Thank you very much, Mr. Patry.
I referred to the lack of transparency in the past as a weakness. I was referring to the report, which, in a sense, talked about a wide range of things. In this case I believe we need to open up the system more. The question is, I'm not sure which report. I think I'm talking about the Burton report here.
I felt in that report, which I only had a chance to see just recently because it wasn't easily available, that people like me never knew anything about these human rights dialogues--and I've only been in the field for 40 years. Not that I necessarily had something that profound to say, but at least I felt that the circle of people who were involved was a little too narrow, and we needed to broaden the base.
There is always a risk. I know why they did it. They were afraid of bringing in advocacy groups that might disrupt the process. But I think this is a real challenge. How do you include and what do you exclude? We were excluded, I think. I'm not saying I should be included, but there should be a broader base for this.
On the subject of what comes first, I thought I made it fairly clear. I think you can't really move to deal with human rights until you have an effectively functioning political system, one where the political culture is already changing--that's not the case in China, as it's still an authoritarian political culture--where people begin to respect the rights of the individual, and that's not been the case in China.
The focus of politics, of law, is the individual's right to property and to defend his or her right to property--his or her own person and property in general--and to be protected by the rule of law. You need an infrastructure to get to that before we run around talking about giving this person more political rights. You can't enforce those rights without these kinds of values and institutions. That's what I meant.