San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, April 14, 1996
By Julie Chao (of the Examiner Staff)
It might adopt a sister city in China. Then it might immediately sever the relationship. That's if things go as planned.
The City Council will decided Tuesday whether Changde in Human province should become Berkeley's 14th sister city and second sister city in China. The city's Peace and Justice Commission, responding to a flood of complaints about China's poor human rights record, wants the council to establish the relationship, but suspend it right away.
The commission, a volunteer panel that oversees Berkeley's sister city programs and human rights issues, reached the recommendation after much soul-searching. The 15-member panel had initially voted to adopt the measure, but after the public outcry against China, decided instead to approve but disapprove.
"We do not want to insult the people of Changde, but we don't want to make it seem as though things are hunky-dory in China," said City Councilwoman Dona Spring, who said she would vote for the proposal and believes a majority of council members would go along.
The sister city proposal came from May Alice Rathbun, president of the informal Berkeley U.S./China Exchange Program. After going to China in 1984-1985 to teach English at Hunan Normal University in Changsha, she kept up contact with the school, sponsoring academic exchanges and hosting visiting delegations. Last October, she and Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean, along with 10 others, visited Changde.
"Over a 10-year period there were many activities. The whole point was to make it more formal," she said of the sister city proposal. She said Changde was chosen for its size (225,000 population) and proximity to Changsha, a larger industrial city.
Word of the plan drew immediate protest from groups supporting Tibetan causes. Many Tibetans living in exile have been calling for independence for their homeland since the Chinese army suppressed an uprising there in 1959.
"(We) think that (the sister city relationship) would be rewarding the government of China for its violation of human rights," said Glen Gilbert, executive director of the Berkeley-based International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet.
Gilbert said that isolation and sanctions by the world community is the way to deal with China, rather than the tactic of constructive engagement favored by groups like Rathbun's and also by the Clinton administration.
"Politically and philosophically I support sister cities as a way of helping people all over the world to get to know other people," said Commissioner Michael Sherman, who helped draft the proposal coming before the city council. "But there was a lot of anxiety in my mind about this whole thing."
The proposal also calls for a review of human rights in China every 12 months to decided if the sister city relationship with Changde can be taken off suspension.
What about Berkeley's other sister city in China, the Haidian District of Beijing? Asked if the Peace and Justice Commission planned to re-evaluate that relationship, Sherman said, "That thought hasn't occurred to us, but this might be something worth looking into."
