Monster Media 1994 #2/Monster Media No. 2 (Monster Media)(1994).ISO/magazine/wtn_0594.zip/WTN-0529.NWS

Text File | 1994-06-06 | 41KB | 751 lines

------------------------   World Tibet Network News   ----------------------
   Published by:     The Canada-Tibet Committee
   Editorial Board:  Brian Given <[e-mail]>
                     Nima Dorjee <[e-mail]>
                     Conrad Richter <[e-mail]>
                     Tseten Samdup <[e-mail]>
   Submissions and subscriptions to:
                     [e-mail]
                     or fax to: [phone]  (U.K.)
   Send us your comments, announcements, news or items for discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ISSUE ID WTN 94/05/29  03:20 GMT                Compiled by: Nima Dorjee
=========================================================================
1. CANADA IN A QUANDARY OVER TIANANMEN SQUARE
2. CLINTON: NO PLAN TO FIRE CHRISTOPHER OR LAKE
3. BAN OF CHINESE GUNS STRIKES AT SOURCE OF U.S. IMPORTS
4. Analysis: Living with China - Warts and All
=========================================================================
All articles in this edition forwarded by Dan Hodel <[e-mail]>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. CANADA IN A QUANDARY OVER TIANANMEN SQUARE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Anne Swardson
Source: The Washington Post

May 27, 1994 TORONTO,  -- The five-year anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square
massacre finds Canada in a quandary.

The federal government is trying to figure out what to do with a
residue of Tiananmen: 4,500 Chinese who sought asylum here after
the uprising but were denied status as refugees. They have held on
here for nearly five years, and now the government has said it
will decide their fate next month.

They remain because Ottawa has an official policy of not deporting
anyone but criminals back to China -- the only country for which
Canada has such a policy.  But Immigration Minister Sergio Marchi
has said that limbo must end.

Lin Xiaoping awaits the coming decision with trepidation. She left
Shanghai in March 1990, after police questioned her for carrying
videotapes of the uprising. She arrived in Canada via Bolivia.
Today, she is the proprietor of a restaurant in one of multiethnic
Toronto's five Chinatowns.

Lin's application for refugee status was denied, she said, because
officials did not believe her. She says her role here as president
of the Mainland Chinese Refugees Organization would single her out
were she forced to return to China.

''I hope the Canadian government will let me stay on compassionate
grounds,'' said Lin, 46. ''I was not directly involved (in the
Tiananmen uprising), but I did show my sympathy and agreement with
the students. Here, I fight for (the refugees') interests and
benefits. My activities here might be something the Chinese
government would not be happy with.''

The debate over the refugees comes at an important time in
Canadian-Chinese relations. Prime Minister Jean Chretien is to
travel to China this fall to promote trade.

More than 100,000 Chinese immigrants are admitted to Canada every
year. Most come from Hong Kong or Taiwan, but some 30,000 mainland
Chinese have gained resident status here since January 1990.

Until recently, Canada was known as a relatively easy country in
which to gain refugee designation. The first wave of
post-Tiananmen refugees -- some of whom were already here as
students -- overwhelmingly had their applications to stay
accepted, refugee lawyers say. But later arrivals had a harder
time persuading adjudicators they were not merely seekers of
economic opportunity.

''I think they are real refugees by (Geneva) convention
criteria,'' said Schiller Wang, a reporter for the Toronto-based
Chinese-language newspaper World Journal Daily News. ''It's a big
problem from a cultural standpoint. Some Chinese refugee claimants
don't understand the question the judge is asking, and the
interpreter is not allowed to explain.''

Some of the rejected refugees have held off buying houses or
establishing roots, waiting until their status becomes clearer.
Although they are considered legal residents, their conditional
status makes it difficult to find legitimate jobs or enroll in
welfare programs. Even those with capital are reluctant to start
businesses for fear they may have to sell quickly.

''It's killing for them because they are go-getters,'' said
Montreal refugee lawyer Richard Kurland. ''I've had grown men and
women crying in my office because they are so frustrated. They
can't go back because they'd go right to jail, but they can't get
permanent status here.''

