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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (135545)	4/4/2001 8:44:39 PM
From: Ish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Do you think if we have radar readings and voice recordings that shows the American pilots in the clear that a mock trial will be done. I'm guessing an Ace up our sleeve to be played in the UN. I can't believe a mock 2 jet couldn't avoid a prop lane it was sent to harass.

To: Ilaine who wrote (135545)	4/4/2001 9:49:01 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 769667

The EP-3 crewmen aren't the only Americans China is holding. I do have the same feeling, CB...and surely wish it wasn't there....That comes I think of having lived lots of years, and seen some very bad things, as most of us who follow history at all. Here's the article I spoke about....Latest Featured Article REVIEW & OUTLOOK opinionjournal.com Detention for Scholars The EP-3 crewmen aren't the only Americans China is holding. Tuesday, April 3, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT This weekend's downed plane is not the only news straining U.S.-China relations. In recent weeks there's been a spate of reports about scholars of Chinese descent going to China and ending up in the clutches of the Ministry of State Security, Beijing's KGB. On February 11, visiting political scientist Gao Zhan, holder of a U.S. green card, was seized as she was about to leave her native land; her husband and five-year-old son, an American citizen, were held without consular protection for a month. Now we learn that Li Shaomin, an American citizen teaching at Hong Kong's City University, disappeared into secret police custody in Shenzhen on February 25. (Mr. Li is an occasional contributor to The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages; one of his articles is here.) Xu Zerong, a Hong Kong professor teaching in Guangzhou, met the same fate last August and is still missing. In none of these cases has the Chinese government released detailed information on how the academics supposedly violated the law. What passes for a judicial process in China will be kept largely secret, even from the accused themselves. This kind of treatment is not new--Song Yongyi, a U.S.-based historian studying the Cultural Revolution, was arrested in 1999 and then released five months later without explanation. And in the interim there have been several similar cases that haven't received widespread attention in part because of family members' fear that publicity would harm chances of early release. The Bush Administration, already suspicious of China's intentions toward Taiwan and America, may be inclined to see the recent detentions as hostile gestures. Rather they should be read as challenges. The arrests do deserve a strong response both from Washington and from the academic communities in the U.S. and Hong Kong. But if anything they should be interpreted as signs of the Chinese government's frustration at its inability to control the terms on which it engages the outside world, rather than as a new foreign policy initiative. The arrests are most likely a response by the Ministry of State Security, or MSS, to several recent developments. These are typified by the upcoming release of a Chinese-language version of "The Tiananmen Papers," the juiciest bits of which will quickly be available on the Internet. This is already causing anxiety in Beijing. The loss of such high-level secrets--including transcripts of China's top leaders in 1989 deciding to use deadly force against student demonstrators--has no doubt energized the information gatekeepers to redouble their efforts. They are trying to intimidate academics and journalists, particularly those of Chinese descent, who might be the conduits for future leaks. There are various ways to do this. Non-Chinese foreigners are usually threatened with restricted access to the country; sometimes they are forced to leave China or put on an immigration blacklist. But the MSS believes it can treat ethnic Chinese who hold foreign passports more harshly. The origins of this policy predate the Communist regime; imperial China claimed the loyalty of all Chinese, even those living outside the middle kingdom's borders. Even after 1949, China's relations with its Asian neighbors have sometimes been strained by Beijing's efforts to maintain a special relationship with the Han diaspora. Beijing uses this history as a bogus excuse to break agreements that detained Chinese holding foreign passports should have access to consular protection. But China may have overestimated what it can get away with. Its intimidation campaign is most effective when news of victimized academics or journalists spreads to colleagues, but the victims are too afraid to kick up a public fuss and rally those colleagues to their defense. Once the cases move onto the newspaper front pages, however, the victims enjoy martyr status and others become emboldened to follow their lead. This suggests the best way to fight back. It's a truism of the schoolyard that bullies are revealed as cowards when they are faced with resistance. Every case of detention, deportation and blacklisting deserves the widest publicity, and colleagues can emphasize that these actions ruin the environment for productive cooperation with Chinese academic institutions, which crave foreign contact. Pressure can be applied to Western governments to provide the same level of consular protection to all citizens, regardless of ethnic background. Meanwhile, Beijing should also be reminded that while Chinese who have gone abroad are now returning--many of them taking pay cuts to help their native land--they will stop coming if they are treated as spies. Most critical now is that the cases of Ms. Gao and Messrs. Li and Xu are satisfactorily resolved so that scholars won't be intimidated into silence.

To: Ilaine who wrote (135545)	4/4/2001 10:25:12 PM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 769667

If the military leadership prevails, you are correct. If Jiang Zemin is able to stand up to the PLA, then I beleive a way will be found to work it out. JLA