From: trinley@churchward.com (Jack Churchward)
Subject: CACCP Weekly 7/6/97 part 1 of 2
Citizens Against Communist Chinese Propaganda is a group of interested individuals devoted to the non-violent and legal removal of religious and minority exhibits from the Communist Chinese government owned and operated theme park known as Florida Splendid China in Kissimmee, Fla.
If you wish to be removed from this 'mailing list', please send us email, and we'll not trouble you again. On the other hand, if you know someone who wishes to be added, ask them to send their email address to trinley@churchward.com.
And as always, send in your thoughts and ideas as well.
Focus:
Getting ready for upcoming Florida Splendid China Protest demonstration on 07/13/97 to commemorate the second anniversary of the Grand Opening of ChinaTown.
1. Accomplishments
2. Plans
3. Action List
a. Florida Public School District Campaign !
b. Florida Pleasure Passport Campaign
c. Collecting letters/articles
4. Misc.
a. A Big Problem in China (submitted by Oyunbilig)
b. Corporate Trends Effecting Human Rights in Tibet and China, 1993-1997 A Case Study
c. Hundreds reportedly denounced to police in troubled Chinese province.
Part 2 of 2
d. Argument erupts at Bhadko lecture: Chinese graduate students denouce refugee monk as 'liar'
e. DEPARTMENT OF STATE'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ABROAD HOLDS SECOND MEETING
f. From WUNN July 1, 1997
g. Separatists 'should be wiped out', South China Morning Post
1. Accomplishments
Wrote letters
2. Plans
Assimilate incoming data...
3. Action List
a. Florida Public School District Campaign !
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1730/fpsd.html
We are putting together a package to send to the green targets and focus on them to start our campaign. Please send in your comments and suggestions.
b. Florida Pleasure Passport Campaign
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1730/fpp1.html
The business arrangement between AAA, Splendid China, Bok Tower, Cypress Gardens, and Fantasy of Flight is known as 'Florida Pleasure Passport'.
We have suggested letters to these establishments to ask them to stop supporting FSC. Your letters are still coming in as well as the responses from the particulars named above (minus FSC).
Addresses for mailing letters
Bok Tower Gardens
1151 Tower Boulevard
Lake Wales, Florida 33853
Cypress Gardens
PO Box 1
Cypress Gardens, Florida
Fantasy of Flight
PO Box 1200
Polk City, Florida 33868-9417
American Automobile Association
Florida/Louisiana/Missippi AAA
1000 AAA Drive,
Heathrow, Florida, 32746-5080
Phone: 407-444-4000
*****
c. Collecting letters/articles
Please send copies of your letters to the editors, school board members, etc., so that they can be included in our web-pages. Let your voice be heard. Thanks to those who have mailed your letters in.
Any articles mentioning Splendid China are welcome also, we prefer to re-print in it's entirety so we can't be blamed for an 'out-of-context' quotations.
4. Misc.
a. A Big Problem in China (submitted by Oyunbilig)
BEIJING , June 20 (Kyodo) - By: Geoffrey Murray The misery brought by gale-blown sand for months each year try the patience of the inhabitants of China's north and northwest regions.
As the wind from Siberia begins howling over the cities and villages, it picks up sand from the intervening deserts, and soon, every inch of living space is filled with dirt. Even Beijing is not immune, as the capital discovered during a blinding dust storm on June 19.
On May 5, 1993, a catastrophic sandstorm swept over the region, turning day into night for three hours. Large parts of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Gansu Province, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia suffered heavily.
The storm took more than 100 lives and destroyed some 370,000 hectares of farmland, resulting in economic loss of as much as 543 million yuan.
On May 16, 1995, another disastrous sandstorm raided Yinchuan, the capital city of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
Traffic ground to a halt as visibility was reduced to 1 meter. Windows were smashed and power lines were snapped.
All factories had to suspend production and a great amount of grain was destroyed.
According to environmental experts, the vast region covering Gansu Province, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia suffered more natural disasters from sandstorms in the past 50 years than the period from the 3rd century BC to 13th century AD.
China is one of the countries in the world most prone to desertification.
Geographically, its arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas lie well inland.
According to Wang Zhibao, vice minister of forestry, a recent ministry survey found that 1.7 million square kilometers, or 17.6% of China's territory, is now desert-affected. The situation is worse if the standard and definition of desertification made by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification is used.
