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The Sichuan Provincial Peoples Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (SIFA) received Ms. Janice Dickson, president of the Scotland-China Association (SCA) from April 3 to 5. Ms. Dickson, an old friend of the CPAFFC and the SIFA, leads a delegation to visit China every year and has been to Sichuan several times. She came this time at the head of a China-Britain Business Council delegation that had come to study the investment environment of Chengdu. She stayed in Chengdu for two more days after the delegation left the city and had working meetings with SIFA leaders.

SIFA President Qin Lin met with Ms. Dickson and briefed her on the economic and social development of Sichuan in the past 30 years since Chinas reform and opening up and the situation of the Tibetan-populated areas of Sichuan. Ms. Dickson was very concerned about the beating, smashing, looting and arson taking place in Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas of Sichuan in March this year and stated her disagreement with the groundless censure of China by the Western media.

Ms. Dickson said, Tibet is an inalienable part of China. The riots in Lhasa and Tibetan-populated areas of Sichuan and Gansu were not accidental, but organized and prepared with the aims of harming Chinas image and disrupting the Beijing Olympic Games. She said that she had read a lot of reports in the Western media before the visit. After arriving in China she read reports in the Chinese media, and learned a different picture of what had happened in Lhasa. She was convinced that the reports by the Western media were one-sided and their conclusions wrong. What happened in Lhasa are violent crimes. Such violence is not tolerated in any country and the government must intervene to stop it.

She noted, questions concerning ethnic groups and religions exist in many countries. The British people are victims of terrorist organizations; the majority of the British people oppose using sanguinary acts of violence to split the country. The SCA has organized its members to visit Tibet several times. They have seen with their own eyes the changes in Tibet and held that the Chinese Government shows concern and care for the Tibetan people and respects and protects the Tibetan religion and culture.

She said, many members of the current delegation visited China for the first time. They had good impressions of the Chengdu High-New Technology Development Zone West Area, where they saw good planning and management. Especially after listening to the briefing by a British venture there, they concluded that the investment environment in Chengdu is good.