Chinese diplomat turns to the US for help after Australia Shrugs shoulders

DEPICTION ATTEMPT: With the Australian government less than enthusiastic about Chen Yonglin's attempt to defect, the Sydney based staffer contacted a US mission

REUTERS, CANBERRA

“Whipping up a controversy about [Chen] is not going to make a contribution one way or another to this application.”－by Alexander Downer, Australian foreign minister

A Chinese diplomat who has sought political asylum in Australia and claims spies are hunting him for aiding pro-democracy groups has contacted a US consulate about his situation, an official said yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy said that Chen Yongkin a-37-year-old political affairs consul at China's Sydney consulate, had contacted a US consulate in Australia about his situation, but was unable to comment further.

Local media reported yesterday that Chen had asked if he could defect to the US.

Chen, who has worked in Sydney for the past four years and is now in hiding With his wife, Jin Ping, 38, and their six-year-old laughter, has also applied for an asylum-seeker protection visa with Australia's immigration department.

Chen, who claims he would be persecuted by the Chinese government if he returned home, also wrote to Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer asking for a rare “territorial asylum visa.”

Downer, who is on a visit to India, told Australian radio that Chen's asylum plea would be considered on its merit.

"Whipping up a controversy about [Chen] is not going to make a contribution one way or another to this application. The application just had to be considered on its merits, on the facts of the case," Downer said.

He said he could only recall two cases where Australia had granted political asylum, one being the case of a senior diplomat from the former Soviet Union who defected to Australia in 1954 along with his wife.

The defections of Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia led to an extensive inquiry into Soviet espionage in Australia. Moscow withdrew its embassy from Australia and expelled Australian diplomats.

Downer didn't have details on the second case.

Chen told a rally in Sydney on Saturday marking the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests that Beijing saw him as a threat because he offered help to democracy groups and Falun Gong practitioners.

China’s ambassador to Australia Fu Ying said on Monday that Chen just wanted Australian citizenship and laughed off his claims that Beijing has 1,000 spies in Australia and that he could be kidnapped and returned home.

Fu said Chen had no reason to fear returning to China.

But when asked if she could guarantee he would not suffer any repercussions for his attempt to defect, Fu said: “Guarantee is not the word I would use because I will not be the person who will judge him.”

Constitutional reforms must continue

The National Assembly has successfully ratified constitutional amendments which, among other things, mandate the assembly's permanent dissolution. This is the seventh round of constitutional revision in the last 14 years, and the final round to be presided over by the National Assembly.

The National Assembly's right to amend the Constitution -- including the definition of national boundaries -- will be given to the legislature, and such changes will be ratified by a national vote. Its right to initiate an impeachment of the president and vice-president will now also be passed on to the legislature, with such cases to be decided by the Council of Grand Justices.

Other achievements of this last National Assembly include extending the term for legislators from three to four years to coincide with the terms of the President and Vice-President. The right of women to participate in politics is further bolstered, with 50 percent quotas for legislators-at-large and overseas Chinese legislators from all parties. The reduction of the legislature from 225 to 113 seats starting from 2008 is a punishment meted out by voters to Taiwan's lazy and irresponsible legislators. But because of the smaller numbers of seats, the legislature will become more vulnerable to manipulation by financial interests.

The adoption of the single-member district, two vote system for the election has been criticized by Taiwan's smaller parties, for the single-member district works to the advantage of the larger parties. Critics say that it will lead to a face-off between the two large parties in which the voice of smaller parties is drowned out, reducing the diversity of opinion. Supporters of the system say that under the the new system, legislators will be more representative of the electorate, and the legislature will be led by politicians with strong roots in local communities. This will make it difficult for political extremists to get elected, and the political parties will have to show greater respect for local opinion.

We believe the purpose of a constitution is to ensure and uphold the highest interests of all citizens. Therefore, the articles of the Constitution must be amended according to the changing needs of the people, with a new constitution created if necessary. Although the amendment of the Constitution has achieved substantial results, it is regrettable that due to the requirement that amendments in the future be ratified by a three-quarters legislative majority, we now have one of the highest thresholds in the world for changing the Constitution. Even if proposals surmount this barrier, they then need the consent of half the total electorate. This makes some people pessimistic about the feasibility of the next round of constitutional reform.

But constitutional reform must continue if Taiwan's constitutional chaos is to be resolved. According to the Presidential Office's proposal, the next round of constitutional revision will help determine whether the country should have a three-branch or five-branch government, and clarify whether the executive branch is a presidential or cabinet system. It will also address issues that are closely related to peoples' everyday lives, such as the abolition of the Taiwan Provincial Government, the lowering of the voting age, reduction in the length of mandatory military service, inclusion of labor rights in the constitution and Aboriginal welfare.

Clearly, all of these issues have nothing to do with Taiwanese independence. Setting a high threshold will only impede the operation of Taiwan's Constitution and deprive people of the exercise of their democratic rights. In the future, the legislature should therefore quickly seek to lower this threshold to avoid future constitutional conflict and prevent the country from becoming an international laughingstock.

