Focus:
Getting ready for the Florida Splendid China Protest demonstration on 12/27/97 to commemorate the 4th anniversary of the opening of the theme park
1. Accomplishments
2. Plans
3. Action List
a. Collecting letters/articles
4. Misc.
a. Letter to the Editor - No Compromise on a Free Tibet
b. WUNN (3) UIGHURS SMOULDER UNDER CHINA'S YOKE
c. NYT: Actor Plans Rally To Protest China
d. Taiwan supporters poke digital finger in China's eye
e. Statement by Representative Dawa Tsering, Office of Tibet, New York
f. REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN ADDRESS ON CHINA AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST
1. Accomplishments
slowly catching up on things
2. Plans
Plan for upcoming protest
Assimilate incoming data...
3. Action List
a. 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. Letter to the Editor - No Compromise on a Free Tibet
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Wednesday, September 24, 1997; Page A20
The Washington Post
The Post's Aug. 22 editorial "Rep. Wolf's Trip to Tibet" stating, "like their leader in exile, the Dalai Lama, most Tibetans are not seeking independence" is grossly incorrect. Most Tibetans are not willing to surrender their country to China, and the heart of the Tibetan struggle is to restore its independence.
More than 1.2 million Tibetans, (one-sixth of the population) died as a direct result of the Chinese occupation. Many are held in Chinese prisons because they will not accept Chinese rule. To suggest that most Tibetans do not want independence not only is a cruel misperception of Tibetan aspirations, it also demeans those who sacrificed their lives for Tibet.
Slogans and posters that Tibetans carry at demonstrations say: "China out of Tibet," "Tibet for Tibetans" and "Free Tibet Now." Come visit with us when President and Communist Party Leader Jiang Zemin is in Washington next month. We will be there to make our feelings known to him, and no one will hear us call out: "We want autonomy for Tibet."
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has indeed stated he wants "genuine self-rule," not independence. But most Tibetans in and outside the country continue to struggle for independence. This is not an act of dissension against His Holiness, who is leveraging His political authority to act in His interest to save Tibet. His concessions are not an admission of defeat, but rather an effort to persuade China to relent in its aggressive and brutal policies. However, Tibetans will continue to call for independence. Their right and heritage is at stake.
I am grateful to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) for his courage, and I am equally proud of those Tibetans who dared to speak with him at the risk of long and harsh prison sentence, or even death, if caught by the Chinese authorities.
I am also grateful to The Post for publishing Rep. Wolf's eyewitness report.
SONAM WANGDU, New York
b. WUNN (3) UIGHURS SMOULDER UNDER CHINA'S YOKE
09/04/97, The Guardian, London, by John McCarthy
They dispute the name of the land they seek to liberate, and their Chinese oppressors condemn them as "splittists". Trapped between farce and tragedy, exiled Uighur nationalist groups have lacked credibility.
But early this year, as Uighurs in China stepped up their popular guerrilla campaign against Beijing's rule in East Turkestan, the United National Revolutionary Front of East Turkestan and the Uighurstan Liberation Front shelved their differences and united. From their base in neighbouring Kazakhstan, they could help forge a coherent independence movement.
Inhabiting the mainly desert territory of Xinjiang - China's 660,000-square-mile "new dominion", 1,000 miles from the sea and periodically closed to foreigners - Uighurs have a degree of nominal autonomy from Beijing.
Though they are Muslims, fundamentalist Islam plays little part in their rhetoric of nationalism and social reform. They proudly liken their struggle to that of the Chechens and Afghans, small nations which threw off the yoke of big oppressors. They draw inspiration from their recently independent Turkic cousins, the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Uzbeks of former Soviet central Asia.
Many are turning to guns, grenades and home-made bombs for political ends.
What Uighurs want is freedom from China and an end to daily racial discrimination. They see the Chinese as colonists, settling ethnic Han peasants on their land and reserving the best jobs for migrants from eastern China.
Government incentives give skilled Han migrants salaries 50 per cent above those they earn at home. Meanwhile, more than one in four Uighurs is unemployed.
With Xinjiang emerging as the strategic key to its urgent search for energy, markets and influence in and beyond central Asia, Beijing can little afford Uighur unrest.
Impelled to open the region's long, tense frontier with Kazakhstan, China has found Xinjiang unstable as nationalist and pan-Turkic ideas, money and, some say, weapons percolate in.