Marchi has ruled out a blanket amnesty for the affected Chinese,
although he may propose establishing a special process by which
they could apply for legal-immigrant status. They would have to
show, for instance, that they can function in Canada's economy
rather than living on its broad social assistance.

Even within the Chinese community, some admit that not all who
seek to remain here are true refugees. But there is general
agreement that their future should be settled one way or another.

''If the government thinks they are not refugees, send them back.
If the government thinks that would be inhuman, let them stay,''
said Tian Guang, general adviser to the refugees' organization.
''You cannot keep people in limbo for four or five years. These
people have been exhausted, physically, psychologically and
emotionally.''
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. CLINTON: NO PLAN TO FIRE CHRISTOPHER OR LAKE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY JACK NELSON AND DOYLE MCMANUS
Los Angeles Times

May 27, 1994  WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, concerned by a loss of public
confidence in his leadership on foreign policy, said Friday that
he has consulted widely but has rejected recommendations that he
replace Secretary of State Warren Christopher and White House
national security adviser Anthony Lake.

Administration officials had told the Los Angeles Times that
Clinton was considering a major shake-up of his foreign policy
team by the end of the year.  But Clinton, in a telephone
interview late Friday, said that the root of the problem is
communicating his foreign policy to the American people. And that,
he said, is not the responsibility of Christopher or Lake.

The president said that he has talked with ''a huge number'' of
people about his foreign policy problems, perhaps more than 100,
and that he could understand how some of them might have drawn an
inference from the conversations that he planned to change his
foreign policy team.

Clinton has come under criticism from some leading Democrats as
well as Republicans for apparent inconsistencies in foreign
policy. Most recently, he was faulted for his decision after weeks
of semipublic deliberations to renew China's most-favored-nation
trade status, despite the Beijing regime's failure to meet human
rights conditions that he had set forth last year.

The president conceded Friday that he had made mistakes in the way
he has articulated his foreign policy and that he needs to do a
better job of that.  But on most major policy issues, he said, he
believes the administration has been on sound footing.

His consultations inside and outside the administration, he said,
was about policy on Bosnia, Haiti and -- most recently -- on
China's trade privileges in the United States.  The interview was
hastily arranged by White House counselor David Gergen, who was
concerned about comments that other senior adminstration officials
had made to The Times. At times, Clinton sounded frustrated by
what he called the ''relentless criticism'' of his foreign policy.
''I'm doing the best I can with some fairly intractable
problems,'' he said.

Two senior administration officials had said earlier that
Christopher and Lake probably would be replaced by the end of this
year or early in 1995. Several other officials in the State
Department and National Security Council had said that they had no
specific knowledge of plans to replace their bosses but that the
expectation was spreading that either Christopher or Lake -- or
both -- would be out of office by the end of the year.

''It's a natural response, when you're taking a beating, to think
about what you can change,'' one senior official said. ''The
political people look at the polls and say: 'Hey, we'd better do
something about this.' And, since you can't discard the policies
that you presumably are serious about, you shuffle people around
instead.''

Clinton has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks in foreign
policy from Somalia to Haiti and Bosnia -- problems that, in the
public mind, have overshadowed his claims of success in Russia and
elsewhere.

The president has publicly defended Lake and Christopher when they
have come under fire and aides in their offices said they believed
the president still has confidence in them.

Recent polls, however, have shown Americans losing confidence in
the president's management of foreign affairs and Clinton's
political aides are concerned that there may be an impact on his
domestic policies and his reelection chances.

Last month a Los Angeles Times poll showed that only 43 percent of
Americans approved of Clinton's handling of foreign affairs. And
last week a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed only 40 percent
approved, his lowest rating since the crisis in Somalia last
fall.

For months, Christopher and other aides have been pushing for a
shift in emphasis by Clinton, who had sought to focus on domestic
issues and minimize the time he devoted to foreign policy.

One official said that as a result of high-level discussions that
has followed the release of some polls, Clinton agreed to devote
more time and personal visibility to foreign policy leadership. An
early reflection of that shift, he said, was Clinton's 90-minute
appearance at a CNN foreign policy ''town meeting'' earlier this
month.

