From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Newsgroups: aus.culture.china
Subject: China News Digest (Europe/Pacific), Sun, 11/8/1992
Date: 8 Nov 92 06:41:48 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.22.8
Summary: CND
Keywords: CND

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===================  Europe / Pacific Section (CND-EP)  ===================
                             November 8, 1992

---------------------------- Table of Contents ----------------------------
No. Subject                                                      # of Lines

1. News Brief (2 items) ................................................ 19

2. Wang Ruowang Optimistic on China's Democracy ........................ 61

3. Dai Qing: China's Most-Favored-Nation Trade Status Necessary ........ 60

4. Peers Say Shen Tong Endangered Colleagues, Caused Arrests ........... 69

5. CND Exclusive Interview with Shen Tong ............................. 139
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1. News Brief (2 items) ................................................ 19
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[CND 11/8/92] Sydney -- The 113 Chinese boat people who landed on Christmas
Island a week ago hoping to enter Australia were flown back to Guangzhou,
China last night aboard a chartered plane. The government found the illegal
migrants had paid $1000 to an illegal immigration racket, which promised
them that when they arrived in Australia they would find work and
citizenship. Gerry Hand, the Immigration Minister said that "while it is
appreciated that they are victims of a scheme to travel to Australia, I
emphasise that illegal arrivals will not be permitted to stay."  (Reported
by: XU Ming Yang)
                      ____  ____  ____  ____

[DPA 11/3/92] Beijing -- Thirty-one people have been sentenced to death and
executed in two Chinese provinces, media reports in Beijing said Tuesday.
Twenty-seven people were shot at four different locations in the central
province of Henan. In the city of Chongging, in Sichuan province, four
robbers were executed, the news agency Zhongguo Xinwen She reported.
Analysts estimate that more than 1,000 people are executed in China each
year, though the exact number is never publicised. Executions are not
public. Convicted criminals are killed with a pistol shot to the back of the
head. (Forwarded by: Wenfeng)

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2. Wang Ruowang Optimistic on China's Democracy ........................ 61
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Forwarded by: Yuan Liu
Source: The Gazette (MTL), 11/2/92

China's hard-line Communist leadership is on its last legs and a single,
dramatic event could spark its downfall at any moment, a leading Chinese
dissident says.

Wang Ruo-wang, 74, a writer and former longtime member of the Chinese
Communist Party expelled twice from the party for his liberal views, said
many key segments of modern Chinese society deeply oppose the rigid social
control imposed by the Beijing regime.

One single, major incident -- perhaps the death of Deng Xiaoping, 88,
China's paramount leader -- could easily galvanize those groups into
bringing down the government, Wang said.

"Any incident in China could ignite the fire just like a spark ignite
a fire in the prairie," he said in a Montreal interview Friday.

"It could come at any moment."

The day Deng "goes to see Marx will probably be the day of the explosion,"
Wang added, speaking through a translator.

Wang, who was imprisoned in 1989 for 14 months for his role in the pro-
democracy movement, was allowed to leave China for the first time in
August.

He said four key forces in Chinese society oppose the regime:

* Owners of businesses that have sprung up in southern and coastal China
as a result of market-orientated economic reforms.
* An additional one million enterpreneurs who now run small businesses
in rural China.
* Open-minded party members and leaders who are unsatisfied with communism
and who sympathize with the people.
* The vast majority of Chinese intellectuals.

Many of these groups are growing, he said, because of Deng's attempts to
build a socialist China with a Communist dictatorship and a capitalist
economy.  Such attempts are bound to fail because of their irrevocable
contradictions, Wang said.

In the meantime, he added, overseas pro-democracy activists and the
Taiwanese government, which he said has begun democratic reforms,
provide support for the internal opposition.

He describe changes in party leadership at last month's party congress
as superficial.

All the same, he said, "there has been some loosening up" in censorship
by authorities since they crushed the pro-reform demonstrations in
Tiananmen Square in 1989 -- even though at least 300 participants remain
in jail.

He cited the permission granted by authorities to students who circulated
a petition demanding reparations for World War II abuses during a recent
visit by the Japanese emperor, and the publication of a book this year by
a Beijing university in which leading dissidents harshly criticized
party hard-liners.