In February the smouldering Uighur rebellion burst into flame when three young separatists were executed in Xinjiang's capital, Urumchi. Several hundred demonstrators took to the streets of Gulja, near the Kazakh border, demanding that Chinese colonists quit the region.
When the police turned water-cannon on them in freezing temperatures, the demonstration exploded into a two-day running battle.
Official figures put the death toll at 10. Independent reports say nearly 200 Uighurs and Chinese were killed in the country's worst ethnic violence in 10 years.
A smuggled-out film of the fighting shows bodies lying in pools of blood, one apparently bayonetted. Burning vehicles litter the streets.
Simultaneous uprisings in half a dozen large oasis towns and about 80 smaller settlements overstretched the 1 million Chinese troops in the volatile west of the region.
In the more remote towns, a heavy security presence still remains; elsewhere, China's slick propaganda machine ensured that evidence of conflict was quickly swept away. Even so, spent Kalashnikov rounds lie on Kashgar's streets.
The February revolt sparked increasing violence. Later that month Uighur separatists planted bombs on three Urumchi buses, killing two people.
Between March and May Uighurs claimed responsibility for a series of fatal bombings in Beijing. The revolutionary front says separatists have set fire to an oil refinery near Karamay and attacked several oil convoys.
Reports have also surfaced of a clandestine Uighur radio station uncovered by Chinese police and attacks on military depots and strategic rail and road links to the rest of China. A machine-gun and grenade attack which left 16 policemen dead in the tense south-western city of Khotan was also reported.
China has reacted with a series of "anti-splittist" crackdowns, arresting tens of thousands of Uighurs and executing hundreds.
Nine more were shot in late July. At least seven tons of explosives, 600 illegal firearms and 31,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as truckloads of separatist literature, have been seized.
Some Han settlers have begun to question whether the government's incentives are worth the risk of Uighur attacks. And for the first time since China's Communists absorbed the East Turkestan Republic under the Mao-Stalin deal of the 1950s, China's authoritarian grip on Xinjiang is slipping.
The chairman of Xinjiang's regional government, Abdulahat Abdurishit, reportedly said last year that "all methods are acceptable" to fight separatism - "penetration, propaganda, killing".
Bulldozers now level ancient bazaars, the focus for popular unrest and the commercial heart of historic Silk Road cities. Wide streets of anonymous white-tiled tower blocks are exposed to armoured vehicles, and ambush-points and alleys ruled by demonstrators are eradicated.
Despite the 6.5 million Han settlers who have colonised Xinjiang since 1950, China's veto in the Security Council prevents the United Nations from recognising China's rule there as colonial.
Meanwhile, countries are afraid of offending Asia's emerging superpower, allowing Beijing to persecute Uighurs and other minorities in its vast empire.
Tibetans have long drawn world attention, but have not taken up arms. Most Uighurs are not prepared to suffer Tibet's fate.
c.NYT: Actor Plans Rally To Protest China 24 October 1997 Filed at 5:18 a.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- While official Washington prepared for next week's state visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin, actor Richard Gere turned the spotlight of his latest film premiere onto President Clinton, asking him to stand firm against the Communist giant.
``We're not going to pretend this is a new, cuddly Communist Chinese government we have here. They haven't proven themselves yet,'' Gere said at a party late Wednesday following the premiere of ``Red Corner.'' In the film, which opens in theaters Oct. 31, Gere plays an American executive framed on murder charges in Beijing by corrupt officials.
An outspoken critic of China's human rights record and its control over Tibet, Gere planned a protest rally outside the White House next week plus his own ``State-less'' dinner, to coincide with the pomp and circumstance of the state dinner Clinton is hosting for Jiang.
``We've had a president who has been neither clear nor firm on China's human rights since the very beginning and that waffling ... with China has sent a message of weakness,'' the actor said.
Clinton has refused demands from human rights' activists and many religious leaders to condition China's ``Most Favored Nation'' trade status to improvements in human rights.
Gere's co-star, Bai Ling, said in quiet English that she hoped the film would focus international scrutiny on oppression in China, where her parents still live. Having left her country five years ago, the former Tiananmen Square protestor said she is now even more afraid to return after her role in ``Red Corner.''