In the interview Friday, Clinton said that the nation is ''in a
period of transition'' in international relations.

''We've got delicate negotiations in the Middle East right now,''
he said.  ''The secretary of state is involved in that and China
and the last thing in the world I need to be doing is to be
considering changing my team.

''What I need to be doing is considering changing whatever it is
that is not inspiring people's confidence in me and, if we've made
some mistakes, we need to fix it. That's what I'm working on.''

If he does ''a better job of communicating our foreign policy,''
Clinton said, Americans will be ''much more understanding of what
I'm trying to do and that will give me the flexibility I need.''

------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. BAN OF CHINESE GUNS STRIKES AT SOURCE OF U.S. IMPORTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By ROBERT BENJAMIN
Baltimore Sun

5/26/94, BEIJING -- President Clinton's move Thursday banning U.S. imports
of Chinese-made guns strikes at the source of one-third of all
firearms and more than half the rifles brought into America each
year.

But the import ban may not seriously hurt the Chinese military
conglomerate making most of these weapons. And it does risk
politically alienating the Peoples Liberation Army, a key Chinese
organization with which the United States has been trying to
restore contacts.

The United States issued permits last year for the import of about
two million weapons from China, according to figures provided by
the U.S. Embassy here.

Most of those were military-style rifles, such as the MAK-90, a
knock-off of the well-known AK-47 assault rifle. Some of these
weapons would be banned by crime bills under consideration by the
U.S. Congress, but one of the most popular makes, the
semiautomatic SKS, would not be affected by the bills.

China is the world's lowest-cost producer of rifles and handguns,
and virtually all guns made here come from factories controlled by
the PLA -- particularly the factories of China North Industries
Co., also known as Norinco.

Norinco is the Chinese military's largest conglomerate with more
than 300 separate enterprises and research institutes. Like most
PLA companies, it has turned aggressively in recent years to
producing and marketing non-military products.

More than 70 percent of the company's income now comes from
civilian products, according to published reports. It claims
assets worth more than $1.7 billion.

Norinco makes more than half of China's motorcycles and more than
a third of its mini-vans, at some factories in joint ventures with
Japanese companies. It turns out machines tools, chemicals and
refrigerators.

But it also is still believed to take in hundreds of millions of
dollars a year from its exports of heavy or high-tech arms --
sales that likely dwarf its receipts from exporting handguns and
rifles to the United States.

Nevertheless, the U.S.-gun trade can be lucrative, particularly in
illegally outfitted rifles.

Norinco was accused this spring by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms officials of having violated federal guns laws by
bringing into America tens of thousands of illegal rifles.

These rifles were illegally fitted with threaded muzzles to
receive silencers or mounts for grenade launchers. Some could be
converted into machine guns.

In announcing a recall of these rifles, ATF officials admitted
that the weapons entered the United States because of the
difficulty in closely checking every shipment within the huge
volume of U.S. imports.

For some diplomats here, this suggests that some importers may be
able to circumvent the U.S. ban on Chinese guns by shipping them
through third countries -- much as importers of Chinese-made
towels sidestep U.S. textile quotas by shipping through the
Philippines and other countries.

''Looks like we'll have something else to work on soon,'' a U.S.
Customs agent based in Asia predicted Thursday.

Whether or not the U.S. ban on Chinese guns hits the PLA's
pocketbook very hard, it certainly risks making enemies within the
Chinese military -- a risk at odds with U.S. policy.

The PLA is one of China's most powerful political forces. The
Pentagon launched a drive last fall to resume high-level contacts
with the Chinese military, in part because of the belief that it
will play a key role in the likely political struggle following
patriarch Deng Xiaoping's death.

''The PLA isn't going to like being singled out in this way,'' a
Western diplomat here said. ''But they're going to be hard pressed
to argue in the international arena for a right to sell guns in
the United States. In fact, even many Chinese can't understand why
the United States has let them sell guns there all along.''

