Dear Mr. Tung Chee-hwa,

Beginning in 1979, China has strictly enforced a set of family planning polices, helping to reduce its population of China. From one-fifth, the current population of China stands at 1.25 billion. However, with the percentage of its population in the child-bearing age group continuing to expand, births continue at a rate of 12 million per year. So that by the year 2050, its population will reach an estimated 1.6 billion, or 18% of the world's total.

Mainland China already exists the huge population pressure. How will the basic problems of providing sustenance to its populace be solved when China, in the year 2050, arrives at the 1.6 billion population figure?

Those problems will include fundamental demands for staple foods, living space, water, education, and employment opportunities.

The elderly population already occupies of growing portion of the population structure --- reaching 10% this year --- making China an aging society. By 2050, however, the elderly will account for more than one-fourth of their population; such a large proportion of dependents is a heavy burden for the workers of a developing economy to bear.

The numbers of unemployed, now standing in the hundreds of millions, constitute a further problems; in addition to these million, there are another 100 million or so who are roving migrant workers, whose numbers are expected to double by the year 2020. This population of roving, partially employed citizens represents an even greater potential social danger.

Ex-Soviet faced the same problems.

The assassination of America's prime minister in the assault on parliament was the latest convulsion of violence to grip the former republics of the Soviet Union as increasingly radical fringe groups take up arms.

In some republics, the violence has erupted between secular governments and religious movements; in others, bloody conflicts have arisen between political opponents. Hopes that democracy would flourish across the former Soviet Union are threatened by growing political polarization. Many of the radical groups have taken root in the economic desperation that has gripped much of the region since the Soviet collapse in 1991.

"Our fathers and grandfathers, who spared no effort and sacrificed themselves to build this country, have been doomed to a half-starved and miserable existence," Nari Unanian, the leader of the gunmen who killed Armenian Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian, proclaimed in a televised statement.

"Thousands of our children have no school books and shoes to go to school, our economy has been ruined, social unrest has risen to an unbearable level and there is a looming threat of losing our independence."

It was not clear whether Unanian and the other four gunmen who burst into the Armenian parliament on Wednesday represented a wider group. But their message would resonate with many in Armenia, one of the poorest nations to emerge from the Soviet Union.

Poverty has toppled successive governments in Christian Armenia; in the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union it has fueled militant religious movements that have challenged state authorities.

The last few months alone have seen a violent incursion by a radical Islamic group into Kyrgyzstan, which had been the most stable former Soviet republic in Central Asia; a militant Islamic offensive in the southern Russian region of Dagestan, which drew Russia back into war with separatist Chechnya; and a series of terrorist bombings in Russian cities that killed about 300 people and were blamed on Islamic fighters from Dagestan and Chechnya.

Caucasus expert Alexander Iskandaryan said that high unemployment among young people, against a background of widespread corruption, made republics such as Dagestan ripe for the spread of radical Islam.

"All of this leads to the popularity of slogans about social equality, unmasking of corrupt officials and criticism of the social mullahs, who are sullied by luxury and hypocrisy," Iskandaryan wrote in The Moscow Times this week.

Earlier this year, terrorists unleashed car bomb attacks against several government buildings in the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan, where the secular government of President Islam Karimov has been doing its utmost to stifle what considers a growing threat of militant Islamic fundamentalism. The government has banned political parties based on religion and prohibits the teaching of religion in schools.

Human rights advocates say that such a climate of confrontation has encouraged the growth of radical movements --- especially in the Central Asian nations, where political life is dominated by authoritarian leaders.

"The real problem is that the population is experiencing extremely difficulty circumstances, and there are very few avenues for them to address their discontent," said John Schoeberlein, chairman of the Central Asian Forum of Harvard University.

Aside from poverty and the struggle for power, the former Soviet republics are united by growing ties between politicians and criminals, and easy access to weapons. These factors have fed the growth of violent, racial movements.

"Huge stocks of weapons have been accumulated almost everywhere and there is no way of preventing them from spreading," said Nikolai Petrov, a political analyst at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

He also noted that soldiers, who always combat experience in the regional wars that broke out in the years following the Soviet breakup, provide ready recruits for militant groups.

"Mostly, they are unemployed, feel themselves alienated from society, and try to make their living with the help of guns," Pettrov said.

In mainland that improving the composition of China's huge population in the next 30-50 years will be an exceptionally difficult task.

Economic development is geared to support China's aim to emerging as an Asian military power, and the government will be loathe to loosen its powerful grip on centralized authority; thus our expectations for an open, democratic state with social justice and order are not likely to be fulfilled in the foreseeable future, nor will any hopes for a truly democratic government.

Even should such an unforeseen transformation occur, it is difficult to imagine a newly instituted democratic government successfully exercising authority over population of 1.3 billion people during the next 50 years.

The unavoidable conclusions are that if China's economic developments and reforms are successful, it will, in theory, strive to become an Asian military power facing off against the forces of the United States; if economic development collapse, then internal strife will ensue, with hordes of itinerant workers and refugees roving over the Asian mainland.

Either the ultimate success --- or the ultimate failure --- of China's reforms can lead to a nightmarish scenario for its Asian neighbors. Regardless of whether they become in the end soldiers or refugees, the people of China cannot escape the fate of being "subjects of the empire", expending their precious blood and loyalty to wave high the flag of nationalism and raise the cry of "long live China". The population of China is little more than a time bomb, waiting to set off a new round of turbulence and upheaval in Asia.

The prevailing anxieties were all part of living in a time of population, disease, poverty, political and military chaos and the superstition would spread to everywhere.

Taiwanese people always warm-hearted in mainland's good intention. For the last, Chinese needs help each other for conquering the bad condition in the near future, that Taiwan and Hong Kong's experience would smooth mainland China's democratic program.