Speech
before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on August 28, 2001:
His Excellency Yang Jiechi
Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United States
Thank you, Mr. Williamson, for
your very warm introduction. Mrs.
Ahmanson, Mr. Mack, Mr. Williamson, ladies and gentlemen.
It is a great honor for me to be invited by the L.A. World Affairs
Council, the Asia Society, and the L.A.-Guangzhou Sister City Association to
this podium in front of this distinguished audience.
This is not the first time that I come to L.A.
I’ve been here many times, but today I feel exceedingly glad to have a
chance to meet you as the new Chinese Ambassador.
This is a great city, and in the last one and one-half days I have
already intermingled with quite a few people in this great city and in the
southern area of California.
Today I propose to talk about
Sino-American relationships and to share my thoughts with you to see how can we
further promote this very important tie between our two nations.
I would like to cite three events, they are current events, and they
might also be called a process, an exciting process, starting from this year.
First is Beijing’s successful bid for the Olympics.
Now, the Chinese people really love the idea of hosting the Olympics, and
about 400,000 people poured out into Tiananmen Square to cheer for the success
and, while they congratulate themselves, they’re also very appreciative of
what others have done for us, friends around the world, particularly those in
the United States. We want to make
it one of the greatest sports events in the world, and I think we need to pick
the brains of people here in L.A.
I still remember back in 1984
when the Chinese sports team made their debut here in L.A., and I think they had
very good luck here: they got 15 gold medals. What’s more important, they made lots of friendships here.
I think you know how to run a successful Olympics, and I hope that the
two sides will have more interaction to exchange ideas.
I think the Olympics will offer lots of opportunities for American
businessmen, for American thinkers, and this process will also be a process of
creating more friendship and understanding between Chinese and American people,
hence consolidating the relationship between our two countries.
The second event is China’s
entry into WTO [World Trade Organization] and I’m glad to say this entry is
within sight. In September, the
working party on China’s entry will hold its next meeting in Geneva and they
will finalize the text of the protocol to China’s entry as well as the working
party’s report and then these documents will be submitted to the Doha
ministerial meeting. I’m sure
that, with your blessing, China will enter into WTO pretty soon. China’s entry into the WTO at an early date will be in
everybody’s interest, particularly those in the United States.
I believe that the agreement
that we have reached with each other is a good one.
The United States is strong in many different areas, and U.S. exports to
China have increased by about 17.9 percent during the first half of this year.
It’s way above the average increase of China’s imports from the
world. China’s exports to the
United States has also increased, but by a lesser amount, about 6 percent.
We do have a trade surplus with the United States, but I’m very glad
that the United States is actually exporting more to China and particularly from
the Greater Los Angeles area and from the State of California.
Actually, China is the fastest-growing market for the State of
California.
What are the priorities for
China, in nation-building? Economically,
it is the infrastructure, its energy, telecommunications, new materials, and
also the opening up of the financial sector of China, the services trade.
I think the United States, and particularly the Greater Los Angeles area,
is strong in all those areas. Recently,
we signed contracts with quite a few companies for the introduction of the CDMA
telecommunications systems to China to the amount of about 1.4 billion U.S.
dollars or so. It’s a lot of
money, and this is only the first phase. I
would like to tell you that now we already exceed the United States in the
number of subscribers to cell phones. It
shows that the consumer market in China is a very big one -- and remember we
have 1.25 billion people. So there will be a lot more people who tend to use
cell phones in China.
How about tourism in China?
Many Chinese would like to go abroad these days.
They go to New Zealand, Australia, and they even go to the Netherlands in
Europe. Before I took this job, I
went to the Netherlands. To my
great surprise, many tour guides there spoke Chinese to me.
It means there are a lot of Chinese touring Europe, and I hope that soon
they will come here.
Because of this rapid
development of business interaction and tourism, China needs a bigger air fleet.
We will buy more Boeing and other airplanes.
How about entertainment? People’s
living standards have gone up, and they would like to see more movies and they
would like to go amusement parks, and I think Los Angeles has a lot to offer in
these areas as well.
So I think China’s early entry
into the WTO is in everybody’s interest.
Of course, we want to see great competitive strength from Chinese
companies as well and I think they’re doing just that.