----------------------------------------------------------------------
4. ANALYSIS: LIVING WITH CHINA, WARTS AND ALL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
By BOB DEANS
Cox News Service

5/26/94  WASHINGTON - In renewing China's trading privileges despite its
continuing human rights abuses, President Clinton has offered to
strike a new diplomatic deal with Beijing.

He hopes to replace confrontation with cooperation in a widening
array of economic and strategic areas, while using those
broadening contacts to help advance the causes of human rights and
political reform in the world's most populous country.

It's a sharp turnaround from a year ago, when Clinton threatened
to hit China with trade sanctions unless it reversed its sordid
human rights record, a threat that ultimately proved hollow in the
face of China's mounting economic and strategic importance.

In the year since he vowed that ''the United States just can't
turn its back on the abuse of lots of people,'' Clinton has become
convinced that those concerns, while still relevant, are
outweighed by an uncomfortable yet inescapable reality: Washington
must learn to live with China -- warts and all
-- and agitating and alienating its rulers with idle threats is no
help.

''We have reached the end of the usefullness of that policy, and
it is time to take a new path,'' Clinton said. ''We need to place
our relationship into a larger and more productive framework.''

That larger framework -- pegged to China's surging economic and
military might, its veto power on the United Nations Security
Council, its influence with North Korea, and its potential to
export weapons of mass destruction and otherwise make trouble for
the West -- is precisely what made annual threats of trade
sanctions against Beijing an untenable pretense for policy.

At the root of Clinton's decision lies a basic belief, widely held
at the State Department, that the tone of U.S.-Sino relations must
shift from confrontation to cooperation as the two countries move
toward a new century that could see China rise to become the
world's most powerful economic superpower.

Clinton underscored that point himself, referring to China's
economy as the world's third-largest. In dollar terms, of course,
China remains one of the world's poorest countries, turning out
roughly a half-trillion dollars worth of goods and services a year
-- about equal to the sales of the six largest U.S.  industrial
corporations.

Scrapping the dollar tally, however, and weighing China's output
based on domestic prices, its economy is indeed the world's third
largest, behind the United States and Japan and just ahead of
Germany. Economists predict that, even in dollar terms, China's
output could top this country's sometime over the next 20 years.
No U.S. president who cares about American competitiveness and
jobs can afford to ignore that.

As China's shadow lengthens across the global economic landscape,
moreover, so does its significance as a military and strategic
power. The goal of U.S.  policy, Clinton said, must be to develop
new partnerships with Beijing in those areas, and he extended an
open invitation on Thursday, saying, ''I am plainly offering to
build the basis of a long-term strategic relationship with the
Chinese.''

Strengthening economic, diplomatic, cultural and other ties
between the United States and China, Clinton said, will help to
encourage the development of democratic institutions.

Free labor unions, unfettered access to information and ideas, a
legal code that addresses individual rights and other building
blocks of democratic development will take time to evolve. But
China's 16-year-old economic opening to the West is already
exposing hundreds of millions of Chinese to the concepts and the
rationale behind those institutions at a critical time: Beijing is
confronting a generational leadership transition, the outcome of
which could set the stage for dramatic change.

But Clinton's efforts to take credit for extending a bold policy
initiative to China are more than muted by history. It was Clinton
the campaigner, after all, who vowed to ''not coddle tyrants, from
Baghdad to Beijing,'' in a slam against President George Bush.

A former U.S. envoy to China, Bush insisted through four dark
years of Sino-American relations that engagement was the best
policy toward the Chinese, a position he was called upon to defend
against repeated Democrat-led Congressional broadside attacks.

And yet, in a line that could have been lifted directly from one
of Bush's old speeches, Clinton pronounced Thursday that there was
no better way to approach Beijing.

''The best path to advancing freedom in China,'' Clinton said,
''is for the United States to intensify and broaden its engagement
with that nation.''