``The Chinese people have suffered for so long and they're living in fear,'' she said. ``Somebody has to speak out. It's a great thing for the world to see China for what it is and demand change.''
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
d. Taiwan supporters poke digital finger in China's eye
By JACK R. PAYTON Times Diplomatic Editor
St. Petersburg Times, published October 21, 1997
WASHINGTON -- They aren't talking about it, at least not publicly, but a fair number of Chinese officials probably went berserk while sitting in front of their computer terminals the other day.
The reason for their discomfort involves Taiwan, and it's simple enough to understand when you know how touchy people in Beijing get when they're reminded that a lot of people wouldn't mind seeing Taiwan declare itself a sovereign nation independent of China.
And the Chinese got reminded of this in the most embarrassing of ways the other day on the Internet, that vast network of computers so central to international communications these days. If some of them went ballistic, it's no surprise.
But before getting into the details of what happened, it's useful to keep in mind that if there's any one thing that could trigger a war between the United States and China, it's the question of Taiwan's independence.
Briefly, Beijing claims that Taiwan, an island of 21-million people off its southeast coast, is an integral part of China and should be ruled by the Communist government on the mainland.
People in Taiwan see things differently. The ruling faction acknowledges that Taiwan is part of China, but says the legitimate government is the democratically elected one in Taiwan, not the dictatorial Communist regime in Beijing.
Lately, another increasingly popular political movement in Taiwan has been saying it's time to forget all this diplomatic hair-splitting, that it's time to declare independence from China and be done with it.
The United States, aware of how much trouble this would cause, is still trying to split the difference over Taiwan. It agrees that there's only one China and that both the mainland and Taiwan are part of it. But as to which side has the legitimate government, that's up to the parties concerned to decide, so long as they do it peacefully.
Even though this diplomatic double-talk has been the basis of U.S.-China relations for more than two decades, the issue is still so sensitive it's likely to be a central topic when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visits Washington next week.
Mainly, the two sides want to avoid a repeat of what happened last year when Beijing started firing ballistic missiles into Taiwan's waters to protest the island's democratic presidential elections. This rattled the White House so much that President Clinton felt obliged to dispatch a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group to the seas between China and Taiwan to calm things down.
To prepare the way for next week's visit, the first by a Chinese president in 12 years, Jiang and his advisers decided that some slick public relations were in order. As part of the PR campaign, Jiang granted a rare interview to the Washington Post, the newspaper of record in these parts. And the Post, as is the practice these days, put its story about the interview on the Internet as well as in the newspaper.
Now if you're familiar with the Internet, you know that many of its "pages" have advertising banners at the top, some of them blinking on and off like a Las Vegas casino marquee.
The Post's Jiang interview story had such an advertisement, and guess what it was selling -- that's right, Taiwan independence. It was an ad put in by a coalition of Taiwanese organizations and its message -- blinking on and off like a neon sign -- said, "A New Taiwan Says "No' To China."
Revealed in its entirety, the advertisement lambasted Chinese policies, called for Taiwanese independence and gave details about rallies being organized in Washington to protest the Chinese leader's visit. One of them, it said, would be attended by movie actor Richard Gere and held right in front of the White House as Clinton and Jiang toast each other at a state dinner.
If that didn't put a few Chinese officials in orbit, nothing will. Even so, officials at the Chinese Embassy here wouldn't talk about it. A representative at Taiwan's liaison office said his government had nothing to do with the ad but allowed as how it was mighty amusing just the same.
You could almost hear him straining not to laugh out loud.
A representative at the Washington Post explained that its computer automatically rotates the advertisements on Internet pages on a regular basis and that it was "just a coincidence" that the Taiwanese independence ad got put on the same Internet page with Jiang's interview.
Whatever the truth, the Taiwan ad was still there above the Jiang story the following day, blinking on and off like a neon sign.
Call it diplomatic brinkmanship or the cyberspace equivalent of a high school prank, the Taiwan ad and Jiang's visit to Washington are about deadly serious issues -- issues we'll be hearing a lot more about when the Chinese leader gets here next week.
e. Statement by Representative Dawa Tsering, Office of Tibet, New York
Statement by Representative Dawa Tsering, Representatives of H.H. the Dalai Lama for the Americas, based in Office of Tibet, New York.
President Jiang Should Lead China to the Future, Not to the Past Alleging Slavery Existed in Tibet Not an Answer to the Tibetan Problem.
