From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Subject: CND 25-7-92 SAT
Summary: CND
Keywords: CND
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date: 26 Jul 92 02:21:29 GMT

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

                             (News Global)

                         Saturday, July 25, 1992

Table of Contents                                               # of Lines
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. News Brief (3 Items).................................................30
2. China Reports Rise in Torture, Illegal Detentions....................39
3. Niger to Recognize Taiwan; China Expected to Break Ties..............25
4. Death of Soviet Communism Puts New Life in China Barter Trade........75
5. Official Purged in 1989 Heads New Development Group..................45
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. News Brief (3 Items).................................................30
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[AP-DJ, 7/22] BEIJING -- Tianjin will become the first city  in  China  to
auction  off  information  on foreign investment projects, the Xinhua News
Agency said Wednesday.  The auction next Tuesday  in  Tianjin  will  cover
economic information such as Sino-foreign joint-venture projects, coopera-
tive projects, technical know-how transfers and technical development pro-
jects,  Xinhua  reported.   The  report didn't give any details on how the
auction would be conducted, who can bid, how many items were up  for  sale
or  whether  minimum  prices were being set. The auction appeared to be in
response to senior leader Deng Xiaoping's calls early this year  for  bold
experimentation in economic reforms.  (From: Huijie and Jian Liu)
                       ____  ____  ____  ____

[The Wall Street Journal,  7/21]  China's  first  private  elementary  and
junior high schools will open in Shanghai Sept. 1 with investment from en-
terprises, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.  The two schools, in an ef-
fort  to do away with uniform government education, will introduce English
classes and computer classes beginning in the first  grade.   The  schools
will  open  registration  to  students  from  other  cities and provinces.
(From: Charles P. Mok)
                       ____  ____  ____  ____

[AP-DJ, 7/24] BEIJING -- People's Daily on Friday urged an end to regional
economic protectionism that keeps products made in one part of the country
from being sold in other places.   Many  Chinese  provinces  and  counties
maintain  checkpoints  on  main roads, and bar products that might compete
with local goods. Other places charge such high tariffs that outside goods
can't  compete.   "Closure  is a kind of short-sighted government policy,"
the newspaper warned in a front-page commentary. "It can  obtain  benefits
for a period of time, but absolutely cannot change one's inferior position
in competitiveness." (From: Jian Liu)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. China Reports Rise in Torture, Illegal Detentions....................39
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:    Chongyu Hua <cyuhua@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Source:  UPI, 7/21/92
By:      Nick Driver

BEIJING (UPI) -- The Chinese government has  acknowledged  a  surge  in  a
range  of violations of individual rights by law enforcement agencies, in-
cluding cases of torture and illegal detention, an  official  report  said
Wednesday.

The China Daily newspaper quoted Wang Wenyuan, deputy chief of the Supreme
People's  Procuratorate,  the  nation's attorney general office, as saying
that torture and illegal detentions were at the top of a  list  of  crimes
that rose from last year's figures.

The total caseload for these incidents,  which  included  "dereliction  of
duty" as well as unspecified related offenses, went up 17.2 percent in the
first half of 1992 over the figure from the same  period  last  year,  the
deputy prosecutor said.

"Registered court cases involving illegal detentions, extortion of confes-
sion  by  torture, dereliction of duty and other instances of infringement
of citizens' rights totalled 9,492 in the first half of  the  year,"  Wang
said.

Wang said his office was targeting major police crimes such  as  death  by
torture and illegal detention of prominent government officials.

"Procurators would focus their attention on cases involving illegal deten-
tion, death and injuries caused by torture during inquisition," the report
quoted Wang as saying.

China periodically publishes such  statistics  on  rights  violations  but
denies  any  widespread abuses, contending the cases are dealt with by in-
vestigating authorities.

Chinese dissidents and Western human  rights  groups,  however,  say  such
abuses  are  systematic, and they have long criticized the Chinese govern-
ment for widespread use of torture and arbitrary police methods.