Wang, now a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, said
he was visiting pro-democracy activists in Montreal "so I can compensate
for what I lost while I was isolated in China."

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3. Dai Qing: China's Most-Favored-Nation Trade Status Necessary ........ 60
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By: George Zhu
Source: CND, 11/3/92

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Dai Qing, a leading Chinese journalist and writer, said
in an interview on Oct. 28 that the United States should continue its
most-favored-nation trade status to China "for the sake of ordinary Chinese
people to change their social status."

Dai, now visiting Harvard University under a fellowship from Nieman
Foundation, was detained by police in Beijing for as long as ten months 
following the June 4 massacre in 1989.  She was then expelled from the 
communist party because of her role in the democracy movement.

In last ten years, Dai said, while the U.S. has been extending China's 
preferable tariff status, the foreign enterprises, joint enterprises
and private enterprises in China have been flourishing, and the central 
planning economy is being weakened.

As a result, China's economic structure has been changed significantly,
millions of unemployed people have been able to find a job in companies
over which the communist government has less direct control, according to 
Dai.

"The impact of the most-favored-nation status on China is that it has in 
fact helped to solve a most urgent and most populous human rights problem
there," said Dai. 

Dai thanked the international community for its concern and support during
her detention in Beijing two years ago.  After Secretary of State 
James Baker personally raised her case to the Chinese leaders during his 
visit late last year, the government finally allowed Dai to leave China 
for the United States.

However, Dai said she disagrees with the U.S. Congress in imposing various 
conditions on China in order to renew its most-favored-nation trade status.

"Undoubtedly I was one of the beneficiaries as a result of the international 
pressure in pushing China to improve its human rights record," Dai said. 
"Nevertheless, the worst human rights violation committed by the communist 
regime is to set a permanent status for each individual based on ideology." 

Dai said, in China, "if you are put on the bottom of the society, you have 
no status right, no education right, no marriage right and no relocation 
right, you don't even have the most fundamental human rights."

"I was once asked: If for the millions of people to have their rights to
live and change their status, still put you in jail. Do you accept that?"  
Dai said. "I replied: Yes, I accept it."

Because, Dai explained, while her imprisonment was certainly in part due to
the fact that "the Chinese law has many flaws and the government often
fails to implement it", it was also the result of her own activities. 

"Since I did what I did, I should bear its consequences," Dai emphasized. 

A renowned reporter for the official Guangming Daily, Dai was recently
awarded the Golden Pen for Freedom by the International Newspaper Publisher 
Association for her excellence in advocating freedom of expression and 
human dignity in China.

Dai's late foster-father was Jianying Ye, one of the founders of the
People's Republic of China and one of the 10 marshals commissioned by
Chairman Mao in 1950's. 

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4. Peers Say Shen Tong Endangered Colleagues, Caused Arrests ........... 69
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Forwarded by: Waishing Choi <waishing@buengf.bu.edu>
Source: The Daily Free Press of Boston University, 10/7/92

Local Chinese political activists now say that Shen Tong, the Boston
University graduate student imprisoned for more than a month in China, not
only lied about his involvement in the student uprising in Tiananmen Square,
but that his reckless travel and meetings lead to the arrests of some of his
colleagues.

Shen was arrested a week after his arrival in Beijing August 31, hours
before he was scheduled to deliver a news conference.

"I do not condemn Shen Tong, I just don't like the way he works. He put
others in danger," treasurer for the China's Long March for Democracy Chung
Tse [Chung-chi Tse] said. "He should have known better. He prepared
everything to make himself more well-known."

Tse said he heard from sources in the Hong Kong Alliance, which runs the
underground railroads between China and Hong Kong, that every time Shen met
with people involved in the underground democratic movement, people were
arrested by the government soon after.

"I trust the Hong Kong Alliance," Tse said. "They have protected over 800
freedom fighters and kept them in hiding."

"Shen should have known he was monitored by the government and he should not
have visited these people," he added.  "They should have come to him at
their own risk, but Shen didn't give them a choice because he came to them."

But a biography released on Shen by his Democracy for China Fund, said he
scrambled to hide in safe areas from the army. According to the biography, he
attempted "to reason with the advancing troops... his life was saved by
civilians who pulled him away from the troops and secretly hid him in
several locations, moving him from day to day."

