DATE=09/30/2002

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01199 Short #2

TITLE=U.S-CHINA RELATIONS

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0037

CONTENT=INSERTS IN DALET AND AUDIO SERVICES

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: This is On the Line, and I'm --------. China is preparing for its sixteenth Communist Party Congress in November. The Party Congress is expected to anoint a new generation of leaders and set the direction of Chinese politics and policies for years to come. The Congress will take place at a time when tensions between the United States and China have eased as a result of cooperation in the war on terrorism.

Dimon Liu is a human rights activist. She says that China has a complicated relationship with the United States.

Liu: On the one hand, it needs the United States; it needs its market. Because of the sheer size of China, the European market is not going to do it for China, if it wants to continue its economic expansion. On the other hand, the philosophy of its communist government is so fundamentally different from the United States. And currently China is a giant Enron [a corrupt, bankrupt company] with nuclear capability and a two-point-five million [man] army. The only reason its economy has not collapsed is because its military might intimidates its population and impresses foreigners. Its collapse is not a matter of if, but when.

Host: Gordon Chang is author of a book called "The Coming Collapse of China." He says that the Communist leadership can no longer sustain economic progress.

Chang: I don't think they can take economic reform very much further. W-T-O [World Trade Association] accession really means that they agree to join the world on the world's terms. And I don't think that the state-owned enterprises and the state-owned banks are really ready to live up to those commitments.

Host: Claude Barfield is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. He says the U.S. cannot predict what will happen in China.

Barfield: I think the United States had better be prepared, however, for the foreseeable future, to have to deal with this regime and take things as they come. And that has to do with both the diplomatic and security situation that we face post nine-eleven [the date of the terrorist attacks on America], as well as their membership in the W-T-O. We can't control whether China will or will not collapse.

Host: Chinese leader Jiang Zemin will meet with President George W. Bush October 25th at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. For On the Line, I'm --------------.