------------------------   World Tibet Network News   ----------------------
   Published by:     The Canada-Tibet Committee
   Editorial Board:  Brian Given <[e-mail]>
                     Nima Dorjee <[e-mail]>
                     Conrad Richter <[e-mail]>
                     Tseten Samdup <[e-mail]>
   Submissions and subscriptions to:
                     [e-mail]
                     or fax to: [phone]  (U.K.)
   Send us your comments, announcements, news or items for discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Issue ID: 94/05/29 03:30 GMT            Compiled by: Nima Dorjee
============================================================================
1. TIBETAN LEADERS URGE TRADE PRESSURE ON CHINA
2.  Disbelief Sank Last-Minute Try To Pressure China; ...
3. U.S. SAYS WILL STILL PUSH HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA
============================================================================
All articles forwarded by Conrad Richter <[e-mail]>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. TIBETAN LEADERS URGE TRADE PRESSURE ON CHINA
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 28, 1994, NEW DELHI, India (Reuter) - Tibet's government-in-exile,
disappointed at Washington's extension of Most Favored Nation
(MFN) trade status to China, Saturday urged the world to keep up
economic pressure on Beijing.
     "It is our belief that continued and concerted international pressure,
including economic pressure, if applied convincingly, can have a tremendous
practical impact, as it did in South Africa," the Dalai Lama's spokesman Tashi
Wangdi said in a statement.
     "We hope that the United States and the international community will
continue to use their economic leverage to pressure China to improve its
treatment of the Chinese and Tibetan people, and to foster negotiations on the
future of Tibet."
     The statement, issued from the Dalai Lama's headquarters in the north
Indian town of Dharamsala, noted President Bill Clinton's renewal of China's MFN
status Thursday, when he also severed for good the link between trade and human
rights.
     "Unfortunately, there has been no improvement in conditions inside Tibet,
and the Chinese authorities continue to refuse to enter into substantive
negotiations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama or his representatives," Wangdi
said.
     He said the government-in-exile, based in India since the Dalai Lama fled
Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, appreciated U.S.
efforts to foster talks and persuade China to change its policies on Tibet.
     "(We) feel that this pressure is critical," he added.
  REUTER
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Disbelief Sank Last-Minute Try To Pressure China; Human Rights Threat to MFN
Seen Preparation for Inevitable
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Daniel Williams and Ann Devroy
Source: Washington Post Staff Writers

