From: xc17@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu ()
Subject: CND-Global. September 8, 1992
Organization: U of Chicago, SSPPCC
Summary: CND-Global
Reply-To: cnd-editor@sdsc.edu
Keywords: CND-Global
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 03:51:59 GMT
X-Posted-From: cicero.spc.uchicago.edu
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

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

                              (News Global)

                        Tuesday, September 8, 1992

Table of Contents                                                # of Lines
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1. News Brief (4 Items) .................................................40
2. U.S. Official in China to Explain F-16 Deal with Taiwan ..............25
3. Chinese Women Rush to Ring Help Line ................................ 28
4. US Fighter Jet Sale to Taiwan Trumps Engraged China .................116
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1. News Brief (4 Items) .................................................40
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[AP-DJ, 9/06/92]  SEOUL -- South Korean President Roh Tae-woo will visit
Beijing Sept. 27-30 for talks with President Yang Shankun and other Chinese
leaders, Roh's aides said Monday. It will be the first summit meeting between
the top leaders of both countries, which established formal diplomatic
relations Aug. 24. "We are also seeking talks between President Roh and
China"s strongman Deng Xiaoping,' said Kim Hak-joon, a presidential spokesman.
Deng is thought to have brokered the new diplomatic ties between the former
adversaries. The spokesman said it was hoped Roh's talks with Chinese leaders
would help improve relations with communist North Korea, an ally of China.
(From: Jian Liu)
                             ____  ____  ____

[AP-DJ, 9/07/92] TAIPEI -- Taiwan's information industry reportedly enjoyed
a growth of 22% in the first half of this year, far exceeding the growth rate
of the republic's three leading manufacturing industries. The Economic Daily
News said that Taiwan's information industry reached a production value of
4.75 billion U.S. Taiwan dlrs in the first half of this year, up 22% from
3.88 billion U.S. dlrs in the year-earlier period. (From: Huijie Chen)
                             ____  ____  ____

[AP-DJ, 9/07/92] BEIJING -- China has signed a contract to participate in the
constuction of a hotel in Alma Ata, the capital of the former Soviet republic
of Kazakhstan, an official report said Monday. The project to build the
383-room, three-star hotel involves an investment of 29 million dlrs, 48%
from China and 52% from Kazakhstan, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
Since the break-up of the former Soviet Union, China has moved rapidly   to
pursue trade and economic cooperation with the former republics.
(From: Huijie Chen)
                             ____  ____  ____

[AP-DJ, 9/07/92] TAIPEI -- Foreign Ministers from seven Central American
countries and their Taiwanese counterpart met Monday to discuss regional
economic cooperation in the first such multi-national conference in Taiwan.
During the one-day meeting, the seven countries urged Taiwan to participate
in economic investments in Central America. They also expressed the hope that
Taipei would help upgrade industries and technology in their region.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's Foreign Minister Fredrick Chien urged his guests to
support Taiwan's entrance into international economic organizations, including
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). (From: Jian Liu)

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2. U.S. Official in China to Explain F-16 Deal with Taiwan ..............25
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From: Huijie Chen
Source: AP-DJ, 9/07/92

BEIJING -(AP-DJ)--A top U.S. State Department official arrived Monday on an
emergency mission to try to ease U.S.-China tensions over U.S. President
George Bush's decision to sell fighter jets to Taiwan.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Tony Hutchinson said Assistant Secretary of State
William Clark would meet with "officials of his own rank," ruling out a
meeting with Foreign Minister Qian Qichen. Hutchinson refused to identify the
Chinese officials Clark would see.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry also refused to release information on Clark's
schedule.

"He is here to discuss the whole range of bilateral issues including
President Bush's recent decision to authorize the sale of jet fighters to
Taiwan," Hutchinson said.

Clark planned to return to Tokyo on Tuesday, continuing a previously
arranged Asian visit that includes a stop in Bangkok to attend the Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting Sept. 10-11, Hutchinson said.

Bush's decision last week to sell 150 F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan has caused
one of the most serious disputes in recent years between Washington and
Beijing.

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3. Chinese Women Rush to Ring Help Line ................................ 28
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From: XU Ming Yang
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald 9/8/92
By: Yvonne Preston

Beijing--A Beijing hotline to deal with what the Xinhua news agency called
"women's obsessions and psychological complexes" was flooded with calls in
its first three days.

Most of the callers were young women worried about sex, birth control and
relationships with boyfriends, but some were men who said they were speaking
for their wives or daughters.

Thirty female volunteers, specialists in marriage and the family, are
rostered to give advice on the newest of a growing number of hotline
services here.

Male volunteers were rejected on the grounds that women would be ashamed to
speak to them about their problems.

Funded by a grant from an American women's organisation, the hotline is
housed in a shabby, small room equipped with two new answer-phones in a
Beijing middle school. Apart from providing on-the-spot advice, it will feed
case studies to the Beijing Women's Research Centre.

Although China is still a chauvinistic society and women generally have low
self-esteem, it is changing. divorce is increasing, sexual harassment is an
acknowledged problem and pregnancy and abortion are major concerns where the
one-child policy is enforced, at least in the urban areas.

But 70 per cent of urban unemployed young people are female, as are 70 per
cent of China's 200 million illiterates.

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4. US Fighter Jet Sale to Taiwan Trumps Engraged China .................116
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From: Huijie Chen
Source: Asian Wall Street Journal via AP-DJ, 9/06/92
By: James Mcgregor

BEIJING -(AP-DJ)--U.S. President George Bush's election-year decision to
reverse a 10-year-old policy and approve the sale of 150 F-16 fighter jets to
Taiwan has left China enraged but also impotent, the Asian Wall Street Journal
reported Monday.