I really believe in competition and the opening up of China is really
about the introduction of competition to a certain extent, in a certain way, and
I believe that China’s entry into WTO will make China a more dynamic country
and make the economic and trade relations between our two countries more solid.
The third event is the holding
of APEC in Shanghai in October of this year.
We believe in the dynamism of the Asia-Pacific region.
In this region, there are both developed and developing countries.
We believe that cooperation in meeting the new challenges will bring a
more meaningful tomorrow for the Asia-Pacific region.
So this APEC is a lot about how to sustain economic development in the
new economy era. People will talk
about e-mail and e-commerce and other things, and people will think not only
about trade, but about how to have more technical cooperation with each other,
because we are really in the same boat and one good thing leads to another.
We need to help each other in the face of the challenges in the current
economic picture, which is not all that good at the moment.
China will be the host for the first time, and we are very glad and
honored to be the host of APEC in the first year of the new century.
But we believe that the United States, and the larger Los Angeles area,
can have a lot to offer. I hope
that many businessmen from here will go to the APEC meetings.
There are quite a few economic meetings on the sideline as well and we
hope to receive fresh ideas from you about how to make this meeting most
productive and rewarding.
Ladies and gentlemen, the
Sino-American relationship, as you can see, has many dimensions.
There is the bilateral dimension as well as the multilateral one.
In the first half of this year the Sino-American relationship did go
through some difficulties, but fortunately, now things are looking up.
We see a positive trend now. Secretary Colin Powell’s visit to China
was a success. It enhanced mutual
understanding and cooperation, and it went a long way to pave the ground for
President Bush’s visit to China. Our
Foreign Minister will come to the United States for a visit soon.
What is really catching everybody’s attention is the summit between
President Jiang and President Bush in October of this year and the subsequent
visit to Beijing by President Bush. This
is a very important event. I
believe and I’m sure that the summit and the visit will contribute a lot to
even more dynamic and positive developments of the Sino-American relationship,
which is really in the interest of all.
Ladies and gentlemen, China and
the United States are both big countries. We’re
at different developmental levels. We have different cultural backgrounds and different
histories, and it’s natural that there will be some differences. But I believe that it’s important to concentrate on the
common interests between our two countries. There are some issues which really
deserve people’s attention, and I would like to talk about two issues today.
One is the Taiwan issue.
The Taiwan issue is the most
critical and sensitive issue in the Sino-American relationship.
There are the three joint communiqués guiding Sino-American
relationships. The United States,
including this administration, has publicly announced that they would adhere to
the one-China policy and to the three joint communiqués.
We believe that strict adherence to the one-China policy and the three
joint communiqués is most important for a stable and healthy development of the
Sino-American relationship. We have
emphasized this point to the American side.
Taiwan is part of China. The
Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and Chinese all over the
world, they want to see the reunification of China.
People are working towards that end.
Peaceful reunification, one country two systems, is the best formula for
bringing about the peaceful reunification of China.
We urge the leaders in Taiwan to recognize the one-China principle very
soon because this will really lay the base for the resumption of dialogue
between the two sides. The peaceful
reunification of China will be in the interests of all.
It will be in the interests of the United States.
I do hope that there will be more people of vision in this country,
especially those in power, who will see things that way.
The second issue is how to look
at China as a country. There are
many visitors who go to China these days from the United States.
Somebody told me about one million people go to China each year.
I and my colleagues have come across quite a few of them, and they
invariably say that China is quite different from what they thought when they
first went there. It shows that, to
some degree, there is still a lack of understanding of China.
Of course, on our part we also need to learn more about the United
States. You are a superpower, so
people not only in China but in other parts of the world, they, too, pay lots of
attention to what’s going on in the United States. As regards China, I do hope that more people will come to
visit China, to see China as it is, to experience the sights and sounds and feel
of China.
As I look at my own country
there are five points which I would like to talk briefly about from this podium.
First is that you have a dynamic system going on in China.
The Chinese economy is going forward, in spite of the slow-down of the
world economy. During the first
half of this year, the economic growth rate was about 7.9 percent.
We think that for the whole year it will be anywhere between 7 to 8
percent. The IMF has just come out
with a report saying that it will be 7.5 percent.
They do have confidence in the Chinese economy.
They think that we are on the right track and that the economy will
continue to grow.
Our target is to get our GDP
doubled in the next decade or so. It
means 7 percent growth rate straight for the next decade.