We welcome the upcoming visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin to the United States and hope that his meeting with President Clinton will contribute to peace and stability in China, in the region and in Tibet.
President Jiang needs to use this historic opportunity of the visit to project the image of a China which is ready to enter the 21st century as a respected member of the comity of nations. This can only be achieved when China renounces its Chinese chauvinistic attitude towards Tibet. President Jiang's reference to Tibet before Chinese invasion as a "slave system" is a case in point.
No Tibetan claims that independent Tibet had a perfect society. But referring to the situation in Tibet as a "slave system" reveals an ignorance of the situation. Furthermore, by comparing Tibetan society before the Chinese invasion with the slavery that occurred in the United States, President Jiang shows a lack of understanding and sensitivity to the history of Black Americans. The situation in Tibet cannot be compared to the suffering that the African Americans endured.
Comparative history of the world at that point of time tells us that democratization started in Asia only in the recent past decades. Prior to this, most Asian countries, including China, were either under western colonialism or had traditional non-democratic government systems. In the case of Tibet, we had our own unique system of governance traditionally referred to as "blend of religion and politics."
Since the Forties of this century, countries in Asia began evolving leading to decolonialization and democratization. In Tibet, too, the Dalai Lama undertook measures to reform Tibetan society. Unfortunately, Chinese invasion and subsequent occupation thwarted his efforts.
After coming into exile, the Dalai Lama had the freedom to implement his reform measures among the Tibetans in diaspora. Today, Tibetan refugees enjoy a parliamentary democracy with a free and vibrant press.
Conditions in Tibet cannot be a justification for Chinese invasion and talking about the past situation of Tibet cannot solve its present problem.
Dawa Tsering
Representative
October 24, 1997
f. REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN ADDRESS ON CHINA AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST
Voice Of America
Washington, D.C.
2:50 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Ambassador Platt. I thank the Asia Society and the U.S.-China Education Foundation for bringing us together today. I thank Senator Baucus and Congressmen Dreier, Matsui, and Roemer for being here; Secretary Albright Ambassador Barshefsky, National Security Advisor Berger, the other distinguished officials from the State Department. And I thank especially the members of the diplomatic corps who are here, and the students. And especially let me thank two of my favorite people, Joe Duffy and Evelyn Lieberman, for the work of the Voice of America and the USIA, all that they do to promote the free flow of ideas around the world.
Next week, when President Jiang Zemin comes to Washington, it will be the first state visit by a Chinese leader to the United States for more than a decade. The visit gives us the opportunity and the responsibility to chart a course for the future that is more positive and more stable and, hopefully, more productive than our relations have been for the last few years.
China is a great country with a rich and proud history and a strong future.
It will, for good or ill, play a very large role in shaping the 21st century in which the children in this audience today, children all across our country, all across China, and indeed all across the world, will live.
At the dawn of the new century, China stands at a crossroads. The direction China takes toward cooperation or conflict will profoundly affect Asia, America, and the world for decades. The emergence of a China as a power that is stable, open, and non-aggressive, that embraces free markets, political pluralism, and the rule of law, that works with us to build a secure international order -- that kind of China, rather than a China turned inward and confrontational, is deeply in the interests of the American people.
Of course, China will choose its own destiny. Yet by working with China and expanding areas of cooperation, dealing forthrightly with our differences, we can advance fundamental American interests and values.
First, the United States has a profound interest in promoting a peaceful, prosperous, and stable world. Our task will be much easier if China is a part of that process -- not only playing by the rules of international behavior, but helping to write and enforce them.
China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Its support was crucial for peacekeeping efforts in Cambodia and building international mandates to reverse Iraq's aggression against Kuwait and restore democracy to Haiti. As a neighbor of India and Pakistan, China will influence whether these great democracies move toward responsible cooperation both with each other and with China.
From the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, China's need for a reliable and efficient supply of energy to fuel its growth can make it a force for stability in these strategically critical regions. Next week, President Jiang and I will discuss our visions of the future and the kind of strategic relationship we must have to promote cooperation, not conflict.
Second, the United States has a profound interest in peace and stability in Asia. Three times this century, Americans have fought and died in Asian wars -- 37,000 Americans still patrol the Cold War's last frontier, on the Korean DMZ. Territorial disputes that could flair in the crises affecting America require us to maintain a strong American security presence in Asia.
