From: "Ignatius Ding" <ding@HPSMTC1.CUP.HP.COM>
Subject:      Whose Fault is it anyway?
Reply-To: "Ignatius Ding" <ding@HPSMTC1.CUP.HP.COM>
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 18:55:00 GMT
Comments: To: Dennis.D.Lee@Eng.Sun.COM, donovan@csl.sri.com,
              hknet@cs.wisc.edu, ho@mips.com,
              ifcss%WAM.UMD.EDU@uga.cc.uga.edu,
              joseph_ng%5y@hp0200.desk.hp.com, jung_lin%40@hp1900.desk.hp.COM,
              sdc@longhorn.Corp.sun.com, ggach@pandora.sf.ca.us,
              xwu@janus.Berkeley.EDU, cnd-editor@sdsc.edu,
              melody@hpsmtc1.cup.hp.com, jchu@hpsmtc1.cup.hp.com,
              wuling@s1.msi.umn.edu, li@perry.berkeley.edu,
              jyee@eclair.berkeley.edu, Isaac.Chen@Eng.Sun.COM,
              ide!ide.com!cai@uunet.UU.NET, wwang@mail1.cis.umn.edu,
              china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu

After reading the attached e-mail, I started to understand where the author was
coming from.  He is worrying about that China will lose the M-F-N trade
privilege.  As several other netters quickly condemned Shen Tong for the same
reason, he criticized Shen Tong in fear of that "an American senator" (or IFCSS
for that matter) will seige the opportunity to use the CMFN bills to impose the
American style democracy onto China.  Then, he got into the argument that the
contents of the CMFN bills are bad for China and they are designed to interfere
with Chinese internal affairs.

I can easily see from his writing that the CCP has been quite successful in its
propaganda campaign to shift the attention on its records of human rights
abuses which the bills try to address to its rejection of "being forcefully
westernized through unwelcomed import of democracy, American style."  Some of
you might not agree that CMFN is the RIGHT vehicle to pressure CCP, but you
must know that these bills are hardly qualified as tools for democratization by
any stretch of imagination (except CCP's, of course).

Nancy Pelosi is not a senator.	Instead, she is a congresswoman.  Some of you
may not know the difference.  I will simply put it:  her voice to promote human
rights in China is heard loud and clear in this country, but it has rather
limited influence in the Senate where the American regional politics
consistently and unfortunately upstage issues of national or international
interests.

Secondly, Pelosi shouldn't be blamed for all the undesirable "other" conditions
attached to the bills, but she can't do anything to stop other politicians to
continue, for self interest, to take free rides on bills popular on the floor
by inserting their favor terms and conditions, sometimes unrelated topics, to
the orginal version.  That is how the American legislation process works.  The
passage of any legislation typically takes many compromises.  It is a mess, but
what can we do about it?  (I am not a Pelosi fan, but I don't think that she
deserves being accused for what she tries to do for the Chinese people).

I don't quite share the opinion that we should leave the problems solely to the
Chinese citizens who have been suppresed for more than forty years and have
little hope to confront the policies and absolute control of the totalitarian
regime.  IMHO, the overseas Chinese, Chinese-descedants, and people of any
nationality with a good conscience have an obligation to use our "people power"
to steer the politicians, businesspeople, and governments of the free
countries, where we live, to the direction of helping pressure the dictatorship
in China to yield.  And, this drive for improvement has obviously had some
successes in the last few years.


Ignatius Ding
===============================================================================
Orginal messages attached below as a frame of reference ....
...............................................................................

>>I don't want to see that senator to speak on China affair.  To promote
>>democracy in China means to promote Chinese's democracy, but not
>>democracy of persons of other countries on China affair.  I don't care
>>what those non-Chinese have said, just tell me the opinions of citizens
>>of PRC on Shen Tong's arrest (including people's feeling in China).
>>
>>
>>[author's name deleted]
>
>Fine.	Tell me how we can accomplish that.  As a matter of fact, we even worked
>with Voice of America to take Shen Tong's case to the Chinese people over the
>air.  Letters have been sent out to the Duties of the People's Congress.  We
>shall see whether there will be any result from these efforts.  There were at
>least three VOA and BBC broadcastings done in the last few days as far as I
>know.

There isn't anything wrong for doing all of the things listed above.
But, VOA and BBC serve as news broadcasting which is different from the
duty of an American senator who represent his American supporters.  It is
this senator (Ms. Pelosi) who try to put conditions on China MFN trade
statue on the request of some organisations, such as IFCSS etc, the
condition of which aims to change the policies of the Chinese government and it
is avoidable that those senator also put some conditions based on their own
interests (eg. Trade deficit with China, Weapon trade ......).	Can I
say that these behaviours of IFCSS aim to promote American's democracy on China
affairs?  The report on the senator's words just trigger me to write the
mail to you.

In USA, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, there are so many Chinese.  Even a
simmple poll on them can help people over all the world to hear their
voices. I remember some d-fighters ever said to promote democracy in
China.

>
>Please keep one thing in mind though.	We are NOT asking American legislators
>to express or excert their opinions or ideas about how Chinese should go about
>in promoting democracy.  We are asking EVERYONE in the international community,
>including Americans, to speak out against human rights abuses and suppression
>of constitutional rights of Chinese citizens by the Communist regime.	Shen
>Tong is merely the latest victim of that totalitarian system.

As I mentioned above American legislator mix what some Chinese student
organisation requested with their own conditions. In fact, these
students are asking American legistlator to use their policy to
interfere China affair for the reason of American's interests.

>Another thing to
>remember please: human rights is univerval and it is not an ethnic privilege.
>Saying that we don't care about "what those non-Chinese have said" is sort of
>dangerously close to becoming discriminative.	"You shouldn't do what you don't
>want others to do to you - Confucius."

Yes, human right is universal.	There is no problem for non-Chinese to
make their own comments.  But, how to improve the human right
situation in Mainland China should only depend on the willings of
citizens of PRC which is the same as the future of USA depends on Americans.
We all agree that there are human right problems in China.  But we may
have different points of view on "How to solve the problem".  As
citizens of PRC, we should have the same right to affect China affair
(one of 1.1 billions).	But, if you request American' senator to
intensify your opinions by using their policies, it is equivalent to
reduce my right on China affairs relative to yours.  If you want to
intensify your opinions, may I ask you to try to win support from
citizens of PRC.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.china