CONFIDENTIAL
Guangdong power project) would not be affected. He nevertheless asked for our assessment, while in London of anti-nuclear sentiment in Britain and Hong Kong (this will be covered in his meeting with
Mr Walker on 9 June).
5.
China has frequently reiterated its opposition to all forms of terrorism, and claims no longer to provide material support for communist insurgent groups in SE Asia. Nevertheless, China condemned the US raid on Libya (and blames Middle Eastern terrorism on US and Israeli policies). Hu Yaobang admitted to Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney last month that China's position reflected the need not to offend Arab countries. He told our Ambassador in Peking that the roots of terrorism lay in social conditions, and police methods alone would never eliminate them.
5. Premier Zhao has recently described the present period as China's best in foreign policy since the founding of the PRC in 1949. There are plans for Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang and Wu Xuegian to visit a total of at least eighteen Western and Eastern European countries within three months this summer. The Chinese continue to see Western and Eastern Europe as a political counterweight to the superpowers. They want closer relations between them.
Hu Yaobang and Foreign Policy
On
7. Hu Yaobang's profile on international questions has during the last three years been rising rapidly. He has visited North Korea, Australia, New Zealand and a number of South Pacific countries. these and other occasions he has increasingly made important statements about Chinese foreign policy. These have however occasionally backfired through his tendency to speak off the cuff to the press: a remark at a press conference last year led to the abandonment of plans for a US naval visit to China.
CONFIDENTIAL
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.