From: 3011_6470@UWOVAX.UWO.CA
Newsgroups: talk.politics.china
Subject: Re: Whose fault is it anyway?
Date: 5 Sep 92 05:55:44 GMT
Reply-To: 3011_6470@UWOVAX.UWO.CA
Organization: Indiana University
Comments: cc: China-net <china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu>


             This is not an ideal world

               -- a response to Patti Lowe

I agree with Patti that this is not an ideal world.  Things
could be complicated.  Even the word "Chinese" needs clarification.
I would like to point out the complexity behind the phenomena of
those "irate PRC individuals".

This is an election year in U.S., and even from the view point of
a foriegner like myself, it is not difficult to sense the misgivings
and distrusts among Americans towards their political leaders.
However, I only want to raise two examples in Bush's foreign policy
to show why some of us could become irate and distrust American
politicians.  The first example is Nigeria.  A few months ago, the
democracy of that country was suddenly halted by the goverment, because the
goverment was afraid to lose the election to Islamic fundementalists.
The country entered into a state of emergency and many civic rights
were suspended.  Opposition leaders were percecuted.  The U.S. goverment
and Congress made little noises.  The other example happened a few
days ago, when George Bush was in Texas, speaking to the employee
of General Dynamics.  That speech deeply disturbed me.  He said,
(not in exact quote, but you should be able to find it out very easily in the
newpapers), this (the F-16) is the American skill, this is the
American technological edge, this is what the whole world wants.
Is this the same President who pushed other countries, including China,
not to sell weapons to Third World countries?

Well, this is not an ideal world.  America cann't only be evangelical
and idealistic.  Every country has its own interests to look after,
either political or economical.  Thus, we do not necessary appreciate
everything said by American politicians.

Although it could only happen in an ideal world, Patti's offer to set up
a forum for all sides of China to sit down and talk out their differences
is quite generous.  We all know it's going to be difficult, considering
the intransigency of Chinese goverment.  How about scale it down.  Let's
put all the oversea Chinese democratic organizations together, and let the U.S.
government help them to iron out their differences.  After all, they share
lots of common grounds.  Forgive me for being pessimistic, even that is
beyond anyone's ability.

Among the oversea Chinese, we are also deeply devided.  One side believes
the importance of both political reform(democratization) and economic
progress, and the other side believe the importance of continuuing
economic growth as the basis of democratization.  We have many hot
debates on the net.  Would Patti like to moderate our discussions?
I have to caution her first: the debate could be very ugly and hopeless.

I happened to belong to the later side, so my view is biased.  I agree
human rights conditions in China are harsh, but believe HR is only
one of the many factors in the equation of China.  This is too big
a topic for this post.  To put it short, HR cann't be a simple and
isolated factor.  After all, this is not an ideal world.
Ask a x-USSR citizen, when one could hardly feed
himself, how much does freedom of expression mean?  Econmic growth
and exchange with the outside world are the most important driving
force for a better China, in terms of both HR and living conditions.

Now there are quite a few American legislators (not everyone of them),
who hold a simplistic view of HR and try to deal a blow to the
real progress in China in the name of HR by revoking MFN ( a normal
trading relationship and benificial to both U.S. and China).
To tell the truth, I, among many others, are irritated by them.


Dave Sheng.