We want China to be a powerful force for security and cooperation there.
China has helped us convince North Korea to freeze and ultimately end its dangerous nuclear program. Just imagine how much more dangerous that volatile peninsula would be today if North Korea, reeling from food shortages, with a million soldiers encamped 27 miles from Seoul, had continued this nuclear program.
China also agreed to take part in the four-party peace talks that President Kim and I proposed with North Korea, the only realistic avenue to a lasting peace. And China is playing an increasingly constructive role in Southeast Asia by working with us and the members of ASEAN to advance our shared interests in economic and political security.
Next week I'll discuss with President Jiang the steps we can take together to advance the peace process in Korea. We'll look at ways to strengthen our military to military contacts, decreasing the chances of miscalculation and broadening America's contacts with the next generation of China's military leaders. And I will reiterate to President Jiang America's continuing support for our one China political, which has allowed democracy to flourish in Taiwan, and Taiwan's relationship with the PRC to grow more stable and prosper. The Taiwan question can only be settled by the Chinese themselves peacefully.
Third, the United States has a profound interest in keeping weapons of mass destruction and other sophisticated weapons out of unstable regions and away from rogue states and terrorists. In the 21st century, many of the threats to our security will come not from great power conflict, but from states that defy the international community and violent groups seeking to undermine peace, stability and democracy. China is already a nuclear power with increasingly sophisticated industrial and technological capabilities.
We need its help to prevent dangerous weapons from falling into the wrong hands.
For years, China stood outside the major international arms control regimes. Over the past decade, it has made important and welcome decisions to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, and to respect key provisions of the Missile Technology Control Regime. Last year at the United Nations, I was proud to be the first world leader to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. China's Foreign Minister was the second leader to do so.
China has lived up to its pledge not to assist unsafeguarded nuclear facilities in third countries, and it is developing a system of export controls to prevent the transfer or sale of technology for weapons of mass destruction.
But China still maintains some troubling weapons supply relationships. At the summit, I will discuss with President Jiang further steps we hope China will take to end or limit some of these supply relationships and to strengthen and broaden its export control system. And I will make the case to him that these steps are, first and foremost, in China's interest, because the spread of dangerous weapons and technology would increase instability near China's own borders.
Fourth, the United States has a profound interest in fighting drug-trafficking and international organized crime. Increasingly, smugglers and criminals are taking advantage of China's vast territory and its borders with 15 nations to move drugs and weapons, aliens and the proceeds of illegal activities from one point in Asia to another, or from Asia to Europe.
China and the United States already are cooperating closely on alien smuggling, and China has taken a tough line against narco trafficking, a threat to its children, as well as our own. Next week I will propose to President Jiang that our law enforcement communities intensify their efforts together.
Fifth, the United States has a profound interest in making global trade and investment as free, fair, and open as possible. Over the past five years, trade has produced more than one-third of America's economic growth. If we are to continue generating good jobs and higher incomes in our country, when we are just 4 percent of the world's population, we must continue to sell more to the other 96 percent. One of the best ways to do that is to bring China more fully into the world's trading system. With a quarter of the world's population and its fastest growing economy, China could and should be a magnet for our goods and services.
Even though American exports to China now are at an all-time high, so, too, is our trade deficit. In part, this is due to the strength of the American economy, and to the fact that many products we used to buy in other Asian countries now are manufactured in China. But clearly, an important part of the problem remains lack of access to China's markets.
We strongly support China's admission into the World Trade Organization. But in turn, China must dramatically improve access for foreign goods and services. We should be able to compete fully and fairly in China's marketplace, just as China competes in our own.
Tearing down trade barriers also is good for China, and for the growth of China's neighbors and, therefore, for the stability and future of Asia.
Next week, President Jiang and I will discuss steps China must take to join the WTO and assume its rightful place in the world economy.
Finally, the United States has a profound interest in ensuring that today's progress does not come at tomorrow's expense. Greenhouse gas emissions are leading to climate change. China is the fastest growing contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and we are the biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
Soon, however, China will overtake the United States and become the largest contributor. Already, pollution has made respiratory disease the number one health problem for China's people. Last March, when he visited China, Vice President Gore launched a joint forum with the Chinese on the environment and development so that we can work with China to pursue growth and protect the environment at the same time.
