America's Future Update on China

Update on National Security

Ray Bishop, president of the Jobs Movement Organization in Panama, has issued an open letter to "Dear American Friends." Here are some excerpts:

"Using bribes, the Chinese company Hutchison-Whampoa has been in operational control of the Panama Canal . . . .

"In case of breakout of war in Taiwan or Korea, vital U.S. troops and supplies could be interdicted . . . . China is engaging in an 'immigration' invasion of our small country. There are now some 200,000 illegal and legal Chinese here, out of a total population of just 2 million. Imagine if you discovered 30 million Chinese in America!

"The Chinese are buying key businesses. They have their own schools and even newspapers. Using China's organized crime, known as Triads, the Chinese government controls this population and is already showing its muscle . . . .

"With the total departure of the U.S., drug lords and money launderers are making Panama City the base of their operations. . .

"Marxist guerrillas from neighboring Colombia enter Panama with impunity, and they have been robbing banks and kidnapping foreigners and Panamanians . . . .

Poll after poll shows that the Panamanian people want the Americans back in Panama." www.newsmax.com/panama, 10-1-02

Update on Military Strategy

"China seeks to become the major power in Asia by 2050. Under its so-called New Security Concept, it is intent on replacing the United States as the pre-eminent military power in the region and achieving economic dominance in Asia by establishing a regional market dominated by the yuan. It is pursuing a long-term, potentially destabilizing strategy to radically alter regional power relationships that have contributed to the prosperity and relative stability of East Asia for the past 50 years." This is the conclusion of Michael Marti, senior research professor at the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University in Taiwan. His paper was originally published by the Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C., 7-18-02.

Hong Kong is suffering a slow-motion suffocation of basic rights and automomy, contrary to rosy predictions when the island was handed over to Beijing by England five years ago. Communist China engineered the re-election of a Beijing-controlled governor, created a layer of government bureaucrats accountable only to Beijing, and issued "security" laws to uphold Beijing's definition of "subversion, sedition and treason." If Hong Kong is the "one-country, two-systems" model China offers, Taiwan should beware. China Reform Monitor 473, 11-4-02

Update on Human Rights

Qian Cheng, the popular director of the China national Symphony Orchestra, has been put under 24-hour house arrest by order of the Communist Party for being "biased" in favor of Western compositions, according to the London Sunday Telegraph. There is a news blackout on his fate. China Reform Monitor 473, 11-4-02

Police in northeastern China have arrested a ranking bishop in the Roman Catholic Church, Wei Jingyi, according to a report in Reuters. The U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation reports that "every one of the approximately 50 bishops of the underground Catholic Church is either arrested, under house arrest, under strict surveillance or in hiding." China Reform Monitor 467, 9-23-02

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) said there has been some "slippage" in China's human rights record in the two years since Congress approved permanent "normal trading relations" with Beijing, clearing China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Washington Times, 10-7-02

Two major Houston hotels canceled reservations for 50 Falun Gong practitioners who came to Houston to peacefully protest Chinese President Jiang Zemin when he visited President George Bush at his ranch in October. Houston Chronicle, 10-23-02