Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-07-15-Speech-3-165"
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"en.20090715.11.3-165"2
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"Mr President, this House has long been critical of the People’s Republic of China for its treatment of ethnic minorities. The Uighurs of Xinjiang Province have suffered more than most, particularly since the occupation of East Turkestan by the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
The People’s Republic claims that it does not seek territorial expansion. History shows that in East Turkestan, Tibet and Taiwan, under Communist rule it has sought to rule and to subjugate. That is the reason why the European Union must not lift the arms embargo on China.
For a European Prime Minister to refer to the reaction to the latest unrest as ‘genocide’ is perhaps an exaggeration, but for the People’s Republic to complain of interference in internal affairs betrays a world view which is touchingly antiquated. If the contours of the world economy are drawn in the computer campuses of West Coast America, in the call centres of India, in the factories of China, if major decisions can be communicated from Beijing to Brussels in a nanosecond, we have become truly one global community, and there is no room in this community for repression or subjugation on the basis of race or religion or ethnicity; no room for Islamophobia or for anti-Semitism or any other kind of hatred.
China’s problems stem in this instance from the greying of the middle kingdom. They need more young people to work elsewhere, similar to the problems we face here in the European Union. I saw this when I visited Urumqi four years ago. But the People’s Republic will find that it needs policies to protect economic migrants, policies to recognise the legitimate demands of ethnic minorities, just as we do.
Here, Mr Bildt, is a role for the European Union. We know that as democracies mature, so they become more willing to allow people self-government and self-determination. Indeed, the biggest problems in Europe are found in the younger democracies, like Spain and Hungary. We need to help the Chinese people, who are quite capable of living in democracy – as Taiwan and Hong Kong show – to match their growing economic strength with a growing political maturity in developing democracy and help them develop the policies to match, policies like Erasmus Mundus, policies of which the Commissioner has spoken to increase people-to-people exchange. I am convinced that the European Union can play an important role in working with China to these ends."@en1
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