Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave then Indonesian strongman Suharto (news - web sites) the green light for the 1975 invasion of East Timor (news - web sites) that left perhaps 200,000 dead, according to previously secret documents made available on Thursday. Kissinger has maintained that he only learned of the plan at the airport as he and Ford prepared to fly home after meeting Suharto in Jakarta on the eve of the Dec. 7 thrust into East Timor, a former Portuguese colony. Kissinger also has argued that any U.S. nod for ...

After Zhou Qicai's mother was apparently murdered, he preserved her corpse in his refrigerator and then took it to Beijing. ''I threatened to display the corpse outside Zhongnanhai [where China's leaders reside] if they did not open an inquiry,'' he said. Mr Zhou is now a hero in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province in the north. Since his mother's death four year ago, he has sought to deploy the justice system against what he says is a corrupt government working hand in glove with the local mafia. He has conducted 12 court cases and scored a number of notable ...

A daring article urging the Communist Party to start political reforms by democratising its own procedures has caused a stir in Beijing at a time when liberals are trying to influence the agenda of next autumn's 16th Party Congress. Although the attack on China's stagnant political system appears in an obscure journal - China Party and Political Cadres' Forum - it is by Wang Guixiu, a politics professor at the Central Party School with a record for staking out reformist positions. The party school is China's top ideological think-tank and is run by Vice-President Hu Jintao, the designated successor to ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - The top U.S. envoy on counterterrorism said on Thursday he was optimistic China would allow FBI agents in Beijing, but indicated sharp differences over China's labelling of terrorists in its Muslim northwest. Winding up a two-day visit to Beijing, General Francis X. Taylor said China and the United States had also agreed to hold formal talks on counterterrorism twice a year. They would also set up a working group aimed at choking off the flow of funds to terrorist groups and the first group of Chinese financial experts would visit the United States early next year. Taylor ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday its exports faced worse prospects than during the Asian economic crisis and that it needed to maintain measurable export growth to help attain seven percent economic growth in 2002. Senior government officials also said renewed deflationary pressures, fuelled by the global economic slump, could persist next year and weigh on the slowing economy. "We will strive to expand exports next year and try to achieve measurable growth in exports," Vice Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Sun Zhenyu told an economic conference in Beijing. "To achieve the seven percent economic growth target ...

The head of US relations with Taiwan played down fears that the DPP's big election gains might move the island closer to a formal declaration of independence from China. Richard Bush, of the American Institute in Taiwan, noted that President Chen's DPP, had been in control of the executive since March last year. The DPP presidency has not "provoked any concerns, and I don't see why this would," Mr Bush said. But he said it was too early to tell how the results might play out in Taipei's policy towards China. Pressed on China's possible reading of the first major ...

A landslide election victory by Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) may cloud relations with the mainland temporarily and embolden those calling on the island calling for statehood, the China Daily said on Monday. But Beijing does not expect relations with Taiwan to ''drastically worsen'' over the long term and will not relax its conditions for reunification talks, the official English-language newspaper said. In the first reaction to Saturday's election in China's official media, the newspaper quoted mainland experts on Taiwan as saying fallout from the results would be limited. ''The results may temporarily cloud the relations between Taiwan and ...

The mainland government is seriously considering setting up a free-trade zone between China, Hong Kong and Macau to enhance the economic relationship between them, according to China's chief trade negotiator, Long Yongtu. "We should take a positive attitude towards this kind of proposal," he said. Mr Long expressed misgivings about including Taiwan in the proposed free-trade zone, considering the political barriers. "It is quite difficult to discuss this issue with Taiwan, as they are even unwilling to commit to open direct links with the mainland." Beijing has demanded Taiwan reopen "three links" across the Taiwan Strait, including postage, communication and ...

The US-led war on terrorism has lent urgency to American efforts to curb Chinese sales of weapons of mass destruction, but bilateral talks planned for next week appear unlikely to break a deadlock on non-proliferation. The dispute is one of the most sensitive issues simmering beneath the surface of a newfound friendship based on China's support for the US-led war on terrorism. The United States is hoping the September 11 attacks on US soil will encourage Beijing to abide by a deal not to transfer missile technology to nations Washington calls ''rogue states'' or ''state sponsors of terrorism'', according to ...

Mainland personal-computer makers, like those elsewhere, must shift their focus from traditional desktop boxes towards "pervasive" Internet access devices, according to a top executive at IBM. "PC sales in general, I think, are problematic," IBM senior vice-president of technology and manufacturing Nicholas Donofrio said during a weekend conference in Guangzhou. "We view the world no longer as a desktop-PC-dominated world. China has got to understand that [PC production] is yesterday's stuff." He said IBM saw an information-technology world centred on the network with rich, robust applications that could be added to via numerous devices, including mobile phones, personal digital assistants ...