By this criteria, the affected area grows to 2.622 million square km, accounting for 27.3% of the territory. About 400 million people live in these areas.
The advance of the desert is highly significant in the context of the current debate over whether China will be able to feed its soaring population in the 21st Century.
The Chinese government repeatedly describes the country as having ''22% of the world's population, but only 7% of its arable land.'' And while the latter is shrinking due to desert encroachment, the former continues to expand -- 1.3 billion people today and possibly 1.6 billion by the middle of the next century, despite a tough birth control policy.
This has led some doomsday visionaries in the West to foresee a situation where a desperately hungry China buys up all the world's food reserves, bidding up prices and causing severe shortages elsewhere.
The Beijing government insists this won't happen. Government officials and scientists repeatedly trot out numerous figures to demonstrate that China still has great untapped potential to continue feeding itself by bringing more land into play and through better crop development. Yet for every optimistic forecast, there is a pessimistic one as well.
Despite considerable scientific achievements and large investment of cash and labor in the last 20 years to reclaim lost land by reforestation, dune fixation and sand stabilization through biotechnology, China says every year, another 2,460 square km of good arable land on average becomes wilderness.
Goa Shangwu, a leading expert in combating desertification with the Chinese Academy of Forestry, says blind reclamation and cultivation, over-grazing of grasslands, excessive collection of firewood and undue cutting down of forests, unplanned mining, and irrational utilization of water resources are the major human factors resulting in continuous land deterioration.
Inner Mongolia, for example, is short of water resources and most of the land there is unsuitable for farming. But the local government encouraged more land to be brought under cultivation by giving subsidies in the 1960s and 1970s.
Consequently, the land opened up soon had to be abandoned because of poor irrigation, resulting in serious desertification.
The Tarim River is the longest inland river in China, running for 2,200 km in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The dense poplar forests growing on its banks provides a valuable oasis totaling 198,000 square km.
Unfortunately, blind cultivation and lumber activity on its upper reaches since the 1960s have caused large-scale drying up of the lower reaches.
As a result, the river has shortened by 300 km in the past three decades and the eco-environment in the valley has been swiftly deteriorating.
In the past few years alone, the Kuruk Desert has moved 60 km, leaving some sections of the river valley just 2 km away from the Taklamakan Desert, the largest drifting desert in the world. Environmental experts warn the Tarim River will disappear completely in a short time if desertification is allowed to continue unchecked.
But there are bright spots. Wushen Country lying in the Maowusu Desert in Inner Mongolia used to be a poor area. Locals would dig up every bush and even grass root found on the barren land to either eat or sell. Their only worry was whether or not the dunes would move onto their doorstep while they slept and prevent the door from opening in the morning.
Now, Wushen is famous for growing various fruits, and solar and wind energy are widely used for generating household power.
All across the barren northwest, experiments in creating such oases are beginning to sprout, some funded by Japanese government aid and involving technical assistance from Japanese scientist volunteers.
Yet the struggle to beat the deserts back is as vast as the deserts themselves.
AP-NY-06-19-97 2258EDT
* Comment from Oyunbilig:
I don't believe the changes in Wushen (Uushin, my hometown, the desert mentioned is called Muu-us, bad-water) is so great. Uushin does grow fruits, but not the Mongols grow it. And we still have enough winds to make power. The lands the Chinese grow fruits today will turn into deserts soon, since I have the first-hand experiences in my childhood time. All of you come from Inner Mongolia should still remember the most famous female Mongol figure during the Cultural Revolution, - Boroldai. She did grow a few bushes of Shavag (a kind of bush in Ordos) and Ud, even Shuitong (? in Mongol and English) around the township buildings of the Uushinjuu Sumu, but except that, the rest is still the endless of Muu-Us, Bad-Water. I had planted hundreds of trees when I was in school in Toli Sumu. But I am not sure how many have grown up as a real tree. The dozens of old Ud Mod beside my home, on which I really enjoyed playing with the Shaajagai-iin uur (Shaajagai---a dove-size black bird, with bright white on its belly, uur
---nest ) when I was a kid were all disappeared under the Mankh (desert) when I last visit there on 1994.