Last week's decision prompted China's state-run media to fume about U.S.
"hegemony" and "hypocrisy," and Chinese diplomats threatened to discontinue
participating in Middle East arms talks. But for now, analysts say, Beijing's
response is limited to bluster because the basic equation of U.S.-China
relations has been inverted by two longer-term developments: the collapse of
the Soviet Union and China's success in building an export-driven economy.

In short, China now needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs China, meaning
that former U.S. President Richard Nixon's "China Card" in the superpower
rivalry has been supplanted by the U.S. consumer's credit card. And despite
lingering U.S. outrage over the June 1989 bloodshed in Tiananmen Square, Bush
has kept the cash flowing into China's economy by derailing repeated attempts
by Congress to restrict Chinese exports to the U.S.

In the long term, however, diplomats say Bush's decision may have severe
repercussions. Many foreign diplomats in Beijing agree with China's assertion
that the F-16 deal blatantly violates a 1982 U.S.-China accord in which the
U.S. pledged "gradually to reduce" arms sales to Taiwan while not exceeding
"either in qualitative or quantitative terms" the level being supplied at that
time.

 -- Threatens Arms Control Accords --

In the past two years, the Bush administration has pressured China to curb
sales of nuclear technology and long-range missiles. China has responded by
signing the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and joining the Missile
Technology Control Regime. Diplomats say that by disregarding the 1982
bilateral agreement, Bush has made it impossible for the U.S. to push China to
adhere to weapons treaties it has signed.

"That is the long-term problem we will all have to collectively live wi  th,"
says a Western diplomat in Beijing. "The Chinese are not all that concerned
about controlling arms sales to the Third World and renegade regimes. It is
not to their advantage economically."

Shorter term, Beijing is prevented from taking strong retaliatory action
against the sale because a real rift in Sino-U.S. relations could turn China's
economic boom to bust. The country's economic growth which the government now
expects to reach 12% this year rests largely on export earnings and
export-driven jobs. Likewise, much of the state sector is bankrupt, so
modernization relies heavily on the private sector and foreign-invested
factories in southern China. The U.S. last year purchased more than
one-quarter of China's 72 billion dlrs in exports.

The U.S. role in employment in China is even greater than trade statist  ics
show. China's other major export customers Japan, South Korea and Southeast
Asia purchase mostly food and raw materials, not manufactured goods. The vast
majority of U.S. purchases, however, are labor-intensive consumer products.
Last year, for example, the U.S. bought some 6 billion dlrs of Chinese-made
shoes and clothing.

 -- China Dependent on Exports to US --

Analysts say that if China lost access to the U.S. export market, many
foreign investors would leave, the country's two fledgling stock markets would
collapse and a current China property frenzy among Hong Kong developers and
investors would disappear overnight.

Indeed, the Taiwan F-16 sale comes at a delicate time in U.S.-China
commercial relations. U.S. and Chinese negotiators face an Oct. 10 deadline in
talks on barriers to the Chinese market. Should those talks fail, the U.S. is
prepared to retaliate with some 3.9 billion dlrs in punitive tariffs.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote again this month on whether to
continue China's most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status. Tariff increases
triggered by the loss of MFN status would make many Chinese-made consumer
goods too expensive to compete in the U.S.

And then there's the U.S. presidential election. Despite the F-16 deal,
diplomats say, China still much prefers Bush, who served as U.S. envoy in
Beijing in 1974-75, to his Democratic opponent, Arkansas Governor Bill
Clinton. Clinton and vice presidential running mate Senator Albert Gore of
Tennessee have suggested that they support Congress's desire to make China's
MFN status conditional on human-rights improvements.

Many who agree with the F-16 sale criticize Bush for doing the right thing
for the wrong reason. The U.S. can argue that Taiwan needs to upgrade its air
force because of China's recent purchase of 24 advanced SU-27 fighters from
Moscow and changes in China's military strategy.

 -- Bush Decision Seen Currying Votes --

But when Bush announced the sale in a speech last Wednesday in Fort Worth,
Texas, to employees of F-16 maker General Dynamics Corp., votes seemed to be
the only motivation. In his speech, he made only a passing reference to
foreign policy, saying that the sale wouldn't change the U.S.'s commitment to
the 1982 accord and other Sino-U.S. agreements.

"It was sheer political expediency, but you can go beyond the political
factors and find some fairly good policy reasons for it," says David Scheffer,
a China watcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

To replace its aging fleet of U.S. F-5E and F-104 fighter jets, Taiwan has
used U.S. technology to build a home-grown aircraft known as the Indigenous
Defense Fighter. It is an underpowered plane with limited capabilities that is
no match for the SU-27 and other advanced Soviet aircraft in China's arsenal.

There is fear that with the F-16 sale, the U.S. will fuel an Asian arms
race. "The U.S. should be in the lead of promoting arms control rather than
stimulating an arms race in Asia that is where our energy and initiative ought
to be going at this time," says Michel Oksenberg, president of the East-West
Center in Honolulu who served as an adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy
Carter on China policy.

The next move may come from Europe. Taiwan has long courted European arms
makers, who are suffering the same economic misfortunes as their U.S.
counterparts. But vociferous threats from China have stymied most European
sales to Taiwan. Some believe that the F-16 deal may change this. The first
place to look will be France, where President Francois Mitterand since June
has had on his desk a proposal to sell 60 to 100 Mirage 2000-5 fighters to
Taiwan.

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