[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 91 (Thursday, June 24, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H4880-H4881]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               IN OPPOSITION TO WORLD BANK LOAN TO CHINA

  (Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous 
material.)
  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, today the World Bank is about to decide 
whether to give China a loan to help in its efforts to colonize 
occupied Tibet with Chinese. Beijing's scheme with the Bank's approval 
would use $160 million to pay for the relocation of poor Chinese 
farmers onto the Tibetan Plateau.
  Editorials in the Washington Post, the Washington Times and the New 
York Times have urged the Bank not to go through with this project. I 
request that copies of these editorials be included in the Record.
  The U.S. Treasury announced on Tuesday that it is going to oppose the 
loan. Chinese officials have demarched embassies in Beijing with 
threats of economic repercussions if member states vote to oppose the 
loan. Twelve bank board members have cosigned a letter to President 
Wolfensohn expressing opposition to this project. Activists and 
parliamentarians from around the globe have deluged the World Bank with 
letters and e-mail messages opposing the loan. Over 60 Members of this 
Chamber signed a letter to the President of the Bank urging him to 
reject the loan.
  For Tibetans this is not development or poverty alleviation, it is 
cultural genocide. This project will lead to increased ethnic tension 
and conflict over access to scarce natural resources. I ask my 
colleagues to join in opposition to this loan.
  Mr. Speaker, today the World Bank will decide whether or not to give 
China a loan to help it in its efforts to colonize occupied Tibet with 
Chinese. Beijing's scheme with the Bank's approval would use 160 
million dollars to pay for the relocation of poor Chinese farmers onto 
the Tibetan Plateau.
  This week, editorials in the Washington Post, the Washington Times 
and the New York Times urged that the Bank not go through with the 
loan. I ask that copies of the editorials be placed in the Record.
  The U.S. announced on Tuesday that it will oppose the loan.
  Chinese officials have demarched embassies in Beijing with threats of 
economic repercussions if member states vote to oppose the loan.
  Twelve Bank Board members have co-signed a letter to President 
Wolfensohn expressing opposition to the loan project.
  Activists and parliamentarians from around the globe have deluged the 
World Bank with letters and e-mail messages opposing the loan.
  Over sixty Members of this chamber signed a letter to the President 
of the Bank urging him to reject the loan.
  China's population transfer program is a long-standing effort to 
resettle Chinese in Tibet to increase its assimilation.
  The World Bank loan would be the first time international financing, 
including U.S. dollars would be funding population transfer.
  For Tibetans, it is not development or poverty alleviation, it is 
cultural genocide.
  The World Bank, in violation of World Bank policy, failed to make an 
environmental analysis available to the public before the project went 
to appraisal.
  The Bank also failed to undertake a full environmental assessment, 
provided no accounting of the impact on indigenous Tibetan and 
Mongolian peoples in the resettlement area, and neglected to evaluate 
the impact on fragile natural habitats.
  The project will likely lead to increased ethnic tension and conflict 
over access to scarce natural resources.
  And opposition to the project could land Tibetans in a Chinese 
prison. The official Chinese news agency has labeled opposition to the 
resettlement as a part of an ``anti-China'' plot.
  Mr. Speaker, the World Bank has been placed on notice that it has to 
stay out of politics. It should stick to its mandate of poverty 
alleviation and not disenfranchise people who are struggling for their 
very existence.
  China is one of the major recipients of World Bank money. It should 
not be dictating to terms of the loans to anyone.

               [From the Washington Post, June 22, 1999]

                      The U.N.'s New China Project

       The World Bank's technical people, having launched 31 
     ``poverty reduction projects'' in China, saw no problem with 
     No. 32. That is why, incredibly, only when British Tibet 
     advocates started spreading the word seven or eight weeks ago 
     did the bank learn of the project's political aspect: It 
     would resettle some 60,000 poor Chinese farmers on land 
     Tibetans say is traditionally theirs.
       The word offended the bank's biggest shareholder, the 
     United States. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, expressing 
     doubt about the staff-proposed $160 million loan, has said he 
     is ``inclined'' to oppose it. Needless to say, the bank's 
     largest borrower, China, is also among the offended. It has 
     threatened to ``reevaluate its relationship with the bank'' 
     if the project does not unfold as planned.
       The World Bank's board is due to vote on the question 
     today. From an American standpoint, any vote on the merits 
     has to be a simple one. As the Tibet lobbyists say, the 
     project puts the bank in the position of underwriting the 
     resettlement of Han Chinese and Chinese Muslims into a 
     traditionally Tibetan and Mongolian area on the Tibetan 
     plateau. Had this factor been fed into deliberations in a 
     more timely fashion, no doubt the project would have been 
     handled differently. It becomes a political embarrassment to 
     deal with the project now. But it is an unavoidable and 
     manageable embarrassment. The World Bank cannot accidentally 
     become the instrument of a Chinese policy that affects the 
     survival of Tibetans as a distinct people and culture.
       The bank itself has a structural problem. The line between 
     technical and political is obviously too sharp. Or the bank 
     has been slow to grasp that decentralization works poorly 
     when a heavy burden of accountability is devolved upon 
     countries such as China that do not provide adequately for a 
     free flow of information or for a space for dissent.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Times, June 22, 1999]