May 28, 1994, -- The endgame between the United States and China, which
climaxed Thursday with President Clinton's decision to extend
China's trading privileges, began at Richard M. Nixon's funeral
in late April when top administration officials organized a last-ditch
effort to persuade China to improve its human rights record.
    In a little room inside the Nixon Library, national security adviser
Anthony Lake, National Economic Council head Robert E. Rubin, and Assistant
Secretary of State Winston Lord met with Chinese Ambassador Li Daoyu to
discuss ways China could make further progress in human rights. The U.S.
officials offered to send a special envoy to Beijing to discuss the matter.
    It is far from clear whether anyone in the room considered China's response
would make much difference. At that late date, no American official believed
disrupting trade with China would be wise, even though Beijing was unlikely to
meet the conditions laid down by Clinton last year for renewal of its preferred
trade status. U.S. intelligence analysts were reporting from the beginning that
the Chinese never believed Clinton's threat to pull the plug on the lucrative
U.S.-Chinese commerce.
    Nonetheless, the administration's offer to send a special envoy reflected
its need to make renewal of trade benefits more palatable politically, and
China's inclination to accept reflected perhaps its willingness to let Clinton
save a little face.
    Indeed, the final days of Clinton's threat to withdraw China's
most-favored-nation (MFN) trading status were an exercise in preparing for the
inevitable. Administration officials not only had to squeeze the Chinese for
any last drops of concession - a released prisoner here, a discussion of radio
jamming there. They also had to convince members of Congress and
the public that Clinton's decision was not another example of foreign policy
waffling, this one involving the most populous country in the world.
    In that sense, the saga is as much a story of politics in Washington as it
is of human rights in China.
    Yesterday, administration officials were describing as heroic Clinton's
decision to extend MFN for China despite insufficient progress on human rights
and to separate in the future the issues of trade and human rights.
Madeleine K. Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
called it "a very important step in showing American resolve."
    Secretary of State Warren Christopher said a policy of "comprehensive
engagement" with China had replaced the trade threat as the focus of U.S.
policy, calling the new approach "the best way to influence China's
development."
   As in other administration foreign policy dramas, even those who agreed with
the outcome despaired at the process. "We have seen one great power try to
bluff another and seen the bluff called," said Douglas Paal, a China
analyst and proponent of delinking trade matters from human rights
concerns. "It's not a pretty sight, and it may be damaging."
   The Yorba Linda meeting had been designed to head off that kind of
perception, but in the end, China gave less than administration officials had
hoped.
    The offer to send a secret envoy resulted in the mission to Beijing in
early May of Michael Armacost, a veteran diplomat. Armacost was publicly
opposed to revocation of China's MFN status, but after some
persuading from Christopher, he embarked for China on May 8.
    He won some concessions: pledges to release from jail at least two
prominent dissidents, including pro-democracy activists Chen
Zeming and Wang Juntao. The Chinese also invited an American technical team
to discuss the jamming of Voice of America, gave Armacost a list of some
prisoners, permitted the emigration of some citizens whose passports had been
blocked for political reasons and agreed to inspection of a prison labor camp
suspected of producing goods for export to the United States.
    Armacost returned to the United States May 12 advising Clinton to pocket
his limited winnings, extend MFN and move on.
    During roughly the same period, the administration recruited numerous
visitors to China to press for more progress on human rights. Among them were
Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Nixon's
former chief foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger and China expert Michael
Oksenberg. All were briefed by security adviser Lake and/or Christopher and all
were urged to ask for more progress.
    The idea for the Armacost mission had been discussed at an April 8 meeting
of Clinton's top foreign policy advisers. Vice President Gore
mentioned the idea to visiting Chinese State Counselor Song Jiang that day.
    High-profile diplomacy had produced mixed results. In late March,
Christopher had returned from Beijing with some pledges of cooperation, but
these were overshadowed by arrests of Chinese dissidents and hard-line public
statements by the Chinese.
    Christopher was constrained in responding in an equally tough
fashion. To do so would risk a confrontation that would all but
tie Clinton's hands, disrupt trade and probably the whole
relationship with China, State Department officials said.
    In any event, Armacost's secret diplomacy was also disappointing.
Christopher, whose assignment it was to report to Clinton on China's progress
on human rights, declined to give it a clean bill of health.
    He made a key judgment that China had complied with two compulsory criteria
for maintaining its low tariff trade status: progress in emigration and
inspections of prison labor camps to search for goods bound for U.S. export.
   He recommended a ban on imports of Chinese munitions to indicate displeasure
with the lack of progress on issues such as repression in Tibet and continued
detentions of democracy activists. At one point in the past week, Clinton
suggested that no sanctions should be applied; it would muddle the message that
trade and human rights were being separated. Christopher and others argued that
some sanction was necessary.
