Cheney chides China on reforms

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

SEOUL -- Vice President Dick Cheney called on China to match its economic changes with political reform, and he warned yesterday that the failure to resolve the North Korea crisis could trigger a nuclear arms race in Asia.

"Freedom is not divisible," Mr. Cheney said during a speech to students at Fudan University in Shanghai. "If people can be trusted to invest and manage material assets, they will eventually be asked why they cannot be trusted with decisions over what to say and what to believe."

The vice president praised communist China's economic reforms in the past 30 years but said people with economic prosperity also want "greater freedom in expressing their views and choosing their leaders."

Mr. Cheney's remarks were an unusually blunt criticism of China's communist rulers. They have refused to initiate democratic reforms, despite loosening economic controls, fearing greater political freedom will unleash instability in a nation with 1.3 billion people.

According to U.S. officials in Shanghai, China's state-run television broadcast Mr. Cheney's speech live and did not use a 90-second delay to censor it. In the past, censors have cut objectionable comments made by U.S. officials speaking in China.

Regarding North Korea's nuclear program, Mr. Cheney said resolving this is "one of the most serious problems" in Northeast Asia.

Allowing the regime in Pyongyang to have nuclear weapons likely will lead to nuclear weapons and missile proliferation in the region, he said.

"There are nations in the region that have the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons but they have not done so," said Mr. Cheney, who made clear current talks are designed to persuade North Korea to give up its arms.

"But if North Korea becomes a nuclear power, and has ballistic missiles, which it does, and has the ability to threaten other nations in the region with nuclear weapons, then those nations may conclude that their only option is to develop their own capability. And then we'd have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia and that's not good for anyone."

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have the technical infrastructure and resources to build nuclear arms and missiles, according to nuclear experts.