From: xu@hydra.maths.unsw.oz.au ()
Subject: CND-GLOBAL, December 25, 1992
Organization: school of Mathematics UNSW
Distribution: aus
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 01:09:58 GMT


               * * *  C h i n a   N e w s   D i g e s t  * * *

                                (News Global)

                          Saturday, December 26, 1992


Table of Contents                                                 # of Lines
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1. News Brief (4 Items) ................................................. 32
2. U.S. INS Officials Worried About Tide of Boatpeople from China ...... 106
3. China, the Last Frontier for Chip Makers ............................ 115
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1. News Brief (4 Items) ................................................. 32
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[China Radio International (C.R.I.), 12/25/1992] -- The Israeli President
Herzog arrived in Beijing Thursday morning for a 6 day state-visit. It's the
first Israeli head of state to visit China. China and Israel established
diplomatic ties in January this year. Yang Shangkun met with Herzog Thursday
afternoon. (Forwarded by: Andrew Waldie <awaldie@web.apc.org>)
                                ___ ___ ___

[AP, 12/24/1992] MOSCOW -- Having forced Boris Yeltsin to soften his
economic reforms, hard-liners are now pressing for changes in foreign policy
they say is too subservient to the West. The country's standing legislature
has demanded Moscow take a more sympathetic line toward Serbs in former
Yugoslavia. A shift in focus from the West already has begun with recent
Yeltsin trips to China and South Korea. While changes have been subtle,
deeper shifts could be forced on Yeltsin and his embattled foreign minister,
Andrei Kozyrev.

Yeltsin himself has undercut Kozyrev. Last week, he signed an order giving
more power over foreign affairs to Yuri Skokov, the respected but secretive
chairman of the president's Security Council. (Forwarded by: Zhao Hua)
                                ___ ___ ___

[C.R.I, 12/25/92 and AP-DJ 12/23/1992] -- Foreign loans to China's rail
system are expected to top four billion US dollars in the next four years.
Thursday's China Daily quoted railway officials as saying that these loans
will be used to modernise some of the railways and construct some new lines
which include the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway line. This 5.7 billion
US dollar project with a designed travelling speed of 250 kilometres per
hour has been submitted to the State Council for final approval.
(Forwarded by: Andrew Waldie and Huijie)
                                ___ ___ ___

[C.R.I., 12/24/1992] -- China will give top priority to developing new
medicines in the next few years. The Director of the State Pharmaceutical
Administration says the Administration will have new regula- tions next year
to expand cooperation and exchanges with foreign companies.  Under the new
regulations foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers will be able to get their
new products patented in China. (Forwarded by: Andrew Waldie)

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2. U.S. INS Officials Worried About Tide of Boatpeople from China ...... 106
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Forwarded by: Zhao Hua, Charles Mok
Source: UPI 12/23 and 12/24, San Jose Mercury News 12/24/1992

Immigration authorities in San Francisco said Wednesday the 180 Chinese
refugees removed from a filthy freighter may face criminal charges and be
deported back to China.

David Ilchert, the INS district director in San Francisco, said "They are
not admissible. None of them have any papers. They probably should be
classed as criminals for breaking our immigration laws."

INS investigators believe the freighter Manyoshi Maruwas actually a mother
ship used to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States and had been
waiting for smaller boats to arrive and take the passengers ashore. When
those boats failed to arrive after 10 days, the ship issued its mayday call.

INS said this is only a start.

"I think this could be worse," said Philip Waters, INS deputy director of
the San Francisco district. "It's a growth industry. More so than Silicon
Valley."

So strong is the allure of Western affluence, and so huge are the profits of
the smugglers, Waters and other INS officials hold little hope of stemming
the surge of trans-Pacific boat people without major policy change by the
U.S. government.

"We don't see any reason for it not to continue," said Dave Gulick, acting
INS director of the Hawaii district, which has intercepted four refugees
ships since February.

The 165-foot Manyoshi Maru was the 10th such ship intercepted in U.S. terri-
torial waters in the past 14 months. And the pace is quickening. Five of
the ships filled with undocumented Chinese immigrants have been intercepted
since September.

No one knows how many similar ships unloaded their human cargoes undetected.
But Jim Hayes, smuggling-project director for the Los Angeles INS district,
said it is reasonable to assume that some succeeded.

In addition to those, other immigrant ships out of China have reached ports
in such countries as Canada and Mexico, he said. Often, the determined immi-
grants then make their way overland to the United States.

The legal U.S. quota for Chinese immigrants is now 32,000 per year. Hayes
estimates that "another 100,000 enter illegally."

