Beijing's Envoy to India: China and India Are Friends

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, June 12, 2003

Beijing's Envoy to India: China and India Are Friends

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Beijing's envoy to India said recently that the common interests between China and India outweighs the disputes, so the two countries are friends, instead of rivals. And an article in the "Study Times" urged China to work on laws of information transparency saying that people have the right to know the truth.

An article published in India-based Sify News urged New Delhi to view China not as a rival but as a partner. The article, titled "Partners, Not Rivals", comes ahead of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's upcoming visit to China from June 22 to 26.

In the article, China's envoy to India, Hua Junduo, saw the "inadequacy in mutual understanding" between the people of India and China as the main stumbling block in normalizing relations.

He noted that many Chinese know about India only from disaster reports on TV and are ignorant of India's success in the fields of agriculture, industry, software and high-tech. And similarly, Indians are unaware of what their neighbor is like these days.

Furthermore, India and China have a series of territorial disputes. But since the early 1990s, New Delhi and Beijing have stepped up efforts to improve ties via a flurry of high-level exchanges.

The last visit by an Indian Prime Minister to China was a decade ago in 1993, when the two sides inked the historic Peace and Tranquility Agreement on border demarcation in Beijing.

India-based Sify News quotes Hua Junduo's view that China's new leadership has declared Beijing will persist in the policy of being friendly and good partners with neighbors.

An article in the Chinese newspaper "Study Times" urged the country to work on laws of information transparency, saying that people have the right to know.

The newspaper, run by the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, noted the daily briefing of the SARS situation in China is helping dispel rumors and increase citizens' confidence in the government.

It said without adequate information about the work of the government, people would find it difficult to believe and trust the government.

Another drawback from hiding information from the public is that people would be unable to see what the government is doing and thereby lose faith in them. After all, they are supposed to represent the people and hence should be transparent about their activities and decisions.

The article said establishing a transparent information system and protecting people's right to know has become a new trend of the modern democracy development.

Recently, much of the Chinese media has thrown a spotlight on the story about a teacher in central China that has won a landmark sexual harassment case.

The lawyer for the victim told reporters it is the first time a Chinese court has ruled in favor of a plaintiff in a sexual harassment case.

The case was also covered by the Associated Press, which quotes legal experts as saying China's laws are insufficient because they require plaintiffs to produce direct evidence of harassment.

AP's article implied that even though this one particular case proved successful for the plaintiff, there is still a long way to go before people have the courage to file a complaint and the legal system comes up with a fair and sensible way of dealing with cases like this.

The woman is a teacher at a business school and filed a suit in July 2002 accusing her former supervisor of sexually harassing her beginning in late 2000. (CRI News)

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