China has taken some important steps to deal with its need for more energy and cleaner air. Next week, President Jiang and I will talk about the next steps China can take to combat climate change. It is a global problem that must have a global solution that cannot come without China's participation, as well. We also will talk about what American companies and technology can do to support China in its efforts to reduce air pollution and increase clean energy production.
Progress in each of these areas will draw China into the institutions and arrangements that are setting the ground rules for the 21st century -- the security partnerships, the open trade arrangements, the arms control regime, the multinational coalitions against terrorism, crime and drugs, the commitments to preserve the environment and to uphold human rights.
This is our best hope, to secure our own interests and values and to advance China's in the historic transformation that began 25 years ago, when China reopened to the world.
As we all know, the transformation already has produced truly impressive results. Twenty-five years ago, China stood apart from and closed to the international community. Now, China is a member of more than 1,000 international organizations -- from the International Civil Aviation Organization to the International Fund for Agricultural Development. It has moved from the 22nd largest trading nation to the 11th. It is projected to become the second largest trader, after the United States, by 2020. And today, 40,000 young Chinese are studying here in the United States, with hundreds of thousands more living and learning in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
China's economic transformation has been even more radical. Market reforms have spurred more than two decades of unprecedented growth, and the decision at the recently ended 15th Party Congress to sell off most all of China's big, state-owned industries promises to keep China moving toward a market economy.
The number of people living in poverty has dropped from 250 million to 58 million, even as China's population has increased by nearly 350 million. Per capita income in the cities has jumped 550 percent in just the past decade.
As China has opened its economy, its people have enjoyed greater freedom of movement and choice of employment, better schools and housing. Today, most Chinese enjoy a higher standard of living than at any time in China's modern history. But as China has opened economically, political reform has lagged behind.
Frustration in the West turned into condemnation after the terrible events in Tiananmen Square. Now, nearly a decade later, one of the great questions before the community of democracies is how to pursue the broad and complex range of our interests with China while urging and supporting China to move politically as well as economically into the 21st century. The great question for China is how to preserve stability, promote growth, and increase its influence in the world, while making room for the debate and the dissent that are a part of the fabric of all truly free and vibrant societies. The answer to those questions must begin with an understanding of the crossroads China has reached.
As China discards its old economic order, the scope and sweep of change has rekindled historic fears of chaos and disintegration. In return, Chinese leaders have worked hard to mobilize support, legitimize power and hold the country together, which they see is essential to restoring the greatness of their nation and its rightful influence in the world. In the process, however, they have stifled political dissent to a degree and in ways that we believe are fundamentally wrong, even as freedom from want, freedom of movement, and local elections have increased.
This approach has caused problems within China and in its relationship to the United States. Chinese leaders believe it is necessary to hold the nation together, to keep it growing, to keep moving toward its destiny. But it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the closed political system in an ever more open economy and society.
China's economic growth has made it more and more dependent on the outside world for investment, markets, and energy. Last year it was the second largest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world. These linkages bring with them powerful forces for change. Computers and the Internet, fax machines and photo-copiers, modems and satellites all increase the exposure to people, ideas, and the world beyond China's borders. The effect is only just beginning to be felt.
Today more than a billion Chinese have access to television, up from just 10 million two decades ago. Satellite dishes dot the landscape. They receive dozens of outside channels, including Chinese language services of CNN, Star TV, and Worldnet. Talk radio is increasingly popular and relatively unregulated in China's 1,000 radio stations. And 70 percent of China's students regularly listen to the Voice of America.
China's 2,200 newspapers, up from just 42 three decades ago, and more than 7,000 magazines and journals are more open in content. A decade ago, there were 50,000 mobile phones in China; now there are more than 7 million. The Internet already has 150,000 accounts in China, with more than a million expected to be on line by the year 2000. The more ideas and information spread, the more people will expect to think for themselves, express their own opinions and participate. And the more that happens, the harder it will be for their government to stand in their way.
Indeed, greater openness is profoundly in China's own interest. If welcomed, it will speed economic growth, enhance the world influence of China and stabilize society. Without the full freedom to think, question, to create, China will be at a distinct disadvantage, competing with fully open societies in the Information Age where the greatest source of national wealth is what resides in the human mind.
