always believed that.’ He continues to be active and to write, and his works continue to be censored.