Like Waters, he thinks the number will grow. One reason is the eagerness of
young CHinese, hungry for Western riches and freedom, to flee their relative
poverty and oppression. Another reason is the eagerness of Chinese crime
syndicates to exploit an astonishingly profitable form of smuggling.

Hayes said when the first shipload of 132 illegal Chinese immigrants was
intercepted in his district in September 1991, he thought it was a fluke - a
desperate long shot, something "that would not be repeated."

Then in February, another ship, this one with 120 illegal Chinese immigrants
on board, was intercepted off the coast near Los Angeles. That same month,
the first of four ships filled with illegal Chinese was intercepted in
Hawaii.

Two ships filled with illegal Chinese immigrants also were intercepted on
the East Coast, one in Massachusetts and one in North Carolina.

The ships began to make sense for Hayes, he said, when he learned through
interviews with detained immigrants that virtually all of those who landed
in Los Angeles had paid or pledged $30,000 each for passage. For the third
boat that reached Los Angeles, for example, smugglers stood to make $4.5
million on their cargo of 148 refugees.

Hayes said the smuggling operations are organized by "triads," based in New
York and Hong Kong.

He said the syndicates send representatives to Fujian. There, he said, they
recruit immigrants through their underground connections and arrange staging
areas along the coast. Passengers are then picked up by small vessels that
shuttle them to the passing ships, which almost always are Taiwanese
trawlers.

That scenario is identical to the one described by the passengers of the
Manyoshi Maru, all of whom are believed to have come from Fujian Province.

Unlike boats from Haiti, Waters said, "you can't take them back across
thousands of miles of water in unseaworthy ships." If the ships from China
make it to the U.S. coast, adds Waters, "they pretty much have made it."

If illegal immigrants request asylum because of alleged persecution in their
native country, they are entitled under law not only to a hearing but to
several appeals.

Currently, there are 216,000 asylum cases pending. During the last fiscal
year, 116,000 new requests were filed. Meanwhile, only 10,923 cases were
adjudicated. It is not yet known how many passengers from the Manyoshi Maru
will request asylum, but it is assumed most, if not all, will.

Immigration activists on Wednesday urged that they be released from deten-
tion, saying it is unfair to punish them for seeking a better life.

"We're really opposed to jailing people for seeking freedom," said Gregory
Kepferle, chairman of the Coalition for Human Rights in Northern California,
at a San Francisco press conference.

Waters dismissed the pleas of the activists, and said the illegal immigrants
deserved to be jailed because "they've broken the laws of the United
States."

Five people convicted of smuggling 160 Chinese aboard the American fishing
boat New Star that sank in July 1992 will be sentenced in February. Loi
Chau, Tham Vo, Herng Wang, Chan Chiang and Chang Lin were found guilty
Wednesday in federal court of conspiracy and aiding and abetting for their
role in the smuggling scheme.

About 160 Chinese nationals were aboard the New Star. They began their trip
on a Chinese fishing boat. After two days they were transferred to a
Taiwanese trawler where they stayed for 40 days. Each passenger paid
$30,000 for the trip.

The Chinese passengers were moved to the New Star about 200 miles from the
U.S. coast. The ship began taking on water, forcing the defendants to send
out a mayday signal. Coast Guard boats rescued them.

The defendants face up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of
$250,000. Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 8.

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3. China, the Last Frontier for Chip Makers ............................ 115
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Forwarded by: Carly Wong <carlyw@ee.ubc.ca>
Source: Electronic Engineering Times, 12/7/1992. Issue 724

Hong Kong -- A host of semiconductor manufacturers from around the globe are
primed to invest in China, opening up what may be the last geographical
frontier in microelectronics industry.

NEC, Atmel, Philips, Alcatel and SGS-Thomson are among the vendors that are
considering adding foundry capacity. In addition, joint ventures between
Chinese companies and overseas firms are springing up, and existing partner-
ships are ramping production.

China's domestic microelectronics industry is also picking up speed and
should accelerate even more next year, as the country enters the third year
of its eighth five-year plan. Reports are circulating that China's govern-
ment will spend as much as $2 billion by the end of the five-year plan,
1995. Those reports are widely criticized as exaggerated, but the
government-backed conglomerate China Electronics Corp. (Chinatron, based in
Beijing) will spend about $400 million by the end of the plan, according to
Xu Shequan, a senior engineer in the group.

Chinatron oversees a number of the country's largest state-run electronics
groups. It will focus mainly on building up commercial production of medium
to low-technology products to meet domestics needs. China consumed about 400
million ICs in 1989, according to Xu, but produced only 100 million. He
estimates China could produce as many as 600 million ICs by 1995, about half
its projected consumption of 1.2 billion parts for that year.

