China should release those of its citizens imprisoned since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown if it wants the EU to end its arms ban, a senior EU delegation told their hosts in Beijing on Wednesday.
The request for an amnesty, one of four areas in which the EU is seeking better human rights, raises the bar for lifting the 16-year embargo, making a change unlikely this year.
The linkage is embarrassing for Beijing's communist leaders, who see removal of the "discriminatory" ban as a central goal of its improved relations with Europe. It is also a setback for the French president, Jacques Chirac, and the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, who have pushed hard for a June date for the 25-state union to lift its ban, imposed after the 1989 bloody suppression of demonstrations for democracy.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU commissioner for external relations, maintained that the June target was still reachable if both sides made concessions, but put the onus on China.
"Lifting the embargo will of course be easier if the climate is right," she said. "Above all, we need to help persuade our public opinion China is making concrete steps to improve human rights."
According to a European diplomat taking part in the negotiations, the EU has urged Beijing to ratify the UN convention on political and civil rights; release Tiananmen prisoners; reform China's re-education-through-labor penal system; and ease media censorship.
Although not described as preconditions, the very public linkage creates a stumbling block. Accepting the four proposals would cost Beijing a huge loss of face. The foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing (李肇星), said it was "unreasonable and unhelpful" to link the embargo to China's rights record.
"Any attempt to impose one's own values on another country is an embodiment of disrespect to the human rights of the other country," he told a joint news conference with his EU counterpart.
Chinese officials argue that the ban is a Cold War relic, and fails to take account of dramatic changes since 1989.
But Beijing has made no effort to address what caused the ban -- the breaking up of the demonstrations on June 4, 1989 by troops and tanks of the People's Liberation Army who killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters. There has been no inquiry or punishment of those responsible.
Although human rights was the reason for the ban in the first place, the question is only belatedly becoming part of the discussion about lifting it.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS