Rally to Mark 15th Tiananmen Anniversary

[lucky wilbury]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-asia/2004/jun/03/060302864.html

Rally to Mark 15th Tiananmen Anniversary
By DIRK BEVERIDGE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

HONG KONG (AP) -

Ever since Beijing sent tanks and troops to crush the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, Hong Kong residents have led a candlelight vigil on the anniversary.

In Friday's evening's vigil, on the 15th anniversary, an expected crowd of thousands will demand that China admit mistakes in its bloody crackdown on the nonviolent student protesters that killed hundreds if not thousands.

The latest commemoration is emotionally charged because Beijing recently ruled out full democracy in Hong Kong in the near term, stirring fears that the territory is losing the freedoms and great deal of autonomy that were promised when Britain handed it back to China in July 1997.

"This year it's important for people to show they will not be silenced," said Law Yuk-kai, director of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, a non-governmental organization.

Many in Hong Kong feel a duty to speak out, because they enjoy free speech rights - unheard of in the authoritarian mainland.

The Tiananmen vigil has also been an opportunity for thousands to voice their unhappiness with unpopular Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, the former shipping tycoon backed by Beijing to lead Hong Kong after the handover.

Hong Kong people want full democracy, but Beijing stepped into the debate in April and ruled that they cannot directly elect Tung's successor in 2007 or all lawmakers in 2008. Ordinary voters will pick just 30 of 60 lawmakers in September, with the rest chosen by special interest groups such as business leaders who tend to side with Beijing and Tung.

Tung was chosen by an 800-member committee loyal to Beijing.

Student protesters pushed their way past police on Thursday to stage a Tiananmen Square commemoration rally outside the Chinese government liaison office here. One activist, Kin Sin, said local demonstrations represent a "passing of the torch" that began with the students who gave their lives in Beijing.

"We are fighting for democracy in Hong Kong from the Chinese government," agreed lawmaker and unionist Lee Cheuk-yan. "The struggle becomes the same struggle."

[lucky wilbury]

President Bill Clinton holds a White House meeting with People's Liberation Army General Zhang Wannian, whose 15th Airborne paratroopers mowed down Chinese civilians during the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. This photo ran in Chinese newspapers, helping rehabilitate the image of the "butchers of Beijing."

[lucky wilbury]

Vice President Al Gore and then-Chinese Premier Li Peng toast an economic partnership between the United States and the People's Republic of China.

[lucky wilbury]

People's Liberation Army General Chi Haotian (left) and U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen (right) celebrate a toast; Chinese General Xiong Guangkai (behind Cohen, partially obscured) looks on. The hard-line Chi and Xiong both played pivotal roles in the brutal Tiananmen Square massacre.

[High Life Man]

I met Cohen back in 1995 when he was still a senator in Maine. He was a cheesedick back then too. Then again, what politician isn't.

I can't believe it's been 15 years. I remember watching that on TV.

[FORD]

http://www.usccc.org/mem-b.5.jpg
His Excellency, Premier Zhu Rongji and Prescott Bush Jr., Chairman of US-China Chamber of Commerce

[FORD]

http://www.usccc.org/mem-b.6.jpg
Siva Yam and Ambassador John D. Negroponte

[FORD]

http://www.usccc.org/mem-b.7.jpg
President George Bush Sr, Siva Yam, President of Us-China Chamber of Commerce and Prescott Bush Jr, Chairman

[FORD]

President's uncle shares Bush family ties to China

By Debbie Howlett, USA TODAY

02/18/2002

CHICAGO — When President Bush arrives in Beijing on Thursday, he'll embrace a policy that's something of a family tradition.

Bush's approach centers on promoting U.S.-China economic ties. That's a course favored not only by his father, the first President Bush, but also by his uncle, Prescott Bush Jr., a longtime acquaintance of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

The Bush family's ties to China go back to 1974, when President Nixon named George Bush ambassador to China. The college-age George W. Bush spent two months in China visiting his parents during his father's two-year stint.

