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The only thing I'd say is, they do have a point. It's taken Britain 150 years and it seems they only want to do it when they are going to hand it over to somebody else. I think Britain would have been credibility-wise in a much stronger position if they had done this 30 or 40 years ago.
Question:
China yesterday came out to attack a few foreign countries including Australia for backing the Governor's reforms. What do you have to say about this?
Senator Schacht: The fact that they are attacking us, I think means we are on the right side, we're doing the correct thing. And so what? Just because we're being attacked by any country in defending free elections, parliamentary democracy, political pluralism, well then that's what we're in the game for. That's Australia and our policy of human rights, and of democratic rights. So if the Chinese attack us, then that's their business but we will not back off on that position anywhere. We've been attacked by many countries in Asia for the impertinence of suggesting there ought to be democratic reform. So it doesn't concern me that China is attacking us as Australia for supporting that position, what concerns me is the future of Hong Kong and the democratic, whatever form it is by 1997, and how it goes over when it's reunited with China.
Professor Tay:
In terms of the prospects for human rights in China generally, I would say this, and in response to the last two questions, I would comment that the Chinese leadership, individually and collectively, are not a monolith. They also have many faces. They're prepared to play the bully when they think they can get away with it, and they're prepared to be very subtle and confusion when it suits them. This is why it is difficult to say that one is optimistic about improvements in human rights, but what else can one do but slog on? And as I have said before in different places, the more contact the Chinese as a group, as individuals, in institutions of education and other places, have with people like ourselves and the more there are of people like ourselves going there and showing our concern and our perception and our criticism, the better. And there are signs that these exposures do leave some mark. But it's a very big country, it's a very complex country, it's a country with a lot of problems that have to be tackled at the same time in different directions. only reach a few. I have myself sought to reach that few over ten years before Tiananmen Square by spending three to five weeks a year lecturing in out of the way places, to lawyers, to cadres and so on. And ten years later, well I actually refused to go back, I cancelled trips after- Tiananmen Square, and when I went back again with this delegation I have found people who had heard me at lectures, ten years later, eight years later, holding not so junior positions, medium range positions, in bureaucracy, in the
We can
Don't be a
bludger, Shachtee!