German president slams communism during China visit
shanghai — Germany’s president condemned the illegitimacy of communist rule in East Germany while on a visit to China on Wednesday, lauding the benefits of human rights in a provocative speech to Shanghai university students.
China has been ruled by the Communist Party as a one-party state since 1949.
Drawing on Germany’s history and his own life in the former East Germany, President Joachim Gauck, whose role is largely ceremonial, condemned “dictatorship” to students at Shanghai’s prestigious Tongji University.
“Most people were neither happy nor liberated,” he said of Communist East Germany. “And the entire system lacked proper legitimacy.
“Free, equal and secret public elections were not held. The result was a lack of credibility, which went hand in hand with a culture of distrust between the rulers and those they ruled,” he added, according to an official English translation of his speech.
“It was a state that, as part of the union of Communist countries dependent on the Soviet Union, silenced its own people, locked them up and humiliated those who refused to comply with the will of the leaders.”
His outspoken comments are a marked contrast to most diplomatic visitors to China, who prefer to focus in public on the benefits of trade ties with the world’s second-largest economy.
Gauck, who was in the commercial hub Shanghai as part of an official visit, said Germany was “concerned” about recent news regarding China’s civil society, though he gave no specific examples. “Vibrant and active civil society always means an innovative and flexible society,” he said.
He also told the students that academic freedom could benefit society. “A university has to be a place of unhampered research and free and frank discussion,” he said, speaking in German with translation into Chinese to an audience of around 100 students
Most people (in Communist East Germany) were neither happy nor liberated. And the entire system lacked proper legitimacy.
Joachim Gauck, German President
and professors. “This freedom is a precious commodity.”
Gauck said the Nazis and Communist-ruled East Germany distrusted free trade unions, but such institutions for workers had later helped support Germany’s economic development.
China has only one trade union, which is controlled by the government.
Gauck dismissed the notion that human rights as outlined under a United Nations declaration were a “Western product”.
“Even if the universal applicability of human rights does not yet mean that every person can de facto enjoy those rights... they can nonetheless lay claim to them,” he said.
In Beijing, the foreign ministry sought to play down his comments. “China and Germany have different cultures and political systems,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters.