BANGKOK -- "He was a very good friend of China," said Terry Branstad, the U.S. ambassador in Beijing, when news arrived of the death of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush on Friday.
Branstad called for a moment of silence on Saturday during a luncheon address to Committee of 100, a nonprofit organization formed in 1990 by Chinese-Americans. It served as a bridge between the two countries in the fallout from the Tiananmen Square incident in June 1989, when the authorities in Beijing killed hundreds of demonstrators.