Oyunbilig
b. Corporate Trends Effecting Human Rights in Tibet and China, 1993-1997
A Case Study
Milarepa Fund
Working Paper E1997-1
June 6, 1997
Executive Summary
In 1993, President Clinton vowed to link China's Most Favored Nation trading status (MFN) to significant human rights improvements in China and Tibet, only to de-link a year later. Since then, human rights abuses in China and Tibet have only risen.
Since 1994, the overall business effort for China has been estimated as high as tens of millions of dollars per year, with companies like Boeing, Motorola, GE, and GM leading the way in local initiatives and DC lobby-shops. These companies, motivated by the promise of Chinese contracts, have muzzled US public concern over human rights abuses in Tibet and China, and directly effected the human rights climate there.
The actions of The Boeing Company and Nike are indicative of the current trend in US corporate behavior in China and the influence of foreign policy. The willingness of corporations such as Holiday Inn Worldwide to enter into cooperative relationships with the Chinese government in Tibet also illuminates an alarming policy in that region.
In the same time period, companies like Todd Oldham indicate a small but steadily growing trend in small to mid-cap businesses making decisions to positively effect human rights conditions in Tibet and China. Levi Strauss has even taken the initiative to pull its operations out of China due to human rights conditions. Many, such as Reebok, have created human rights guidelines, though recent research indicates they are not enforced.
Transnational corporations bear great responsibility to all of the countries they are operating in. Large-scale lobbying efforts aimed at protecting unhindered trading relations with China have not and will not curb human rights abuses in Tibet and China. Similarly, sanctions and isolationist policies against China will do little to further quality of life there. Alternatives combining trade and human rights objectives in corporate operations and political lobbying remain largely untried.
Introduction
The issue of Most Favored Nation Status for China has been debated annually since the Tiannemen Square massacre of 1989. In 1993, President Clinton vowed to link China's Most Favored Nation trading status (MFN) to significant human rights improvements in China and Tibet , only to de-link a year later. With human rights no longer a criteria for determining trade with China, Clinton and supporters of MFN hoped that through an economic-driven 'comprehensive engagement' the U.S. would be in a better position to influence their human rights policies.
Given new support from Christian groups and concern over presidential campaign contributions, this year's congressional debate promises to be the most heated yet, as corporate lobbying on behalf of the Chinese government and media attention is at an all-time high. The proponents of the continuation of MFN-status believe a policy of 'comprehensive engagement' that emphasizes an economic relationship with China promises the best results for trade and human rights in China, while those against seek a leverage to insure protection of internationally recognized human rights.
Since 1993, corporate lobbying on behalf of the Chinese government, in regards particularly to Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status, has mushroomed. The overall business effort for China has been estimated as high as tens of millions of dollars per year. In the last two years, a coordinated local lobbying initiative has been led by companies such as Boeing, Motorola, GE, and GM , and at least four major business groups in DC are lobbying for unrestricted U.S.-China Trade .
This kind of lobbying, motivated by promise of Chinese contracts, has recently muzzled US concern over human rights abuses in Tibet and China, and directly effected the human rights climate there. Directly following President Clinton's 1994 de-linking of human rights and trade, crack-downs in Tibet occurred almost immediately . Two years later, the 1996 State Department Report on Human Rights revealed that human rights abuses in China have consistently risen. The report also indicated that government control over religious and other fundamental rights have intensified.
With lobbying and trade, corporations are playing an active role in effecting human rights in China and Tibet. Unfortunately, these have largely been negative effects. This report examines the words and deeds of U.S. corporations in current and past debates over MFN, as well as on the ground in China and Tibet. Because the number of U.S. companies now in China range well into the thousands, we have chosen case studies that are indicative of current trends or corporations that are leaders in their area.
Case Studies
The following condensed case studies identify common trends in three key areas: U.S. lobbying, tourism in Tibet, and garment industries. In the time period studied, these areas have taken precedence in media and consumer campaigns. Other pressing areas, such as mineral extraction, prison labor, and environmental hazards, are addressed in reports forthcoming from several different organizations.
Lobbying Efforts
For years, corporations such as Boeing, Nike, TRW, Allied Signal, Motorola, ConAgra, Rockwell, Dresser, Eastman Chemical, GM, UTC, Ford, AIG, AMP and American Standard, have assumed responsibility for assuring 'pro-MFN' votes from representatives in their regions. For example, at the Public Affairs Council's 1996 "National Grassroots Conference," Dresser and Motorola alone claimed credit for delivering 29 of the state's 31 congressional 'pro-MFN' votes in Texas, while Boeing delivered 8 of 9 in Washington.