Taiwan's constitutional reform has gotten this far, and there is no reason to stop now. No matter how difficult it may be to reach the next stage of revision, we believe that public opinion in Taiwan will support those who uphold continuous constitutional reform and relegate into the dustbin of history those who oppose the people's will.

Ching a victim of Beijing's games

By PaulLin

The arrest of Ching Cheong, a correspondent of Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, has drawn international attention. Up to now, comments made by Beijing and Ching's family on his arrest suggest that he is a Chinese patriot who has been betrayed by his "homeland."

After all, this homeland is one that has been transformed by the tyrannical Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and is also what officials of its regime like to claim is the "homeland" of the Taiwanese people as well.

A song lyric from the Cultural Revolution period reads "nothing is as immense as the party's kindness to you. Even your parents cannot love you as much as Chairman Mao." It is therefore understandable that the CCP thinks nothing of asking people to "accuse their family in the name of justice."

Ching is a Hong Konger, who considers China his motherland. After graduating from a university in Hong Kong, he declined a well-paid offer and instead chose to work as an journalist for Wen Wei Po, a CCP-backed newspaper. After more than 10 years of hard work, he was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief of the paper.

However, the Tiananmen Massacre that took place on June 4, 1989 led Ching to steer clear of his motherland. Ching, whose love for China has never ceased, always hopes that Beijing can one day relinquish its tyrannical rule, introduce political reform and seek to achieve something for the benefit of people in Hong Kong. Ching even offered his advice to Beijing on cross-strait unification. Unfortunately, eventually his homeland turned on him and accused him of being a spy.

According to Beijing, Ching is a spy who has been working for an "external" intelligence agency, likely referring to Taiwanese intelligence. Since Ching clearly hopes for cross-strait unification, it is difficult to believe that he has been conducting espionage for Taiwan. Lau Mun-yee, Ching's wife, pointed out that following the demonstration that took place on July 1, 2001, Lu Jianhua, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also went to Hong Kong to study public opinion on behalf of Chinese President Hu Jintao and meet with Ching. Oddly enough, Lu has also been apprehended by Beijing.

As a result, the incident has now become even more complicated. It is generally believed that it is Lu who relayed the undisclosed speech made by Hu to Ching. Upon receiving the content of the speech, Ching made a copy and stored it in his computer.

This has led us to associate the whole incident with the power struggle within the Chinese leadership. If the CCP's infighting has already come into play in this matter, anything could happen. Clearly, the 1989 student-led protests do have something to do with political conflict within the Chinese leadership. That is why students were treated as political human sacrifices.

Recently, Beijing has taken rigid measures against the real estate sector in Shanghai. Obviously, China's leadership can no longer bear to see that this small Shanghai clique always has their way to deal with policies enacted by the central government. In April, the government-manipulated anti-Japanese demonstrations which swept through major cities across the country. Shanghai and Shenzhen, where most foreign enterprises are situated and where violent acts are supposed to be the least tolerable, turned out to be the cities where things got most out of control.

Shanghai is considered the turf of former president of China Jiang Zemin, and Shenzhen is the stronghold of Huang Liman, former party secretary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and Jiang's right-hand man. When Hu sought to put an end to these demonstrations, there were claims that attempts had been made to fan the flames, and Shanghai came in for the harshest crackdown on the protests. There were claims of a "black hand" behind the demonstrations and a 25-year-old man got a five-year jail sentence for inciting people over the Internet to participate in the demonstrations.

We wonder how many times Beijing has staged this sort of melodrama. Zhou Yurui, former publisher of the Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong-based daily, was detained in 1953 on charges of conducting espionage in China simply because he had frequent contact with foreigners.

Huang Xian, a Harvard graduate and Hong Kong-based lawyer, went to China to help the nation with the establishment of the rule of law. However, he was detained in 1981 and charged with "stealing a large quantity of state secrets,"and sentenced to a jail term of 15 years.

In 1982, Luo Fu, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Ta Kung Pao was also accused of engaging in espionage in China and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The real reason behind his arrest is still unknown.

Viewed as spies by Beijing, these patriots, who devoted themselves to the CCP, have paid a high price for their patriotism. We believe that there are more people who are suffering Beijing's oppression. As a Chinese saying goes: being a patriot too early is no better than being a patriot too late, and being a patriot too late amounts to not being a patriot at all.

Although they pay a high price for loving China, many still carry a torch for their so-called "homeland." It is a pity that these patriots do not understand the history of the CCP and believe they can make use of the party.

This is also true of some pro-unification politicians in Taiwan. They are not aware that the CCP is actually the one that uses them. Even such a dedicated patriot as Ching still fell victim to the Chinese regime. How many of those who want to make use of the CCP will suffer the same fate?

Paul Lin a New York-based political commentator.