I think things are going our way, although there are still some
challenges lying ahead, but we want to improve our market economy.
We want to introduce more foreign investment into China.
We want to pick the brains of smart people all around the world.
I think you will see that the Chinese economy will remain dynamic because
we, as a large country, we just have more means to maintain the growth of the
country. The economy in terms of
growth is basically composed of three things: investment, consumption and
foreign trade. We just don’t put
all our eggs in one basket. Now we pursue a pro-active fiscal policy. We have
this developed strategy. We’re trying to lay a natural gas pipeline from the
northwestern part of China all the way to the eastern coast. Besides, as Mr. Williamson has just said, we’ve tried our
luck in the offshore areas for natural gas as well.
We have the Yangtze Gorge dam project going on, and we want to do a lot
more.
Second is the people’s
attitude toward society. With this
economic growth rate of about 9 percent for twenty years, the Chinese people’s
living standards have really gone up. If
few people believe that the average people vote from the pocketbook, you have to
believe that most people in China support the government’s policy because they
live a much better life then. There
is social progress in China as well. So
when people talk about the attitude of China sometimes those people with
prejudice say, “Well, it’s the government’s policy.” They try to conveniently forget that it’s the feeling,
it’s the will, of the Chinese people.
My third point is about the
leadership in China. It’s an
effective and strong leadership that has led China through a lot in the last one
or two decades. I think China is in
good hands, and China will continue to be in good hands.
My fourth point is about the
attitude of China’s neighbors. China
is improving its relationship with its neighbors and China is on good terms with
its neighbors. As a mater of fact,
when things were not going so well between the United States and China in the
first half of the year, it was our neighbors, their prime ministers, their
foreign ministers, who came to Washington and tried to urge people here who have
the power, the clout, to fix the whole thing so that they will not suffer,
because they want to see good relationships between China and the United States.
They want to be friends with both sides.
My fifth point is about
China’s attitude towards the relationship with the United States. China wants
to have a good relationship with the United States.
We think that it should be a constructive, a cooperative, relationship.
Never mind the differences. If
you have a constructive attitude you know how to go about the differences. You seek common ground and you have to shelve some of the
differences. Each side will
respectfully table its point of view. You
have to assume that the people in China know how to go about their own business.
You have to assume that China wants to have a good relationship with the
United States because it’s in our mutual interests.
China does not seek confrontation with the United States because it
serves nobody’s interests. We
believe that the commonality of interests between our two sides outweigh our
differences. Look at Asia, look at
the Pacific. We tried to work very hard, both sides tried very hard, to pull
Asia out of the economic crisis in 1997-98.
Both sides tried to keep some regions in a stable condition, and we all
worked against the nuclear proliferation. So
I believe that there is a lot that we can do together.
In light of the actual situation
in China and our attitude towards the United States, I believe that Cold War
mentality is not something called for. A
China threat does not exist. As I
look at this relationship, it’s a win-win situation.
It’s a grow-grow situation. If
you grow, we grow with you and vice versa.
This relationship needs effort from all sides, not only from the
government, but from the people, from the various walks of people around the
United States and in China.
I feel sentimental about my own
connection with Los Angeles. The
first time I came here was in 1977. That
was two years before the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and
the United States, and I can see in this audience quite a few pioneers of the
relationship. They worked very hard
for the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
It was not so easy in those days and our relationship has come a long
way. I remember the L.A. games, I
remember the standing ovation of the audience, the spectators when the Chinese
sports team entered the stadium. I remember President Jiang’s trip to L.A. and Prime
Minister Zhu Rongji’s trip to this city, people’s warmth, even tears, for
these two very important visitors. Only
last night there was a gathering of 800 people to celebrate Beijing’s
successful bid for the Olympics.
I believe to tackle Sino-America
relationship we kind of need the spirit of the Olympics.
We need to be good runners, to run faster, to push the relationship
forward. We need to be good high
jumpers. We should aim high.
We need to have team spirit, because only together can we pull this
worthy relationship up.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m very grateful for your time. I know Labor Day has not come yet. This is still the summer vacation, and some of you have sacrificed your time at the beach to come here to listen to me. But we are all working for a very good cause. I’m glad to be in this great city, and you will see me back quite a few times, because there’s a lot that we can do together for a brighter and more beautiful tomorrow for the Sino-American relationship.