Bush criticises China's repression
US president George Bush told China bluntly today that America was strongly opposed to the way the communist government repressed its people.
In a rebuke delivered from the heart of Asia on the cusp of the Olympic Games, and perhaps his last major address in Asia, Mr Bush said the US spoke out for a free press, free assembly and working rights not to antagonise China’s leaders, but because it was the only path the potent US rival could take to reach its full potential.
“America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents and human rights advocates and religious activists,” Mr Bush said, speaking in Thailand.
“We press for openness and justice not to impose our beliefs, but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs.”
But along with his chiding, Mr Bush offered praise for China’s market reforms and hoped that it would embrace freedom.
“Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions. Yet change will arrive,” he said.
The marquee speech of Mr Bush’s three-country trip hailed deepening ties between the US and Asia. He pledged that whoever followed him in the White House would inherit an alliance that was now stronger than ever.
The president planned to quickly pivot from his speech to a full day of outreach toward the people of Burma, who live under military rule across the border.
Yet heading eagerly to the Beijing Olympics himself as a sports fan, Mr Bush faced pressures all around: a desire not to embarrass China in its moment of glory, a call for strong words by those dismayed by China’s repression, and a determination to remind the world that he has been pushing China to allow greater freedom during his presidency.
But his message will surely be noted in China, which has already knocked Mr Bush for intruding in its affairs by hosting Chinese dissidents at the White House ahead of the Games.
“The leadership in Beijing will almost certainly find his comments irritating or objectionable,” said Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “But they will clearly understand that the United States will not impose any real consequences if they do not make progress on human rights.”
Seeking an event scrubbed free of protest, China has rounded up opponents and slapped restrictions on journalists, betraying promises made when China landed the hosting rights.
Mr Bush says he built a relationship with China’s leaders that has built up honesty and candour and allowed him to have more influence. He cited examples of significant alliance over Taiwan, North Korea’s nuclear programme and shared economic concerns. He has also been adamant that the Olympics is not a time to pursue the US political agenda.
Given his setting, Mr Bush devoted a surprisingly small portion of his speech to Burma, one of the world’s poorest countries that has been under military rule since 1962, when the latest junta came to power after brutally crushing a pro-democracy uprising in 1988.
“Together, we seek an end to tyranny in Burma,” Mr Bush said. “The noble cause has many devoted champions, and I happen to be married to one of them.”
First lady Laura Bush is an outspoken advocate for Burma, drawing attention to a south-east Asian nation unfamiliar to many Americans.
In Thailand she will visit a border refugee camp today in Mae La, home to thousands of people who fled Burma’s violence.
Mr Bush heralded Thailand’s democracy as alive and well, but it is deeply embattled.
Prime minister Samak Sundaravej’s six-month-old coalition government came to power in elections, but only after a bloodless coup against predecessor Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mr Samak faces daily demonstrations demanding his resignation. He is accused of blocking corruption charges against Mr Thaksin and trying to amend the constitution to cling on to power.
Though Mr Samak regards himself as a friend of Burma’s generals, Mr Bush heaped praise on his Thai hosts when he arrived, calling them close allies in the war on terror.
About 25 people around the convention centre where Mr Bush spoke welcomed the president. But a Muslim group shouted: “Bush, get out. God is great” as the presidential motorcade passed. The protesters handed out leaflets saying: “George Bush is a war criminal.”