The Boeing Company. Boeing has been at the forefront of lobbying efforts to de-link human rights and trade, and to renew MFN status for China. In 1994, 14% of Boeing's business was with China and Boeing currently controls over 61% of the foreign market there. In its campaign efforts to renew China's MFN status, Boeing actively pursued permanent MFN for China, as well as entrance to the World Trade Organization and International Labor Organization, by involving itself in various trade associations (NAM, USCBC and the Chamber of Commerce). Boeing was also a leader in organizing key congressional districts mentioned above, playing on American workers' fears of losing jobs, even though technology transfer set in contracts will not bring long-term job protection. Boeing currently sources from six Chinese government owned factories. The airplane manufacturer was one of ten corporations that jointly wrote to President Clinton on May 11, 1994, urging him to "to pursue an approach towards China which does not put at
risk the commercial relationship in order to advance other policy interests," as part of the lobbying push convincing Clinton to de-link human rights and trade. Other corporations include Chrysler, Digital, Kodak, General Electric, Honeywell, Motorola, TRW, and AT&T. It would seem that Boeing's massive lobbying has paid off. On Vice President Al Gore's March 1997 visit to Beijing, he presided over a $685 million contract signing with Boeing and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. However, only 2 months later, in a move that has typified China's eco-political strategy, China announced a $1.5 billion dollar contract with French airplane manufacturer, Airbus Industrie. French President Jacques Chirac and Zemin presided over the announcement ceremony, a month after France helped silence a U.N. resolution that would have censured China's human rights records . At their annual meeting on April 28, 1997, Boeing shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a resolution that would have required the company to adopt human rights c
riteria for their business with China.
Tourism in Tibet
Foreign joint ventures in Tibet of this nature are particularly threatening given the Chinese government's five year plan, which stresses the need to "open the tourist market, to gradually set up tourist agencies abroad, to do publicity and promotion work, and to ensure the steady development of tourist sources." The kind of tourism they endorse is exemplified below.
Holiday Inn Worldwide. A subsidiary of Bass, PLC, the Holiday Inn entered into a direct partnership with the Chinese government in 1986 and opened a hotel in Lhasa, the capitol city of Tibet. The 'Lhasa Hotel' is run jointly by the Holiday Inn and a division of the Chinese government called the Tibet Tourism Corporation. The Holiday Inn accounts for 75 percent of all foreign money coming into Tibet. It was built with Chinese labor, often billets Chinese troops, and is used by security forces to monitor the activities of tourists. There is evidence suggesting that phones and faxes at the 'Lhasa Hotel' are tapped by the Chinese government. Holiday Inn tour guides are directed to confiscate cameras from tourists, and to lead them away from Tibetan demonstrations. Holiday Inn's travel brochures describe Tibet as a "magical world where the local people talk proudly of their heritage and where relics of their ancient past abound."
Garment Industries
This sector has received the most scrutiny in recent years due to several consumer boycott campaigns regarding corporate irresponsibility and sweatshops. Many companies have voluntarily drafted codes of conduct or country codes, though very few have pulled out of China or Tibet according to their codes. Codes and standards are often not enforced, as revealed most recently in a report that documented how Reebok has not met its own production standards in China.
Nike. Nike is the leader in shoe production and its production in Asia is similar to most other major shoe companies. In 1987 Nike moved a large number of its shoe manufacturing from South Korea and Taiwan to China and Indonesia. Democratic reform in both S. Korea and Taiwan between 1987 and 1991, caused wages in South Korea to triple. These democratic reforms permitted workers to organize and to request wage increases for the first time. That same year Nike relocated to China and Indonesia, the two governments that were ranked by an article in Asian Wall Street Journal as the two worst for foreign investors, due to rampant corruption. From 1990 to 1994 the number of training shoes imported from China to the UK alone (in thousands of pounds) has increased by thirty times. Nike dictates the price per shoe and even the cost of operation to its subcontractors forcing them to set high quotas for their workers and to pay low wages. A British NGO estimates that the labor cost involved in making one pair of Nike sh
oes is only $3 in Vietnam, yet it may sell for $100 in the U.S. Nike is one among may who have lobbied heavily for the renewal of China's Most Favored Nation Status.
