From: cyuhua@NCSA.UIUC.EDU (Chongyu Hua)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Aide to ousted China leader gets 7 years in jail
Date: 21 Jul 92 17:41:02 GMT




	BEIJING (UPI) -- The former chief aide to ousted Communist Party
leader Zhao Ziyang was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison for
offenses during the 1989 pro-democracy movement in the last major trial
expected from the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
	The Beijing Intermediate People's Court convicted and sentenced Bao
Tong, 59, after a half-day trial. Bao was the highest-ranking Chinese
official arrested in the 1989 crackdown and the most senior known to
have been tried in more than a decade.
	His trial was believed to be the last major criminal case stemming
from the 1989 protests and will allow Chinese leaders to resolve the
divisive party charges still pending against Zhao before a crucial
national party congress this fall.
	Bao, who as Zhao's key adviser formulated many of China's bold
economic and political reforms during the 1980s, was apparently
sacrificed to placate hard-line leaders instead of prosecuting the party
chief, who was a protege of senior leader Deng Xiaoping until his ouster
June 1989.
	Dozens of police surrounded the court building on the city's west
side Tuesday morning during the closed-door trial. Bao's relatives were
barred from the trial and allowed only to witness the sentencing.
	Court spokeswoman Fan Shumin said Bao was sentenced to four years for
revealing state secrets and to five years for counterrevolutionary
incitement. The 1989 protests are officially labeled a 
``counterrevolutionary rebellion.''
	Officials said the court fixed the sentence at seven years under
discretionary laws allowing parts of the terms to run concurrently. Bao
has been held without trial since May 1989, and officials said he could
be freed in 1996 with credit for time served.
	The sentence was shorter than those given to some other 1989 figures,
but Bao's wife, Jiang Zhongcao, dressed in black for the trial,
expressed outrage after the verdict.
	``He's not guilty in the first place,'' Jiang said. ``So even one
month would be heavy.''
	``It's not a question of guilt,'' said another family member outside
the court. ``There's no guilt -- all the charges were trumped up.''
	The most serious charge against Bao was reportedly that his office
gave to the Tiananmen Square protest leaders the routes the Chinese army
was to use on May 19, 1989, as troops moved into Beijing before martial
law was declared.
	Family members said Bao appeared at ease and confident during the
sentencing. They said he would likely appeal, but such appeals in China
are generally rejected.
	The need to close the books on Tiananmen has come as Deng has this
year revived many of the reforms previously associated with Zhao, and
hopes to enshrine pro-reform policies and officials at the fall party
congress.
	But Chinese leaders want to first clean up the political mess
involving Zhao, who has remained in limbo and under virtual house arrest
for three years.
	Bao served as Zhao's chief of staff when Zhao was premier from 1980-
1987, and then as his key adviser when he was party chief. Bao also
headed a political reform office, disbanded after the 1989 crackdown,
that was linked to intellectuals who joined the protests.
	But Zhao, a gregarious moderate who became the front-man for Deng's
reforms in the 1980s, was shunted aside in a bitter power struggle as
martial law was imposed in Beijing in May 1989.
	He was formally ousted in June 1989 for ``supporting the turmoil and
splitting the party'' and has since refused to admit wrongdoing despite
pressure from hard-liners.
	A party investigation failed to make a criminal case against Zhao,
and he now is expected to be disciplined for internal party violations.
	Bao is the highest-ranking government official known to have been
tried in China since the 1980-1981 public trial of the so-called Gang of
Four, the radical leaders of the Cultural Revolution.