Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday urged China not to take “backward steps” on human rights, saying she will raise her concerns in an upcoming meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
Gillard leaves today on a week-long trip to countries critical to Australia’s prosperity and security — key trading partners Japan, South Korea and China.
It will be her first visit to China, Australia’s top trading partner, and comes as the communist country wages a serious crackdown on dissent, highlighted by the recent detention of famed -artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未).
Rights groups say China has detained at least 54 dissidents, activists and others in an apparent bid to squash any political movements similar to the “Jasmine” revolutions that have rocked the Arab world.
Gillard said she raised her concerns with Beijing’s fourth-in-command, Jia Qinglin (賈慶林), when he was in Australia this month, and will repeat them to Hu and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶).
“We have a comprehensive engagement, a constructive relationship [with China],” she told Sky News. “As prime minister, on my first trip to China I want to add to that constructive arrangement.”
“Of course we raise human rights regularly with China. I raised it myself with Mr Jia in just the last few weeks,” Gillard said. “Will it be something I raise when I’m in China? Certainly I will be raising it in my discussions. I will be meeting with President Hu and Premier Wen and I will be raising human rights as we talk through the breadth of our relationship.”
Asked whether she would specifically bring up the recent crackdown on dissidents, she replied: “I raised recent events with Mr Jia when he was here and I will take the same perspective into my discussions in China itself.”
“When I saw Mr Jia, I said to him that we do not want to see China taking backward steps on human rights,” Gillard said.
Australian spy novelist and blogger Yang Hengjun (楊恆鈞) was feared to have been caught up in the anti-dissent crackdown after he disappeared briefly last month in strange circumstances in southern China.
Yang, a former Chinese diplomat and now a prominent online commentator, vanished after telling a colleague he was being followed by three men, but resurfaced within days, insisting it was all a “misunderstanding.”
While human rights will be one focus of Gillard’s trip to Beijing, a trade relationship worth US$50.6 billion each year will also be high on the agenda.
In particular, Gillard, who has previously admitted foreign affairs are not her “passion,” is hoping to “inject some momentum” into long-standing free-trade talks with China when she meets both political and business leaders.
“I will certainly be hoping to give [the talks] a push along,” she said.
Before China, she heads to Japan, where she will see for herself the devastation wrought by the recent magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that swept thousands to their deaths.
In South Korea, the focus will be on commemorating one of Australia’s key military engagements of the Korean War as well as being updated on Seoul’s icy cross--border relations with Pyongyang.
Trade will also be on the agenda in Japan and South Korea, Australia’s second and fourth-largest trading partners.
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