解放军文职招聘考试Bill Clinton's Remark at Beijing University (I)

Bill Clinton's Remark at Beijing University (I)

I come here today to talk to you, the next genera­tion of China's leaders, about the critical importance to your future of building a strong partnership between China and the United States.

The American people deeply admire China for its thousands of years of contributions to culture and reli­gion, to philosophy and the arts, to science and tech­nology. We remember well our strong partnership in World War II. Now we see China at a moment in his­tory when your glorious past is matched by your present sweeping transformation and the even greater promise of your future.

Just three decades ago, China was virtually shut off from the world. Now, China is a member of more than 1,000 international organizations—enterprises that affect everything from air travel to agricultural develop­ment. You have opened your nation to trade and in­vestment on a large scale. Today, 40,000 young Chi­nese study in the United States, with hundreds of thou­sands more learning in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Lat in America.

Your social and economic transformation has been even more remarkable, moving from a closed command economic system to a driving, increasingly market-based and driven economy, generating two decades of unprecedented growth, giving people greater freedom to travel within and outside China, to vote in village elec­tions, own a home, choose a job, attend a better school. As a result you have lifted literally hundreds of millions of people from poverty. Per capita income has more than doubled in the last decade. Most Chinese people are leading lives they could not have imagined just 20 years ago.

Of course, these changes have also brought dis­ruptions in settled patterns of life and work, and have imposed enormous strains on your environment. Once every urban Chinese was guaranteed employment in a state enterprise. Now you must compete in a job mar­ket. Once a Chinese worker had only to meet the de­mands of central planner in Beijing. Now the global economy means all must match the quality and creativity of the rest of the world. For those who lack the right training and skills and support, this new world can be daunting.

In the short term, good, hardworking people— some, at least—will find themselves unemployed. And, as all of you can see, there have been enormous environmental and economic and health care costs to the development pattern and the energy use pattern of the last 20 years—from air pollution to deforestation to acid rain and water shortage.

In the face of these challenges, new systems of training and social security will have to be devised, and new environmental policies and technologies will have to be introduced with the goal of growing your economy while improving the environment. Everything I know about the intelligence, the ingenuity, the enter­prise of the Chinese people and everything I have heard these last few days in my discussions with President Jiang, Prime Minister Zhu and others give me confi­dence that you will succeed.