      Proposals for either an American or a joint Chinese-American human rights
commission also were shot down this week as unworkable. Carter, whom Clinton
tried to recruit to head the commission, persuaded the president to drop the
idea. On May 19, Rubin, Lake and other officials met with Carter at National
Airport; Carter them met with Ambassador Lito push the human rights message, a
last stab at back-channel diplomacy.
  Clinton's original threat was expressly designed to unite the presidency and
Congress behind a single policy. Congress, led by Democrats, had repeatedly
tried to legislate economic sanctions against China, which President George
Bush repeatedly vetoed. Clinton roundly criticized Bush and  said
he would be tougher.
    The political consensus was sacrificed with Clinton's retreat. Sen. George
J. Mitchell (D-Maine) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized Clinton's
decision and threatened to legislate sanctions on Chinese imports. If
successful, they would put Clinton in the position of having to veto the
measure, just as Bush did.
    Administration officials are counting on Democrats not to embarrass Clinton
over the issue. One Democratic staff member in the House, musing on the
inability of Clinton to win major concessions from the Chinese, said wryly, "It
turned out that MFN was useful as a tool only to bludgeon George Bush."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. U.S. SAYS WILL STILL PUSH HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Eds: releads with Christopher, Albright comments)
     By William Scally
     WASHINGTON, May 27 (Reuter) - The Clinton administration said Friday that
promoting human rights would remain a central element in U.S. policy toward
China even though the issue is no longer linked with trade.
     "We have focused a brighter spotlight on human rights practices in China.
That scrutiny will continue, and our human rights dialogue with China will
intensify," Secretary of State Warren Christopher said.
     His remarks were part of an effort by the administration to rebut
suggestions by opposition politicians and human rights groups that by renewing
China's Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trading status
unconditionally, Clinton caved in to Beijing.
     The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, denied
Clinton's shift was a sign of weakness. "On the contrary, I think
this is a very important step in showing American resolve," she told reporters.
     She said Clinton's was a policy that "shows strength, that shows the
ability to know what is important for the United States and to know the
importance of how to pursue a policy of human rights as well as a policy of
engagement with China."
     Christopher, in a speech to the Asia Society in New York made available in
Washington, said the administration would work with U.S. business leaders to
develop principles to improve working conditions and would make
it a practice to meet with a wide spectrum of Chinese citizens.
     He said Beijing had told the United States that greater progress on human
rights could be made even without the MFN linkage and "now we will give them a
chance." Revoking MFN, he said, would have led to a "downward spiral in
U.S.-China relations."
     Christopher put the China decision in the context of what he called a
comprehensive U.S. strategy of engagement and leadership in the Asia-Pacific
region.
     This also included new trade negotiations with Japan, efforts to solve
nuclear problems with North Korea and U.S.-Vietnamese agreement on establishing
liaison offices in each other's capitals.
     The State Department released a summary of Christopher's report and
recommendations on China MFN that conceded that China had not made the
"overall, significant progress" on five areas of human rights that had been
required for renewal of MFN in an executive order signed by Clinton last year.
     The report said China was complying with an agreement barring exports to
the United states of goods made by prison labour, although officials
acknowledged that there was "some evidence" that such exports were continuing.
     The report also said that negotiations with the International Red Cross
had not yielded any Chinese agreement to permit access to prisons and Tibetans
were continuing to be jailed for peaceful protests in support of political and
religious independence.
     Human rights groups have condemned Clinton's decision, accusing the
president of caving in to big business. Li Lu, one of the student
leaders of the democracy movement crushed in 1989 at Tiananmen
Square, said he was "discouraged, disappointed and frustrated" by
Clinton's MFN announcement Thursday.
     Deputy National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, speaking on ABC
television's "Good Morning America" programme, denied any climbdown and
defended the new policy of engagement, which resembles that of President
Bush. As a candidate Clinton villified Bush's policy.
     Clinton had to decide whether to sever "a $40 billion relationship that
has enormous importance to the security and economic" interests of the United
States, he said, or "whether we pursue human rights better through a policy of
contact, of engagement, in which we press the human rights agenda but not
through threatening to sever the entire relationship."
     Senator Majority Leader George Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, plans to
introduce legislation sanctioning targeted products in an effort to to force
human rights progress in China.
     Not surprisingly, the business world was overjoyed. Analysts had warned
that revoking China's tariff benefits could cost up to 200,000 American jobs as
well as billions of dollars in trade and potential markets.
     Foreign policy experts, too, predicted dire consequences with loss of
leverage and cooperation between China and the United States on such other
issues as North Korea's possible development of nuclear bombs.
-------------