Motorola will invest US$6.6 billion in the mainland over the next five years and double its production in one of the world's few remaining high-growth telecommunications markets. "It's an important market. We just have enormous opportunities in broadband, in wireless and in the Internet, not to mention in the sweet spot in which they all merge," Motorola spokesman Shelagh Lester-Smith said. Analysts said the tripling of its annual investments in China would help Motorola cut costs as a global slump in telecoms gear sales this year threatens to drag it into its first full-year operating loss in at least 45 ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - For the first time in more than a decade, China is facing the spectre of an economic slowdown severe enough to threaten its ability to create new jobs and keep a lid on social unrest. Seven percent growth is considered the minimum required to generate the 10 million new jobs needed each year over the next five years to cover the natural increase in the workforce, and absorb surplus farm labour plus workers idled as a result of state factory closures. By most reckoning, China will just squeak by this year. Next year will be the most ...

BEIJING, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Gao Xiaoguang glowed with excitement after watching himself on the screen of the latest video-enabled mobile phone, shown at China's top wireless fair over the weekend. "This is the first time I've ever seen this kind of thing!" said Gao, 47, who works for a computer company in Beijing. Foreign mobile giants at the biennial PT/Wireless & Networks expo, including top two firms Nokia and Motorola Inc , gave Chinese their first-ever glimpse of third-generation (3G) cellphones, which work 10 to 30 times faster than today's cellphones. For many students and out-of-towners, the 3G phones ...

I would like to begin with Larry M Wortzel's concluding words of his excellent analysis on United States-Chinese military relations: "There is a great deal of mutual mistrust between the United States and China, particularly at the senior level of the two armed forces. American generals are polite but they are neither blind nor stupid. These generals see the intelligence on the real People's Liberation Army exercises, they know what is going on in the information warfare realm and they know Beijing is cheating on its statement with regard to proliferation. ... Cultural factors weigh heavily in the attempts to ...

BEIJING - With no fuss and without a word in public at all, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CPC) has repudiated the bold plan of its leader, General Secretary Jiang Zemin, to open the party to capitalists and entrepreneurs. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the US, it seems no one bothered to check on the fate of Jiang's plan, which he first made public in an historic announcement on July 1. The proposal met its end, in fact, in the CPC Central Committee plenary session of September 24-26, according to informed sources. That the Central Committee ...

Beijing yesterday responded to an olive branch from Pope John Paul by reiterating its demands for the Vatican to sever ties with Taiwan and stay out of China's internal affairs. Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said China was ready to resume diplomatic links with the Holy See only if it took the initiative to cut diplomatic links with Taiwan. He also said the Vatican would have to promise not to meddle in China's internal affairs "using the pretext of religious issues" - implying the two sides were still at odds over the power to appoint bishops and cardinals in China. ...

US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned yesterday China should expect no political pay-off, in the form of diluted criticism of its human rights record, for its co-operation with the war on terrorism. Mr Powell told lawmakers that US President George W. Bush had informed President Jiang Zemin in talks in Shanghai last Friday that Washington would continue to press home its concerns over Beijing's human rights performance and other glaring differences between the two sides. "The President in his meetings with Jiang Zemin made very clear that human rights remains an important part of our agenda with China," Mr ...

Expense claims by senior executives of China's state-owned enterprises amount to an average of 10 times their salary, according to a report by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. The ministry said a survey this year found that state-enterprise executives were using their expense accounts to buy goods such as houses, cars and telecommunications equipment, according to the report in the Economic Times. The survey found that 86 per cent of these executives had a car assigned to them, 23.3 per cent had more than two cars and 3.5 per cent had more than five cars. More than 60 ...

Shanghai suspended 60 rules and regulations yesterday in a bid to cut red tape and make it easier to conduct business. The move follows Beijing's decision earlier this week to change its laws to lure Hong Kong investors. The suspension will eliminate overlapping regulations among government departments and reduce the number of licences that businesses need. Analysts say Shanghai is keen to make itself more user-friendly to investors as it tries to become a modern metropolis capable of soon joining the financial ranks of Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. It also hopes to capitalise on the high-profile Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation ...

Many Americans heard about terrorism, security and a little about human rights in the few minutes ABC, NBC and CBS television news spent covering President George W. Bush's first trip to China. But NBC's Tom Brokaw never mentioned Taiwan pulling out of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Shanghai, the latest incident in a decades-long power struggle with mainland China. CBS's Dan Rather didn't mention the anti-American protests in Indonesia and Malaysia. And ABC's World News Tonight didn't report that every resident of Shanghai was given five days holiday during the conference. Viewers in the San Francisco Bay area saw ...