Levi Strauss. In 1991, Levi Strauss & Co., the largest privately-held US clothing manufacturer and retailer, set up a management task force called the Sourcing Guidelines Working Group to draw up Global Sourcing Guidelines based on reviews of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These guidelines would dictate their relationships with overseas producers. In accordance with these guidelines - despite China's potential to become one of the largest markets for blue jeans - Levi Strauss began to phase out of its use of contractors' there in 1993, and to no longer make direct investments there "unless there is a substantial improvement in human rights conditions in the PRC." China - and Burma a year earlier - had violated Levi's 'Guidelines for Country Selection,' that demand that human rights, health and safety, political and social stability, be investigated and approved in nations in which Levi's is operating.
Todd Oldham. Fashion designer Todd Oldham discovered that a portion of his sweaters were being manufactured in China. After long discussions with the Chinese-American owner of the manufacturing plant, they both agreed that Todd Oldham could not continue to manufacture in China. In 1996, Todd Oldham pulled the manufacture of his sweaters out of China and brought them to the United States. Oldham has also discontinued using any fabrics from China, choosing instead to support countries with more conscionable human rights records. Todd Oldham is a member of the Tibetan Freedom Coalition and the Hang Tag Campaign, a coalition of over thirty business leaders committed to promoting consumer responsibility and awareness of abusive working conditions in China.
Conclusion
By and large, lobbying done by transnational corporations to protect trade with China are often not for the good of American workers, particularly given large scale technology tranfer and the nature of joint venture contracts. The de-linking of human rights and trade has left the United States with no leverage to insist upon the protection of Tibet's religious and cultural heritage, and has in fact allowed human rights abuses to worsen.
Trade and human rights in China can go hand in hand, though U.S. foreign policy has moved primarilly in the extremes. The diplomatic fear of communicating an isolationist policy to China is a real one. Any attempt to discuss, in any forum, the efforts of the Tibetan government in exile or human rights abuses, is met by the Chinese government's accusations of meddling in internal affairs. Yet, 'comprehensive engagement' has proved itself to be a failed experiment. However amiable diplomatic relations remain between the US and China as a result of that policy, there is little if any incentive for China to adopt the economic, social and humanitarian standards of conduct accepted internationally.
There have been attempts to use American economic leverage in ways other than MFN, including tracing of Peoples Liberation Army goods and prison labor-made products. Continued alternatives must be sought as we address human rights and trade together. Places where common ground may lie are: Chinese rule of law and stronger corporate guidelines with both internal and external auditing and accountability.
Though it is difficult to locate companies who have begun to make business decisions that positively effect human rights conditions in Tibet and China, they do exist. Todd Oldham and Levi Strauss demonstrate the possibilities of operating effectively and ethically in China. Consumers are beginning to insist upon human rights standards more and more. As companies begin to enforce those standards, either out of conscience or insistence from consumers, change will begin to take place, not only in overseas factories, but in American buying patterns as well.
c. Hundreds reportedly denounced to police in troubled Chinese province
Copyright =A9 1997 Nando.net
Copyright =A9 1997 Agence France-Presse
BEIJING (June 28, 1997 02:38 a.m. EDT) - Hundreds of people in the troubled northwest region of Xinjiang have been turned in to the authorities as Chinese security forces clamp down on Moslem separatist unrest, newspapers
reported Saturday.
"There have been more than 1,000 denounciations recorded recently from just the villages of Urumqi, Kotan and Aksou," a public security officials said in the Xinjiang Daily.
"Some people have even handed over the names of family members implicated in criminal acts" after attending meetings to inflame the population with ideas of "separatism" and "terrorism," he added.
Some of the so-called terrorists have said they wanted to "atone for their crimes" and have handed over information allowing the authorities to smash "organisations and illegal groups."
"Because of the services given, the security authorities have treated (the repentants) with indulgence and have taken measures to ensure they are protected," the Xinjiang Daily added.
Last week authorities seized 11 tonnes of explosives in the region which has been rocked by a series of attacks and clashes between ethnic Chinese and Moslem-majority Uighurs.
The unrest left 10 people dead, according to official figures, and more than 100 according to separatists. The region borders on some of the states of the former Soviet Union.
Police sweeps have focused on five cities, including the regional capital Urumqi, Kashgar, Aksou, Kotan and Yining, the paper added.
