Washington Post: Jiang Zemin's Puzzlement

The Washington Post (Sunday, March 25, 2001; Page B07) published Fred Hiatt's article: Jiang Zemin's Puzzlement.

According to the article: "Jiang seemed genuinely puzzled at our interest in the case and at U.S. interest generally in the abuse of human rights here. 'I have a very big question in my mind,' he said. 'The United States is the most developed country in the world, in terms of its economy, its high tech. Its military is also very strong. You have a lot of things to occupy yourselves with. Why should it be that you frequently take an interest in cases such as these?'"

"His suggestion that anyone accused or detained in China must, by definition, be guilty came in response to a question about an American University researcher, her husband and their 5-year-old son, each of whom was held -- separately, without notification to lawyers or relatives -- about a month ago. The husband and little boy were freed after 26 days and are now back in the United States; the woman remains in custody."

"And by the way, his spokesman called afterward to say: Don't fret over the 5-year-old who was removed from his parents for a month without explanation. He was in boarding kindergarten, not in jail."

The article said: "He seemed just as puzzled that the United States would object to seeing China swallow democratic Taiwan, which, he reiterated, China reserved the right to do by means of military force. 'If the United States had not troubled itself over the question of Taiwan, we would have been able to solve the question and liberate Taiwan at any time,' the president complained. And unification would 'not introduce any harm whatsoever to the United States; it would only bolster stability in Asia.'

"This was a Stalinist view of the world, presented with great sincerity. If you are strong, why should you trouble yourself over the weak? If a small country stands in the way of strategic interests, why not crush it, or allow it to be crushed?"

The article also mentioned that Falun Gong practitioners are being hounded, jailed and tortured throughout the country by his police.

The article concluded: "Jiang himself is something of a lame duck. After a decade in power, he is expected (though no one knows for sure) to cede his party title and the presidency within the next two years.

"Yet this is the leader with whom President Bush must, at least initially, engage. And, maybe more important, no one, Chinese or foreign, really knows what will come next. It may be that Jiang and his ilk are dinosaurs, unable to survive in the climate of personal freedom and private enterprise they have helped create, and that China will evolve gradually toward democracy. It may be, though, that China's dictatorship will evolve gradually into a different form of dictatorship, harnessing the new private enterprise in the service of something like a fascist state, with communism replaced by resentful nationalism. Or China could fracture along any one of its many dividing lines -- ethnic, rich-poor, urban-rural -- with frighteningly unpredictable consequences."