Crackdown cruel—Nixon

Press, 26 June 1989, Page 10

Crackdown cruel —Nixon

NZPA-AFP Hong Kong

The former United States President, Richard Nixon, called China’s brutal military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators “shockingly cruel and incredibly stupid” in an article published in Hong Kong.

The executions of activists and workers “deepened our revulsion, leading even China’s friends to question the rationality of a regime that would go forward with such brutality,” Mr Nixon said in an article published by the

"South China Morning Post.”

Mr Nixon went to China for the first time in 1972, in a historic visit which opened China to Western contact.

He cautioned against imposing sanctions against China, especially as Peking has recently normalised relations with Moscow.

“If in our anger, we drive China back into the shadows of the Soviet Union and the oppressive economic system Deng Xiao-ping has tried to re-

form, those who fell in Tiananmen Square will truly have died in vain,” he said.

Further sanctions by the United States would effectively close the door to China that Washington opened in 1972, he said, warning that the “Kremlin gates now stand open.” He said a “strong and stable” China was vital to peace in the Pacific region.

Mr Nixon said many people in the West had lost sight of the fact that China since 1949 has had

a communist dictatorship “held together by brute force.”

He said, “No one who knows China should be surprised when its leaders turn to violence to pursue their political goals. They have done far worse before Tiananmen Square,” he said.

“Hundreds of thousands, some Chinese claim millions, died in Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Twenty million died in the wake of the brutal forced collectivisation known as the Great Leap Forward.”