Dictatorship? No!

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Mainland Chinese President Jiang Zemin, in a rare interview with a Western television network, says the United States “tends to overestimate itself and its position in the world.”

In the CBS News “60 Minutes” interview to be broadcast on Sunday, Jiang emphasized Beijing’s desire to improve sometimes strained relations with Washington although the two countries “differ greatly in terms of our values.”

“Candidly speaking, maybe it is because of the economic power and leading edge in science and technology that the United States enjoys that more often than not it tends to overestimate itself and its position in the world,” said Jiang, according to a transcript released by CBS News on Thursday.

“I hope to convey through your program my best wishes to the American people,” he said.

He said the regardless of whether Democrat Al Gore or Republican George W. Bush wins the Nov. 7 U.S. presidential election, the new president “will try to improve the friendly relations between mainland China and the United States, for this is in the strategic interest of the whole world.”

Jiang, scheduled to attend the Millennium Summit of the United Nations Next week, denied that Wen Ho Lee, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist accused of copying U.S. nuclear weapons secrets, was a spy for mainland China.

“I can tell you frankly, China was not in any way involved in Wen Ho Lee’s case,” Jiang said.

He then suggested Lee was being framed.

“Allow me to quote a Chinese proverb which goes. ‘If you are out to condemn someone, you can always trump up a charge.’ We don’t know what political motives are behind it.”

Lee has pleaded not guilty to 59 counts of illegally copying computer data on nuclear weapons design at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was indicted last December after being fired from Los Alamos in March 1999 amid congressional allegations of Chinese spying on the weapons laboratory.

Beijing is still on the defensive in the West over the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of unarmed pro-democracy protesters in Beijing and other allegations of human rights abuses. The Chinese communist leadership resents the West’s view of human rights in the mainland.

The opposition People First Party (PFP) made public last week moderate rational cross-strait policy designed to resolve the stalemate between the two sides. PFP chairman James Soong said his party toes a “pragmatic” line, leaning neither to independence nor unification, and appealed to both sides to consider the integration of the European Union as the model for China’s eventual reunion.

The PFP’s cross-strait policy places emphasis on economic cooperation, staring from the establishment of a Free Trade Area, to the development of Customs Alliance, and finally, to Common Market, a la the EU model. Such an evolution is highly desirable, the PFP believers, after both sides enter the World Trade Organization when direct trade, transport and communication links will become inevitable.

Politically, the PFP plays down ideology. “We are Taiwanese, we are also Chinese. Both sides are part of a ‘whole China.’ Taiwan is by no means part of the People’s Republic of China.” It goes on:

“Both sides possess absolute jurisdiction over the area of their effective control, and both sides enjoy ‘relative rights and obligations’ regarding international

Soong pointed out correctly that the conflict between Taiwan and the mainland stems from the “difference in systems,” having nothing to do with racial or cultural differences. To resolve the conflict, it is important to respect the political difference and to bridge the gap gradually and peacefully. “Economic cooperation is the best starting point to narrow down the difference,” the PFP says.