                  Ethnic Cleansing and the World Bank

       In a stunning display of insensitivity towards the plight 
     of the Tibetan people, today the World Bank board is 
     scheduled to vote on a project that would grant the Chinese 
     government a $160 million loan to resettle 57,775 Han Chinese 
     and Chinese Muslims farmers into a historically Tibetan 
     territory. The move is being defended by China and the

[[Page H4881]]

     World Bank as a simple initiative to give poor farmers 
     greater access to arable land. The undeniable byproduct of 
     such a project would be to undercut Tibetan territory and 
     dilute the Tibetan culture.
       It seems inconceivable that in the wake of NATO's air 
     campaign to enforce human rights in Yugoslavia, the World 
     Bank would fund an ethnic cleansing initiative in China. This 
     is what the World Bank project would amount to if approved, 
     however.
       ``In order to consolidate control over Tibetan areas, the 
     Chinese government has undertaken a policy of moving Chinese 
     citizens into these areas,'' 60 congressmen said in a letter 
     to World Bank President James Wolfensohn. The project would 
     ``facilitate the Chinese government's destructive transfer 
     policy.'' The administration, on the other hand, has failed 
     to voice clear opposition to the project. U.S. Treasury 
     Secretary Robert Rubin said he was ``inclined'' to oppose it. 
     He should try to incline himself to muster vigorous 
     opposition.
       The area in which the project would be carried out has the 
     highest concentration of prisoners of any single county in 
     China. According to John Ackerly, a spokesperson for 
     International Campaign for Tibet, the bank would inevitably 
     support prison labor by working in such a territory. The bank 
     would have to depend on either prison labor itself or on 
     goods produced by that labor, Mr. Ackerly added.
       Not so, claims the World Bank. David Theis, chief of the 
     World Bank's external affairs, said that local and provincial 
     Chinese authorities assured the bank no ``prison labor will 
     be involved or benefit from this project.'' Somehow, these 
     assurances are not comforting.
       The World Bank is also accused of running roughshod over 
     its own environmental guidelines to give the loan swift 
     approval. The bank insists that it gave the project a 
     rigorous environmental review, but circumstantial evidence 
     isn't supportive. China, due to its economical development of 
     the past few years, will no longer be eligible for loans 
     doled out by the bank's International Development Association 
     after July 1. These loans are typically interest free and 
     paid over a 40 year period. Interestingly, the vote on the 
     project was scheduled suspiciously close to the cut off date 
     and the project's environmental review was conducted swifter 
     than most.
       Unsurprisingly, China is allegedly pushing hard to get the 
     loan approved. Apart from the obvious economic benefits, the 
     loan would effectively grant the regime an international 
     rubber stamp of its relocation policy. The regime has 
     threatened reevaluated its relationship with the bank if the 
     loan isn't approved. The World Bank should make clear it is 
     free to do so.
       The bank has long been derided for aiding and abetting 
     corrupt and spendthrift regimes. It surely doesn't want to be 
     labeled the benefactor of ethnic cleansing campaigns. The 
     board should vote down the project today.
                                  ____


                [From The New York Times, June 23, 1999]

                          Loan for a Land Grab

       The World Bank's board of executive directors ought to 
     reject a loan package to China that would be used to relocate 
     about 58,000 impoverished Chinese and Hui Muslim farmers to a 
     remote area on the Tibetan plateau traditionally inhabited by 
     Tibetans and Mongolians. In the past, China has used 
     migration policies to tighten control over Tibetan areas and 
     to diminish the viability of the distinct Tibetan culture. 
     The World Bank should not be in the business of financing 
     this destructive scheme.
       The Chinese Government has rejected criticism of the 
     project and insists on going forward. But approving this loan 
     may violate the bank's own guidelines for assessing the 
     social and environmental impacts of its projects. Dozens of 
     international environmental groups, Tibetan activists and 60 
     members of Congress have written to James Wolfensohn, 
     president of the World Bank, to oppose the resettlement. The 
     Clinton Administration also announced its opposition 
     yesterday.
       The ostensible purpose of the project is to give 
     desperately poor farmers in Western China a better life. But 
     this plan would move them from badly eroded land to a barren 
     high-altitude plain, currently used by nomads, that is itself 
     environmentally fragile. Even though the project would 
     involve construction of a dam and extensive irrigation works, 
     it did not receive a full environmental assessment. Nor does 
     it appear that the plan fully complies with World Bank 
     policies designed to protect ethnic minorities and indigenous 
     peoples from the adverse effects of development.
       The World Bank has worked hard to overcome its reputation 
     for insensitivity to local cultural and ecological concerns. 
     Approval of this loan would be a significant step backward.

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