In the past year, Chinese dissidents have increased their use of the court
system, both as a way of lodging their protests and in what they say is an
attempt to force the government to obey its own laws. Those  efforts  have
had only minimal impact.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Niger to Recognize Taiwan; China Expected to Break Ties..............25
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:    Jian Liu
Source:  AP-DJ, 7/23/92

NIAMEY, Niger -- This impoverished  West  African  nation  is  recognizing
Taiwan, the Niger government said late Wednesday, indicating a victory for
a Taiwanese diplomatic offensive backed by millions of dollars.

China was expected to break relations with Niger, as it has done with  all
countries  that recognize the nationalist government off the Chinese main-
land.

Niger's announcement came after a late-night meeting and  weeks  of  wran-
gling  that  provoked  a government crisis. Prime Minister Amadou Cheiffou
announced in June that his country was going to establish diplomatic rela-
tions  with  Taiwan, then was forced to go back on the decision because of
complaints from other groups in his interim government.

Diplomatic sources said Taiwan has offered a grant of 50  million  dollars
in return for recognition from Niger.

Chinese President Yang Shangkun made  the  first  visit  to  Africa  by  a
Chinese head of state this month in a bid to counter Taiwan's offensive.

He traveled with Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, who told  reporters  Taiwan
was taking advantage of Africa's economic difficulties to sabotage China's
relationships on the continent.

Niger is the eighth African country to recognize Taiwan.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Death of Soviet Communism Puts New Life in China Barter Trade........75
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:    Xu, Ming Yang
Source:  The Sydney Morning Herald 7/24/92
By:      Yvonne Preston

Day tours bring boatloads of Russians to this Chinese border town  weighed
down  with  furs,  cameras,  cutlery,  watches, toys and little dogs. Each
cluster of new arrivals is quickly surrounded by Chinese locals  eager  to
swap  their  trainers, tracksuits, T-shirts and chewing gum in a specially
erected trading post on the Chinese side of the Amur River.

"Tovarich," a Chinese mistakenly kept calling to me, pointing to  my  cam-
era, "how much?" In downtown Heihe's "Russia Street", Chinese traders sell
Russian fox furs, garlic presses, pendant necklaces with holograms of  the
Madonna  and  Buddha,  religious  paintings,  Red Army greatcoats, fishing
rods, tea-sets, felt hats, meat mincers, binoculars, galoshes and  Russian
dolls with blonde wigs. Puppies sell for a few yuan.

For 20 years Heihe was cut off from the Russian city  of  Blagoveshchensk,
clearly visible across the 900-metre-wide stretch of the Amur River divid-
ing the two countries, know to the Chinese as Heilongjiang  (Black  Dragon
River).  Barter  trade dates back to the 17th century but was abruptly cut
with the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s.

Ideological and political differences now count for nothing. Barter  trade
resumed in 1987 when Heihe traded 206 tonnes of watermelons for 308 tonnes
of Russian chemical fertiliser, and it is booming. When temperatures  sink
to  minus-30, trucks trundle across the frozen river. In the northern sum-
mer, hundreds of Russians arrive by boat every day and  Chinese  take  the
day trip to the other side, where they have set up a Chinese restaurant, a
wood-processing plant and a hospital  specialising  in  Chinese  medicine.
Heihe  has  a  Sino-Russian joint-venture brewery and brickworks, and only
July 1 Russia began to supply it with electricity. A new bridge  is  being
built.

"We like to look on Heihe as a bridge connecting the  European  and  Asian
continents,"  said  Mr  Huo  Qinxian,  director  of the Heihe Economic Co-
operation Commission. Like many Chinese, he is gratified to see his  coun-
try  ahead  of the former Soviet Big Brother. Chinese sell clothes, sports
shoes and items they no longer consider fashionable. Russians  still  like
them, Mr Huo says.

Mr Hu Yaobang, the former Communist Party boss, visited the town  in  1984
and decreed it should become the Shenzhen of the north. Money was invested
in an airport, railway and power station. In the  past,  Heihe  was  badly
neglected  as  a border town which might have to be abandoned in the event
of conflict with the Soviet enemy.

Russian trading companies swap steel, fertiliser, wood and cement for  the
Chinese  light consumer goods. There are limitations. The Vice-Governor of
Heilongjiang Province, Mr Du Xianzhong, said China's  fast-growing  barter
trade  with  the  former Soviet Union did not bring the US dollars and ad-
vanced technology China needed.

