10:21
MUSTRALIAN CONSULATE GEiermL M. K
852 ber
انال
4-
Though this was a showpiece,
is clearly a showpiece jail. it is actually a working centre.
I just want to conclude my remarks and then we will be open to questions and other members of the delgation will be free to make their own comments to you. I think this delegation, like the first, was a success in the terms that we set ourselves, which was to continue a dialogue and lock the Chinese into having that dialogue. We hope that we can
make a third visit in the intermediate future, in the next year or 80. We certainly issued an invitation to the Chinese that a delegation from the Tibetan Autonomous Region visit Australia to discuss human rights issues in the next twelve months and also a more general delegation from China under the auspices of PIFA, the People's Institute for Foreign Affairs, with a range of people who were involved in administration in the area of human rights can come to Australia. Last year we got no response to those invitations to come to Australia. There now seems to be a much more enthusiastic consideration that a delegation can come and certainly a number of officials privately indicated that they very much would like to Australia in that dialogue process.
We understand prior to our arrival here some informal approach was actually made from Tibet to Australia for a delegation to come and we certainly want to take that up and ensure that that occurs. Once these delegations start exchanging I think that it further enhances an ongoing dialogue and discussion can continue. In that atmosphere there is no doubt that the impact of the decisions of the 14th Congress have certainly loosened people up and loosened the attitude up about where China is going when you get phrases put to you by very senior officials that "China now has a market economy where survival of the fittest in economic terms is now on the agenda". One thought you were listening to Adam Smith talking about the wealth of nations than senior officials with a Marxist ideology. But all their commitment is to economic reform - they insist they will remain open to the world, that China is going out to the world, open to the world all of that to me indirectly means that the chance is to continue to promote human rights issues in China will be enhanced. Privately, many of their officials accept that there will have to be changes and further reforms are inevitable once you keep changing the economy. For example, in a long discussion in Shanghai with the senior officer of the Personnel department about the personnel dossier system that is kept on everybody, they admitted that the market reforms, the greater mobility of labour, State enterprises, corporate enterprises, private enterprises mean that the personnel dossier system has evolved from back in the 1950s is no longer going to be able to operate that way. That it is now too complex in the structure of a market economy to have a simple dossier on a
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