By 1995, Xu said, China could be serving all its needs for 5-micron devices
and half its needs for 2- and 3-micron parts. China now imports all its ICs
using 2-micron-or-finer design rules. The country will produce only small
batches of 1- and 1.5-micron parts by 1995, and submicron work will only be
at the research stage, Xu predicted.

Yet, only 5 percent of China's current demand is for parts using design
rules finer than 2.0 microns, Xu said. The country's electronics industry is
heavily weighted toward consumer products, producing about 25 million telev-
ision sets a year, and only about 100,000 personal computers.

Those figures may be misleading. Some sources say China is overproducing TVs
and stockpiling the extra sets. At the same time, the sources say, PC pro-
duction is rising, partly because new ventures are trying to take advantage
of low production costs in China to gain an edge during the continuing PC
price wars.

-Fine Lines-

If that is true, demand for finer-geometry ICs could grow fast. Such demand
could put pressure on the numerous foreign companies now forming or already
engaged in joint ventures. Most of them intend to produce parts using 2-
micron-or-finer design rules. But many of them are interested in exporting
the products, not selling them domestically.

Atmel Asia Ltd., for example, is negotiating with Chinatron for a foundry
deal that could involve production of more than 10,000 wafers per month
using 1-micron design rules. The company sees China as a potential alterna-
tive to foundries in Japan and Taiwan, where it now makes two-thirds of its
products. At the same time, China's largest state-run fab, Huajing Electron-
ics Group in Wuxi, is seeking a partner for a 1-micron project. Atmel is one
of the potential partners for the project, but Atmel is looking to export
all the ICs it makes, and Huajing wants technology for the domestic market.

In 1990, Huajing started developing a 2- and 3-micron process on 5-inch
wafers with help from Siemens A.G. It already has a 5-micron process on 3-
inch wafers using equipment from Toshiba Corp.

Elsewhere, NEC Corp., and Shougang Electronics have agreed to boost the
technology level of their joint-venture fab, which plans to start production
Beijing in 1994. The fab will shift from planned production of 4-inch wafers
with 2- and 3-micron design rules to 6-inch wafers using 1.2-micron design
rules.

The venture will start a separate assembly operation late next year, prob-
ably packaging 1-Mbit DRAMs. The fab will make a mix of products, including
DRAMs, consumer ICs and communication chips, to serve an NEC public-switch
factory in Tianjin.

Joint venture fabs of Philips International NV and Alcatel in Shanghai are
both planning to ramp up their 2- and 3-micron production in 1993. Managers
at the fabs say they will spend more than $10 million each on semiconductor
equipment next year to support the increases in production.

Huayue Semiconductor, in Shaoxing, is seeking partners for a 2- and 3-micron
project. The fab is currently being groomed as a mass-production facility to
help meet China's domestic needs for 3- and 5-micron parts.

-In the Works-

Although delayed for many months, plans for a submicron fab in Hong Kong
sponsored by the Shenzhen Electronics Group are still being discussed by SEG
and SGS-Thomson. A deal with VLSI Technology for design-center software for
the project seems to have already been worked out.

Academica Sinica, one of China's leading research institutions, is said to
have plans to spend as much as $100 million over the next three to four
years to upgrade its research fab.

Belling Microelectronics, a joint venture of Alcatel, is now producing about
300 4-inch wafers a day. It is mainly making 2.4-micron CMOS logic ICs for
public exchange switches assembled at another Alcatel venture, Shanghai
Bell. By the end of 1993, Belling will be producing nine integrated circuits
for Bell and making about 500 wafer starts a day, according to Belling's
general manager, Jean Van der Donk.

Belling plans to push its process technology to finer geometries starting in
1994. "We are squeezed in between two forces, " Van der Donk said. "Local
authorities want us to move to the latest technologies, but our customer
just wants us to move to mass production of our existing products."

Just around the corner from the Alcatel fab, Philips Semiconductor Corp., of
Shanghai, is qualifying its 2- and 3-micron bipolar television ICs, which
have been in pilot production since early this year. The fab will ramp to
full production starting in April 1993 and spend as much as $20 million in
equipment to support the increases, according to Eric McLeod, general
manager of the plant.

Equipment vendors are split over how bright the prospects are in the next
two years in China.

Jenson Wu, manager of Varian China Ltd., in Beijing, said he expects a boost
in 1993 for the equipment business, which has been sluggish in China for the
past two years. Varian may have $2 million in China revenue this year.

But William Parrette, a general manager of Solitec Inc., is less optimistic.
His company signed an agreement in January to jointly make and sell its
equipment in China with Northwest Machine Factory. "The reality is that
Solitec has done little business since signing the agreement, but we have
had a lot of talks," Parrette said. "none of our projects have generated any
significant revenue for us."

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