China's creative potential is truly staggering. The largest population in the world is not yet among its top 15 patent powers. In an era where these human resources are what really matters, a country that holds its people back cannot achieve its full potential.
Our belief that, over time, growing interdependence would have a liberalizing effect in China does not mean in the meantime we should or we can ignore abuses in China of human rights or religious freedom. Nor does it mean that there is nothing we can do to speed the process of liberalization.
Americans share a fundamental conviction that people everywhere have the right to be treated with dignity, to give voice to their opinion, to choose their own leaders, to worship as they please. From Poland to South Africa, from Haiti to the Philippines, the democratic saga of the last decade proves that these are not American rights or Western rights or developed world rights, they are the birthrights of every human being enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Those who fight for human rights and against religious persecution, at the risk of their jobs, their freedom, even their lives, find strength through knowledge that they are not alone, that the community of democracies stands with them. The United States, therefore, must and will continue to stand up for human rights, to speak out against their abuse in China or anywhere else in the world. To do otherwise would run counter to everything we stand for as Americans. (Applause.)
Over the past year, our State Department's annual human rights report again pulled no punches on China. We cosponsored a resolution critical of China's human rights record in Geneva, even though many of our allies had abandoned the effort. We continue to speak against the arrest of dissidents, and for a resumed dialogue with the Dalai Lama, on behalf of the people and the distinct culture and unique identity of the people of Tibet -- not their political independence, but their uniqueness.
We established Radio Free Asia. We are working with Congress to expand its broadcast and to support civil society and the rule of law programs in China. We continue to pursue the problem of prison labor and we regularly raise human rights in all our high- level meetings with the Chinese.
We do this in the hope of a dialogue. And in dialogue we must also admit that we in America are not blameless in our social fabric -- our crime rate is too high, too many of our children are still killed with guns, too many of our streets are still riddled with drugs. We have things to learn from other societies as well, and problems we have to solve. And if we expect other people to listen to us about the problems they have, we must be prepared to listen to them about the problems we have.
This pragmatic policy of engagement, of expanding our areas of cooperation with China while confronting our differences openly and respectfully -- this is the best way to advance our fundamental interests and our values and to promote a more open and free China.
I know there are those who disagree. They insist that China's interests and America's are inexorably in conflict. They do not believe the Chinese system will continue to evolve in a way that elevates not only human material condition, but the human spirit. They, therefore, believe we should be working harder to contain or even to confront China before it becomes even stronger.
I believe this view is wrong. Isolation of China is unworkable, counterproductive, and potentially dangerous. Military, political, and economic measures to do such a thing would find little support among our allies around the world and, more importantly, even among Chinese themselves working for greater liberty. Isolation would encourage the Chinese to become hostile and to adopt policies of conflict with our own interests and values. It will eliminate, not facilitate, cooperation on weapons proliferation. It would hinder, not help, our efforts to foster stability in Asia. It would exacerbate, not ameliorate, the plight of dissidents. It would close off, not open up, one of the world's most important markets. It would make China less, not more, likely to play by the rules of international conduct and to be a part of an emerging international consensus.
As always, America must be prepared to live and flourish in a world in which we are at odds with China. But that is not the world we want. Our objective is not containment and conflict; it is cooperation. We will far better serve our interests and our principles if we work with a China that shares that objective with us. (Applause.)
Thirty years ago, President Richard Nixon, then a citizen campaigning for the job I now hold, called for a strategic change in our policy toward China. Taking the long view, he said, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations. There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.
Almost two decades ago, President Carter normalized relations with China, recognizing the wisdom of that statement. And over the past two and a half decades, as China has emerged from isolation, tensions with the West have decreased; cooperation has increased; prosperity has spread to more of China's people. The progress was a result of China's decision to play a more constructive role in the world and to open its economy. It was supported by a far-sighted America policy that made clear to China we welcome its emergence as a great nation.
Now, America must stay on that course of engagement. By working with China and making our differences clear where necessary, we can advance our interests and our values and China's historic transformation into a nation whose greatness is defined as much by its future as its past.
Change may not come as quickly as we would like, but, as our interests are long-term, so must our policies be. We have an opportunity to build a new century in which China takes its rightful place as a full and strong partner in the community of nations, working with the United States to advance peace and prosperity, freedom and security for both our people and for all the world. We have to take that chance.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 3:15 P.M. EDT
Bod Rangzen !