------------------------   World Tibet Network News   ----------------------
   Published by:     The Canada-Tibet Committee
   Editorial Board:  Brian Given <[e-mail]>
                     Nima Dorjee <[e-mail]>
                     Conrad Richter <[e-mail]>
                     Tseten Samdup <[e-mail]>
   Submissions and subscriptions to:
                     [e-mail]
                     or fax to: [phone]  (U.K.)
   Send us your comments, announcements, news or items for discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ISSUE ID: WTN 94/05/29 04:00 GMT        Compiled by Nima Dorjee
========================================================================
1. Tax Protest in Lhasa - 70 Detained in Nepal

From: Tibet Information Network <[e-mail]>

Tibet Information Network / 7 Beck Rd London E8 4RE  UK
ph: ([phone] / fax: [phone]
TIN News Update / 27 May, 1994 / total no of pages: 2


Chinese police are alleged to have beaten demonstrators and arrested five
Tibetans when shopkeepers staged a protest in Lhasa today, according to
sources in the city.

Up to 200 Tibetans joined a crowd in the Tibetan capital protesting against
tax increases this afternoon, Friday 27th May. The demonstrators were
protesting against recent increases of over 20% in taxes on shopkeepers.

The incident, which falls close to two sensitive anniversaries, may have had
a concealed political agenda. Monday 23rd May marked the 33rd anniversary of
the Tibetans' formal surrender to the Chinese in the "17 Point Agreement" of
1951, and Tuesday was the anniversary of a major protest in 1993 which began
as a complaint about prices but turned into a pro-independence rally.

The protest today began around 2pm this afternoon when all the traders in
the Barkor, the main shopping street in the Tibetan quarter of the city,
closed their shops, apparently in protest at the tax increase.

Between 100 and 200 people gathered in front of the offices of the Lhasa
"Chengguanqu", the Inner City Government, in Dekyi Shar Lam (Beijing Dong
Lu) and shouted slogans against taxation. The protesters were joined by
around 100 onlookers who also joined in the shouting, said one report.

At about 5pm riot police carrying shields marked "Gong An" (Police) took up
positions along Dekyi Lam and sealed off the area around the Inner City
Government offices. A number of demonstrators were beaten and five people
are believed to have been arrested, according to an unconfirmed report.

A platoon of armed police was moved by truck into the area at around 7.30
pm, by which time the crowd had dispersed and the situation was calm, said
the report.

Police confiscated the passports of three tourists staying at the Banakshol
hotel, opposite the Government offices, who had witnessed the protest.
Watching disturbances is illegal for foreigners in Tibet, according to local
laws issued in 1987.

This is the second incident to have been reported in Lhasa in the past week.
On Tuesday 24th May four monks were said to have been arrested after they
began a pro-independence protest near the Jokhang Temple in the Barkor area,
according to a report yesterday by the Kyodo news agency in Tokyo, citing
unnamed foreign tourists. The four monks were detained at around 9am by
police after shouting pro-independence slogans and some of the monks were
knocked to the ground by the police before being led away, said the report.

                - Nepal Interns 70 Tibetans -

In neighbouring Nepal fears that Tibetans might demonstrate to mark the
anniversary of the 1951 "17 Point Agreement" led to a wave of random arrests
of Tibetans in Kathmandu.

In a well co-ordinated security operation an estimated seventy Tibetans were
imprisoned for eight hours on the anniversary, Monday 23rd May, in police
quarters near the old Post office in the Nepalese capital, according to one
detainee interviewed by TIN.

"We were held from ten in the morning until 6 o'clock that evening. We had
no food or water and were escorted by police even to go to the toilet," said
the detainee, who had been arrested by police for no apparent reason as he
was about to collect a visa from the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu. The 70
detainees were picked up during the morning, apparently at random, from
different areas of the Kathmandu valley.

The one day internment policy appears to have been sparked off by Nepal
government fears that Tibetans would hold a protest in Kathmandu on Monday.
But Tibetan activists in Nepal insisted that there was never any plan to
mark the anniversary in Kathmandu.

Platoons of up to 30 police were stationed for part of the day at Swayambhu,
Baudhanath, the Chinese Embassy and in a hotel forecourt in Lazimpath, near
the offices of the Dalai Lama's representative in Nepal, according to
various sources. The arrests were not covered in local newspapers and no
police spokesmen were available for comment last night.

The Nepalese Government is under strong pressure from opposition parties and
pro-Chinese sectors of the press not to allow Tibetans to upset China by
criticising Beijing's policies or calling for independence.

- end -

--- GoldED 2.41+/#1067
 * Origin: BODY DHARMA * Moderator, TIBET_NEWS - DharmaNet (96:101/33)