Ms. Gong Xiaoxia, Board of Directors member of the Newton, Massachusetts-
based China Information Center, said that Shen was irresponsible for
conducting "American politics" in China, and should have known his action
would lead to arrests.

Gong, who was prevented from returning to China last spring for her
involvement in Tiananmen, said Shen's arrest was based on his attempt to
open the Democracy for China branch without a required government permit.

Xian Xiaoji, a member of the government-approved Dialogue Committee
established to act as a liaison between students and the Chinese government
and of which Shen was also a member, said the government was using Shen to
find and arrest others.

In article in the Chinese community newspaper World Journal, Hunan
Independent Student Union chairman Tang Bo Chao said he was upset because
Shen did not follow plans they had made for his return.  This endangered
Tang's contacts and forced them to leave China.

Tang claims that he gave Shen the names and addresses of people who were
involved in the underground railroad.

He said that in many instances when Shen met with these people they were
arrested. Tang explained that after a Beijing university assistant teacher
met with Shen, he disappeared, adding that he believes the professor was
arrested by the Chinese government.

Controversy over Shen's involvement in the Tiananmen incident arose when
Columbia University assistant professor Stephen Ng charged Sunday that Shen
falsely represented himself and endangered other students when he returned
to Beijing this summer to establish a Democracy for China Fund. In a letter
to the Daily Free Press, Ng said that many people have been arrested or
disappeared shortly after their meetings with Shen, citing sources in China,
Hong Kong, and the United States.

Shen's Boston University colleagues came to Shen's support Monday, saying
that he did not lie about his role in the revolution and remains committed
to a democratic China.

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5. CND Exclusive Interview with Shen Tong ............................. 139
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By: George Zhu, CND Correspondent
Source: CND, 11/2/92

[Note: The following is an excerpt of the interview with Shen Tong by CND
correspondent on October 28, 1992 in Newton, Massachusetts.]

CND: In your article in The New York Times following your detention, you
mentioned that some ex-political prisoners have been tortured and a retired
man starved to death in custody. Can you give me more details?

Shen: I interviewed some political prisoners released after 1989, I found
they have scars on their bodies, on their arms or legs. When I was in
Shaoyang, I learnt that a group of retired workers were on strike, because
their company stopped providing them with welfare due to reforms, and they
had been demanding the company for it for more than two years with no
answer.  As a result one old worker died from hunger. When I arrived in
Shaoyang, those workers were sitting on the streets in protest. These kind
of situations are very common in China.

CND: What do you think of the Bush administration's China policy such as on
MFN issue?

Shen: In principle, I think the West should maintain its economic tie to
China, but it should not abandon the principle such as human rights.  Most
importantly, the West should realize that without using those economic means
to impose those conditions, it's impossible to ensure that China in the long
run will gradually improve its investment environments and become a better
part of the global economy.  Thus by doing so, it's not only for the
principle of the Western countries, but also for their interests.  Therefore
Bush's refusal in the last three years to impose those conditions is wrong,
although his analysis is correct, like keeping ties with China, but what he
did is just inconsistent with his analysis. Moreover, his so-called
diplomatic way definitely is not as effective as legislative imposed
conditions.  As we can see, some people were released only when MFN was
debated, not when Bush sent his officials to China.

Another point, I want to acknowledge Bush was doing a right thing in signing
the Chinese student protection bill.  And the protection bill was also one
of my specific considerations in choosing the timing of this China trip.  My
trip was a test.  We all know clearly, the CCP does not want overseas
students to freely go back, it's only alright if you come back and do
nothing. My return was to test its policies, and obviously we were detained.
At the time Bush signed the bill, and safeguarded the interests of Chinese
students in the U.S.  Although it's very basic, it should be acknowledged.

CND: Were you in any Chinese government's most-wanted list after the June
4th?

Shen: I was not in the famous published 21 most-wanted list. I do not know
myself what I'm going to say for sure, but various sources from Hong Kong
and people inside China confirmed that I was on a most-wanted list of 60
students. The reason for me not in that published list was because I came to
the U.S. two days before they published the list. And actually what happened
was, the operation was so successful in rescuing me from Beijing that two
days after I left Beijing, the Beijing security bureau went to my father's
work unit and asked my family's address. They were going to take me. Because
at the time they published the warrant list, they found I left two days ago.

