'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
''It is not every day that the queen and the British prime minister welcome a state leader who ordered his troops to mow down unarmed civilians." So begins a British newspaper report by eminent China scholar and editor Jonathan Mirsky on the visit of Hu Jintao to England in 2001. At the time, Mr. Hu was only No. 2 in China.
Mr. Mirsky wondered what briefing notes the United Kingdom's Foreign Office sent around, because Mr. Hu's official biography as released by the Chinese Communist Party is pretty innocuous.
Mr. Hu declared martial law in Lhasa and "Chinese security officers, under orders from Party Secretary Hu, opened fire for three days, killing somewhere between 100 and 700 Tibetans," Mr. Mirsky wrote.