Mr Du said Heilongjiang accounted for 50 per cent of China's border  trade
and  20  per  cent  of  its total trade with the independent States of the
former Soviet Union. The total barter  trade  volume  topped  100  million
Swiss  francs  ($A103  million)  and reached 495 million Swiss francs, the
designated barter currency, in the first four months of this year.

Paradoxically, communism's collapse in the old Soviet Union gave an  extra
push  to  the  bartering  along the 3,045-kilometre border with China, the
longest in the world. The collapse exposed a desperate need  for  clothes,
shoes,  food  and basic everyday items, Mr Du said. And the end of the So-
viet central government created new republics free to trade with China.

Traders from as far away as southern China have flocked to Heihe, doubling
the town's population to 100,000.

"It's a kind of historical joke: we used to get consumer goods and experts
from Russia, now the situation is reversed," said Professor Long Xiang, of
the Sino-Soviet Studies Institute at Heilongjiang University,  in  Harbin,
the  provincial  capital to the south. China had 13 years of reform behind
it,he said. The agricultural reforms begun in 1979 gave farmers  incentive
and were particularly important.

Professor Long said it was  not  very  smart  of  the  Russians  to  trade
resources for consumer goods. "Being isolated so long, they do not seem to
know how much about terms of trade.  They  should  process  raw  materials
themselves."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Official Purged in 1989 Heads New Development Group..................45
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Chongyu Hua <cyuhua@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Source:  UPI, 7/24/92

BEIJING -- In another sign of support for economic reform, China has named
a  moderate official purged in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown to head
an industrial group for a high-profile  Shanghai  development  project,  a
news report said Friday.

The state-run China News Service said Hu Qili, currently a  vice  minister
of the Ministry of Machine Building and Electronics Industry, would head a
"leading group" for industry and technology for Shanghai's Pudong develop-
ment zone.

The government has touted the Pudong area as a special zone for developing
advanced,  export-oriented  industries,  with  foreign  joint ventures and
high-tech enterprises. Senior officials have staked considerable  prestige
on making the zone a success.

Hu Qili, 63, a moderate in the pro-reform leadership faction, was a member
of  the  Communist  Party  Politburo's Standing Committee, the pinnacle of
party power, when he was purged in June 1989 after the crackdown  on  that
spring's pro-democracy protests.

He was rehabilitated last year and named to his current post, but has kept
a generally low profile since.

His appointment to the key Pudong project, which has been endorsed even by
conservative  Chinese  leaders,  is  the  latest sign of the renewed drive
launched this year by senior  leader  Deng  Xiaoping  to  advance  market-
oriented economic reform.

CNS quoted the Minister of Machine Building and Electronics  Industry,  He
Guangyuan,  as  saying  he  hoped to "take advantage of Pudong's role as a
window on the export-oriented economy to provide the best  conditions  for
the all-around opening to the outside world."

The CNS report said ministry officials planned to use the new group headed
by  Hu  to  attract  foreign  investment  in Pudong, promote international
cooperation in industry and electronics  and  introduce  advanced  foreign
technology and management techniques.

Hu was a rising star in the party and  government  throughout  the  1980s,
elected  to  the ruling Politburo in 1985 and in 1988 to its Standing Com-
mittee, where he supervised ideology and propaganda.

But he was ousted, along with then-party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and
other  lesser  officials,  for his alleged failure to keep a tight grip on
the propaganda apparatus during the 1989 protests.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|             Executive Editor:      Junjie Hu       (U.S.A.)            |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| China News Digest (CND) offers the following services:                 |
|  (1) Global News (Daily)            (2) US Regional News               |
|  (3) Canada Regional News           (4) Europe & Pacific Regional News |
|  (5) Hua Xia Wen Zhai (Weekly Chinese Magazine)                        |
|  (6) Several Information Packages                                      |
| For subscription information, mail to:   cnd-info@djohn-sun.kent.edu   |
| News contributions should be sent to:  cnd-editor@djohn-sun.kent.edu   |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Newsgroups: aus.culture.china