People Have the Right to Know

Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in the US

733 15^th Street NW, Suite 700, Washington D.C. 20005; Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

October 4, 2002

For Immediate Release

Yi, Danxuan
Tel: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]

According to a front-page report of People's Daily (Ren Min Ri Bao) on December 11, 1999, Jiang Zemin signed a border treaty with Russia. The Chinese government has not disclosed terms of this treaty so far.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that the border issues between China and Kazakhstan were completely settled. China's president Jiang Zemin signed a border treaty with Kazakhstan on April 26, 1994, and two supplements on September 24, 1997 and July 4, 1998 respectively. China did not disclose terms of these treaties, either.

On May 20, 2002, China and Tajikistan Republic issued a joint statement that the historical bilateral border issues were completely settled, but the treaty's terms were still undisclosed.

Historical border conflicts between China and Russia and former Soviet Union include the following three parts:

The first part comes from uneven treaties the Qing Dynasty signed with Russia. For 9 out of many treaties they signed, China's past leadership has never acknowledged them. The 9 treaties were relevant to land of about 1.5 million square kilometers.

The second part is: before China became a republic, Russia forcefully occupied about 400,000 square kilometers of land. None of the past Chinese governments, including the Manchu, Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party acknowledged that.

After inception of the People's Republic of China, the former Soviet Union took some land from China with military power. The spokesperson of China stated in October 1978, that Russia took 185 square kilometers of land during 1960 and 1969, and 1080 square kilometers during 1972 and 1977. He also pointed out that Russia took 3,475 square kilometers of land from China in addition to areas with bilateral border issue conflicts.

As Chinese citizens, we have the right to know the contents of those treaties and how these historical border issues have been "completely settled." How much land does not belong to China any more?

According to article 7 of China's Law of procedures of signing treaties, any land or border related treaties should be discussed and passed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. In addition, these treaties should also be registered at the United Nations and thus become public information, according to the Charter of the United Nations.

We demand that the signer, Mr. Jiang Zemin, disclose detailed contents of these treaties. In addition, we demand that he follow China's law, and submit the treaties to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for discussion and voting.

China belongs to the people of China. We cannot accept concealment and deceit.

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Yi Danxuan

President of Independent Federation of Chinese
Students and Scholars in the US
Washington, DC