Open Letter from Wei Jingsheng to US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton
Respectful Secretary of State Clinton,
I am a political prisoner rescued from China during
President William Clinton's term. I was fortunate to be
invited to the White House to meet with then President Clinton, as well as
to be introduced to you by President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic
during a banquet hosted by him. The rescued political
prisoners like us, and the Chinese people during that era, had all
appreciated very much the human rights diplomacy of the USA.
We have cheered for its success, as well as sighed for its
shortcomings. We are actively seeking the reasons for
the shortcomings. When there is inappropriate wording,
please forgive us.
Unfortunately we saw some huge mistakes during the
President Clinton's Administration. The first was the unlinking of Chinese
human rights from trade issues, and the second was forcefully pushing the
Congress to offer PNTR (i.e. Most Favored Nation status) to China.
The result was that it not only reduced America's international
prestige and damaged the democratic progress in China, but also brought
disastrous long-term results for America's own economy and employment
opportunities. According to the data released by the US
government, during this period, the US trade deficit with China grew rapidly
by a factor of 10 to more than 300 Billion Dollars annually, accumulating a
total of more than 2 Trillion dollars.
Generally, people expected you to make a correction
to this important historic mistake after you become the Secretary of State
and to re-emphasize the human rights issue in China.
However, from what you said and did during your visit to China this time, it
was not the case. Using the words of the Chinese
Communist government's Internet agents, the human rights diplomacy of the
USA has come to its end.
Is it true that there is no relationship between
Chinese human rights and the US interests? That is not
so. Although the trigger for the economic crisis in the
USA was in the financial sector, the root cause was the trade imbalance,
especially the huge trade deficit with China that has effectively destroyed
the real economy in the USA. The Obama Administration
has been mobilizing Americans to overcome the difficulty and revive the real
economy, as the prerequisite to tide over the current economic crisis.
The real prerequisite of this policy is to block the huge loophole of
the foreign trade deficit. Otherwise, billions of
dollars from the economic stimulus package will simply become the profit of
the multi-national companies and the Chinese government.
How was this huge US trade deficit to China formed?
The most important reason out of the many was due to unfair and
unequal trade with China. China is not a free market
economy but a totalitarian country under one party dictatorship.
The Chinese Communist government controls China's trade.
Chinese workers do not have rights to protect their own interests.
The government controls the Chinese media. It is
exactly these human rights problems that result in the unfair and unequal
trade, producing the abnormal trade deficit, tipping the economy of the
developed countries, and finally ending with the current economic crisis.
The imbalanced economic development in China has also resulted in the
global energy crisis and environment pollution, and indirectly threatens the
global security. All of these issues were of your
attention during your trip to China, yet you have failed to put human rights
as your top priority.
Thus, not to talk about Chinese human rights issues
is effectively blocking the effort by the Obama Administration to solve the
economic and security issues. I do not think that fits
your responsibility as the US Secretary of State, or your purpose of
visiting China now. There is a huge wave of criticism of
your conduct related to your China visit this time, both inside China and
Overseas, as well as in English and in Chinese. This
failure has severely damaged the image of the Obama Administration,
resulting in a huge misunderstanding of the US government, and also severely
harming Americans' expectation of President Obama. I
wish that you would take effective steps to remedy that.
If you think that there is a need, I am willing to
discuss the related issues with you further.
Best wishes that your work will be productive and
successful.
-- Wei Jingsheng
Chair, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition
Washington DC, USA