CND: When you left China three years ago following the June 4th, did you
receive any underground help?

Shen: I can't say it in a concrete way, you see, a lot people helped me, and
the government was so frustrated in unable to find them. They're still safe.
So at most what I can say is many people got involved and helped, even
including certain sympathetic government officials.

CND: Did you anticipate your detention before your news conference on
September 1?

Shen: First of all, in my mind before I went back, I was prepared to be in
jail.  On the other hand, during the operation, the principle was
unconfrontational and testing. So there was always a chance that we might
succeed. The press conference was something very unacceptable to the Chinese
government. But I did make moderation because the press conference was only
for Chinese press and it was to announce that we were preparing to legally
register the Democracy for China Fund, not as a chapter of this Democracy
for China Fund but just an organization in China. And the reason we were
doing it was to get response through the media from Chinese people about the
validity of this idea. The direct reason they arrested me was the press
conference.  They couldn't charge me in any way because I have done all
legally, all my activities in China were all legal.

CND: If by any chance they allowed you to announce the establishment of the
democracy fund, were you prepared to stay in Beijing?

Shen: That's why I worked out the arrangement with Qi Dafang and Qian Liyun.
What we were doing in Beijing included several things. One is to meet with
many people. We met about 20 people, all scholars and sensitive figures, to
get their response on this operation, the establishment of the democracy
fund. Second, we did a poll in which we asked nine questions to ask these
people about what they think on this idea.  The third way was a press
conference. So the first two things were in process, we had been doing that
for eight days.  Meanwhile we also wrote a petition letter on behalf of Wang
Juntao and was ready to circulate among dissident circles.  All of these
were already in process. I think the press conference was kind of too much
for them, so they finally took the action.  But if we can pass that stage,
and during this process we were talking to lawyers as well about legal
questions of how to organize such an organization according to relevant
existing laws, and if we succeeded in some fashion like establishing a local
chapter, very low profile, then I'd spend a couple of weeks to make concrete
financial arrangements, and Qi Dafeng and Qian Liyun would be in charge of
the office. I personally would come back to the States for a year or so to
make other arrangements and then go back again.

CND: Were you aware that the Chinese authorities might be monitoring your
activities in China?

Shen: Yes, obviously we had to pre-assume that, and we had plans for various
stages of the operation.  Though they claimed after they detained me that
they had been monitoring me all along, from what they knew it's not true.  I
think what happened was they were supposed to monitor me all along, but they
kept losing me, they were not doing a good job, not as good as we may think.
So there were times when I sensed they were close, one was while I was in
Changsha, we were making a call at a place where we made several calls
before. And by accident on the telephone I heard the tapping people talking
to each other. And a couple days later, Marshall Strauss was rejected a visa
in Hong Kong.  So by then we decided we should stop all the covert
operations. That's on August 7 or 8. That's in very early stage that we
decided it's impossible to do the underground part.  So the accusation about
the arrests of Social Democrats is ridiculous.

CND: Tang Boqiao was quoted as saying a Beijing University assistant teacher
disappeared after meeting with you. Do you have any information?

Shen: No. Actually I can't be 100% sure now since I already left for four
days. I didn't know any arresting in Beijing other than the two.  Actually I
had many phone conversations with Beijing U. young professors and I did meet
one personally. He was an advisor during the operation and he was a public
trouble maker whom the government wouldn't touch.  You know the situation,
there's a circle of dissidents who the government wouldn't do anything.

CND: What's your opinion on Toycott?

Shen: I very much support Toycott. In principle, if there only exists
Toycott, it certainly is not consistent with our principle in maintaining
economic tie and keeping door open to China. But from the entire political
point of view, it's coordinated with MFN. Because even if Toycott succeeds,
its direct damage to Chinese economy is not great, because it's only the
sixth in export.  Most importantly it's one thing that American people can
do personally, to let them not to forget June 4th, not to forget China,
whereas MFN status can only play a role politically.  Furthermore in last
three years Bush vetoed all the conditional MFN bills.  So you have to see
these two things together.

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