Seven years after his brother left the ambassadorial post, Prescott Bush made his first trip to China. He later joined with Japanese partners in 1988 to build a golf course in Shanghai, the first in China. He met Jiang, who was then the mayor of Shanghai.

Prescott Bush, now 79, also developed a close working relationship with Rong Yiren, a former trade minister and vice president, who in 1993 introduced Bush to a group of Chinese business leaders as "an old friend." In 2000, Forbes publications reported that Rong, who has retired from government, was the richest man in China.

The president's uncle concedes that he sometimes relied on his name to open doors, but he says any deals he made were the result of his own hard work.

"You can get a meeting because of it, you can meet a lot of people because of it," he said in a recent interview in Chicago, where the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce has its headquarters. "But I don't get a lot of business because my nephew is president or my brother was president."

Some experts argue otherwise. A name is not just helpful, it's essential, says Nick Larty, a professor of international relations at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.: "Who you get access to in China is pretty much a function of how important you are."

Along with access, the family name has also brought scrutiny to Prescott Bush's deals:

* He was criticized in 1989 for visiting China to meet with business and government leaders just three months after the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which army troops fired at pro-democracy demonstrators.
* His Shanghai partnership with the Japanese firm Aoki in 1988 proved embarrassing when revelations surfaced that Aoki at the same time was allegedly trying to get business contracts by bribing Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, whom the first President Bush later ousted from power.
* His connections to an American firm, Asset Management, came into question in 1989, when the company was the only U.S. firm able to skirt U.S. sanctions and import communications satellites into China.
* When Asset Management went bankrupt later that year, Bush's deal to arrange a buyout through West Tsusho, a Japanese investment firm, raised eyebrows. Newspapers reported that Japanese police were investigating West Tsusho's alleged ties to organized crime.

Bush declines to discuss those controversies. "That's old news. It's in the past," he says.

Typical BCE response :rolleyes:

Last year, he opened the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce offices in Chicago. The membership roster includes United Airlines, American Express, McDonald's, Ford and Arthur Andersen, the beleaguered company that audited Enron's books.

Bush says opportunities abound now that the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis is in the past: "The Chinese are very much interested in getting foreign capital in. They desperately need the jobs."

Last fall, Bush hosted a well-attended trade conference in Chicago at which U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick gave the keynote address. At a dinner he sponsored last month at the Yale Club in New York, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, was guest of honor.

Perhaps the most intriguing question about Bush's China connections is whether he played a role in ending a U.S.-China standoff in April, when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. Navy surveillance plane over the South China Sea. The Chinese pilot was killed, and the U.S. plane made an emergency landing on Hainan island, where 24 U.S. crewmembers were held for 11 days.

The president's uncle traveled to China just hours after news of the incident broke. He flew aboard United's inaugural flight from Chicago to Beijing. Other dignitaries on the largely ceremonial flight stayed a few days, but Bush didn't return home for two weeks. Moreover, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher met Bush — but not the rest of the group.

Prueher says their meeting was simply a social call.

"I might have joined him for a cup of tea or a Coke — maybe we had a beer, I don't recall," says Prueher, who left his post in June. "We spent an hour chatting."

Bush denies any involvement in the diplomatic settlement that ended the crisis.

"I couldn't possibly do something like that," he says. "It would be very embarrassing for the president if it was found out that I was going to see my friends when he was trying to work things out."

The standoff ended when Prueher sent Jiang a carefully worded letter of regret over the incident. The next day, the U.S. crew was permitted to leave. Bush left a day later.

[lucky wilbury]

no see ford theres a difference here: clinotn met with and priased the people behind tiananmen square. had them in the white house. not all people from china are bad ford only the ones who roll over people with tanks and shoot at them which is what all the people in the clinton pics did. THEY were responsable. the people you posted did what at tiananmen square? NOTHING. the people i posted did EVERYTHING. here clinton is meeting with them after it all when down and he was praising them. coe on ford anyone i mean anyone can see that there is a problem with what clinton did. hell they tried to hide it. you didn't see those pics in american papares did you? no they where only in papers in china.