Contra Costa Times

April 14, 2001 

"China must apologize"

How well has the Bush administration handled the China spy plane incident? It has done OK, because the Bush administration has not fully apologized.

However, in China, they think that the United States has apologized fully. China should be the one to apologize for demanding an apology from the United States, before the facts of the incident have been established. If later it is established that the Chinese pilot is at fault, China should also apologize.

Unfortunately, China has never apologized for anything. The Chinese government should apologize for the killing and imprisonment of many Chinese during the cultural revolution.

The Chinese government should apologize for killing Chinese students at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The Chinese government should stop imprisoning Falun Gong members (some died in prison) and apologize. The Chinese government should apologize for firing missiles near Taiwan to intimidate it in 1996.

China enjoyed permanent normalized trade relations, while they held our personnel and airplane hostage. What can we do now? We should not buy goods made in China at least until there is a satisfactory settlement of this incident.

Ken Lin

Danville