Published by: World Tibet Network Monday - May 12, 1997

PARIS, May 12 (Reuter) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin has said Beijing has

an unquestionable claim to Taiwan but that, as with Hong Kong, China's

recovery of the Nationalist-ruled island will take place peacefully.

"When it comes to the Chinese nation's basic interests, there is no

compromise: Taiwan is Chinese," Jiang told the French magazine Politique

Internationale in an interview carried on Monday by the daily Le Figaro.

Asked how Beijing would secure reunification, he said: "By inspiring

ourselves from the method of peaceful reunification used in Hong Kong: one

state, two systems."

Hong Kong, a British colony for more than 150 years, becomes a Special

Administrative Region of China at midnight on June 30. Beijing has pledged

the territory of 6.4 million people would keep its freewheeling capitalist

way of life intact for 50 years after the handover.

In the interview, published ahead of French President Jacques Chirac's

visit to Beijing starting on Wednesday, Jiang said relations with France,

soured in the early 1990s by sales of French jet fighters and frigates to

Taiwan, had recovered since Paris pledged in 1994 to end arms sales to

Taiwan.

He said Chirac's visit would give relations a new momentum in all fields.

Jiang, who also heads China's ruling Communist Party, rejected charges of

human rights violations in Tibet and accused the exiled Tibetan leader, the

Dalai Lama, of fomenting trouble in the Chinese-ruled Himalayan territory.

"He defends secession, with the backing and encouragement of some foreign

forces," Jiang said of the Nobel Peace Prize winner who visited France and

Washington last month.

"Not only does he clandestinely send supporters to Tibet to stir up trouble

and organise riots, but he travels around the world, begging international

aid with the vain hope of internationalising the Tibetan problem," Jiang

said.

"I'll tell you the truth: foreigners are welcome in Tibet... They can see

that Tibetans are an ethnic group among others and fully benefit from

China's economic advances," he said.

In an apparent reference to western criticism of the repression of

pro-democracy supporters after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, Jiang

said the West should not apply its own criteria in passing judgment on

China.

"Some western countries have a discriminatory trade policy towards us. But,

in the long run, such measures always harm those who start them," he said.

"Political leaders should have a higher vision rather than be caught in

short-sightedness," he said.

"One forgets too often that China is the biggest developing country on

earth. You must make the effort of understanding what this really means.

China is not a country as any other. It is China," he said.

"If China were to plunge into instability, if its economy went into a

crisis plunging the Chinese people into poverty, the whole world would be

affected. China's development is a guarantee of peace and prosperity for

our planet and everyone should welcome this," he said.

Jiang said that seeing China's economic growth as a danger was nonsense.

China, he said, needed a peaceful international environment to carry out

its reforms, modernisation and opening to the world, and improve its

people's living standards.

"If in the future China should become richer and stronger, that does not

mean it would be a threat. There again, the West must admit that its size

gives China a particular status," he said.