"The Sichuan earthquake showed how much China has changed and offered a glimpse of its future: a more open and self-confident nation. The political aftershocks from this defining moment in China's history will be felt long after the ground has ceased to tremble."

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, in his speech at the Asian Security Conference on May 30

"Dear Grandpa Hu and Grandpa Wen, your love to the quake-affected in Sichuan has again won worldwide respect for China, I hope all the leaders of other countries can also make it this way in their administration."

Hannah Rudoff, a 12-year-old student from the Department of Chinese Studies at the Portland International School, Oregon, in a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao

"We call on you to take immediate action to address the world food crisis by mobilizing emergency funding to prevent starvation, removing perverse incentives to turn food into biofuels and managing financial speculation."

Declaration of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization summit in Rome on June 3-5, which was convened for discussing measures to stop the spread of hunger threatening nearly 1 billion people

"We have been committed to improving human rights not on the premise of the will of any nation, group, organization or individual, nor because of a certain activity to be held that makes us concede to the human rights issue."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, responding to a question about whether U.S. President George Bush's attendance at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics would make China concede on human rights issues at a news briefing in Beijing on June 3