International Herald Tribune, 18 July

Regarding "China's Economic Reforms Are Gradual but They're Working" (Opinion, July 3) by Pieter Bottelier:

Mr. Bottelier correctly asserts that economic reforms have transformed China, but the benefits hardly extend to China's minorities.

In a two-month trip through rural Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang Uygur, I found that the for-profit People's Liberation Army exerts a medieval force over its fiefdoms. Witness a Tibetan farming population often pressed into road gangs; riot troops with submachine guns guarding government installations from the Uygurs and Kazaks; truck drivers forced to transport military supplies free of charge, and so on. Little wonder that the concept of the rule of law seems most alien in China's borderlands.

Douglas Kremer, Zurich.