From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Newsgroups: aus.culture.china
Subject: China News Digest (Global), Sun, 11/22/1992
Date: 22 Nov 92 09:16:34 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.22.8
Summary: CND
Keywords: CND

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

                                (News Global)

                         Sunday, November 22, 1992


Table of Contents                                                 # of Lines
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1. News Brief (4 items).................................................. 36
2. China Adjusts Population Goals, Saying Previous Goals Unmet .......... 18
3. Jiang Zemin Reportedly to Serve Also as Chinese President ............ 15
4. Sino-US Trade Gap Widens in the First Nine Months This Year .......... 16
5. PLA Lobbies for Increase in Funding .................................. 35
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1. News Brief (4 items).................................................. 36
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[JAPAN ECONOMIC NEWSWIRE, 11/21/92] BEIJING -- A new book on United States
President-elect Bill Clinton sold out within days of reaching the shelves,
a spokeswoman for the state-run Xinhua Bookstore said Saturday. The
130,000-word volume entitled "The New U.S. President Bill Clinton" went on
sale earlier this week to help meet public curiosity surrounding Clinton.
Compiled by some of China's most renowned experts on international affairs,
the Clinton biography introduces his life experiences, policy ideas,
personality and interests, the English-language China Daily newspaper said
Saturday. (Forwarded by: Huijie)
                           ___ ___ ___

[Reuter News Service, 11/18/92] BEIJING -- A new poster of Deng Xiaoping,
drawn in Chinese-style brush and ink, was released on Wednesday as the
latest tribute to China's paramount leader. The first 3,000 copies of the
glossy portrait entitled "Our Chief Architect" are being distributed by the
Central Arts Publishing House to selected shops around China. "Comrade Deng
Xiaoping's head is tilted slightly to the left, and his far-seeing eyes are
pregnant with meaning," the official Beijing Evening News reported. "His
pressed lips reveal a strong and resolute spirit of self-confidence, showing
his firm and confident belief in socialism," it said.
(Forwarded by: A CND Reader)
                           ___ ___ ___

[Reuter News Service, 11/18/92] TOKYO -- China's 88-year-old paramount
leader Deng Xiaoping is in good health and living a relaxed life at home,
his third daughter said on Wednesday. Deng Rong told Japanese Prime Minister
Kiichi Miyazawa her father did not emerge to greet Emperor Akihito on his
historic China visit in October because he was retired and no longer saw
foreign dignitaries, Kyodo News Agency said. "My father fully recognised the
importance of the visit," said Deng Rong, who was visiting Japan with a
Chinese friendship delegation. (Forwarded by: A CND Reader)
                           ___ ___ ___

[AP-DJ, 11/21/92] SEOUL -- Russia recently changed its history textbook to
announce that North Korea, not South Korea, started the 1950-1953 Korean
War, officials said Saturday.  The Defense Ministry said Russia discarded
its previous endorsement of North Korea's claim that the capitalist South
started the bloody civil war, by changing a middle school history textbook.
According to the new book edited by the Russian Education Ministry, North
Korean President Kim Il Sung set off the conflict by invading the South
under the approval of Soviet leader Josef Stalin. (Forwarded by: Huijie)

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2. China Adjusts Population Goals, Saying Previous Goals Unmet .......... 18
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Forwarded by: Huijie
Source: DOW JONES INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 11/21/92

BEIJING -- China has announced new population targets for the next century,
after acknowledging that it can't meet previously set goals, an official
newspaper reported Saturday.

China's original target for the year 2000 was a population of 1.2 billion.
But with 1.16 billion people already, officials have acknowledged that
target was unattainable.

Peng Peiyun, chairman of the State Family Planning Commission, said at a
national conference that opened in Beijing Friday that the new goal for the
year 2000 would be 1.294 billion.

Officials have said that even with strict population control, China will
have 1.3 billion people by then. Most experts say China can support a
maximum population of 800 million.

Maintaining the growth rate at 12.5 per thousand will be difficult because
China is in the middle of its biggest "baby boom," as women who were born
during an earlier baby boom in the 1960s enter their childbearing years.
About 123 million women will be in their prime childbearing years of 23 to
29 during the 1991 to 1994 period, 16% more than the previous five-year
period.

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3. Jiang Zemin Reportedly to Serve Also as Chinese President ............ 15
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Forwarded by: Huijie
Source: JAPAN ECONOMIC NEWSWIRE, 11/22/92

TOKYO -- Chinese Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin will be named to
concurrently serve as the nation's president at a spring 1993 meeting of the
National People's Congress, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Sunday.

The Mainichi said in a dispatch from Beijing that Jiang, who is also
chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, will concurrently serve
in the symbolic but important post.  His tenure as president will be for
five years.

Jiang's projected appointment as Chinese president will make him the first
Chinese leader to concurrently hold the three top party, state and military
posts in about 30 years, reviving what the Mainichi called "the Communist
Party's dictatorial system."

Only the late Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi held the three key posts at the same
time.

The appointment of Jiang as president was informally decided during last
month's party congress, the Mainichi said.  He will succeed Yang Shangkun
who was elected to the post in April 1988.

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4. Sino-US Trade Gap Widens in the First Nine Months This Year .......... 16
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Forwarded by: A CND Reader
Source: SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 11/19/92
Written by: Lucinda Horne

The US trade deficit with CHINA has hit US$13.4 billion for the first nine
months of the year - well ahead of the $12.7 billion shortfall recorded for
the whole of 1991.

Despite record US exports in September, demand for Chinese goods sent the US
deficit with the mainland soaring to $2.3 billion for the month from the
$1.9 billion shortfall in August.

The deficit with CHINA widened by more than $6 billion over the three months
of July, August and September.

US Department of Commerce figures issued last night indicate the US trade
gap with China could easily exceed the forecast deficit of $15 billion for
the whole of 1992.

The latest data will further fuel pressure on US president-elect Clinton to
take steps to arrest the US trade imbalance with major trading partners. Mr
Clinton indicated during his campaign that he would take a tougher stand
with China, withdrawing trade privileges if its human rights record did not
improve.

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5. PLA Lobbies for Increase in Funding .................................. 35
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Forwarded by: A CND Reader
Source: SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 11/19/92
Written by: Willy Wo-Lap Lam.

The People's Liberation Army is lobbying for more funds because it has over-
spent its budget allocations for the early 1990s by large margins.

And with the ascendancy of Central Military Commission (CMC) vice-chairman
and former naval chief General Liu Huaqing, the Navy seems destined to get a
large chunk of funding earmarked for the modernisation of weapons.

The Army's official budget for the period of the Eighth Five-Year Plan
(1991-1995) has already been determined by a military five-year plan passed
last year.

The plan provides for an annual budget increase of at least 10 per cent,
discounting inflation.

However, many big-ticket items, especially the importation of military
hardware, are covered in unpublicised, "unofficial" budgets.

For example, the bulk of China's arms purchases from Russia, including Su-27
fighters, are paid for by "secret funds" controlled by the CMC.

Military sources said the new CMC was lobbying the top Communist Party
leadership for an increase in both the official and unofficial budgets.
"Some army officers are raising the bogey of a new containment policy
against China waged by the West," a military source said.

The source added that Taiwan's acquisition of F-16 jets from the United
States and its reported procurement of Mirage fighters from France - could
buttress the Army's argument for additional allotments.

Political analysts in Beijing said that, free of the influence of commissars
and ideologues associated with former chief political commissar General Yang
Baibing, the army leadership was dominated by professionals whose goal was
the modernisation of weaponry.

The new line-up is headed by General Liu, who was also promoted to the
politburo Standing Committee last month.

The analysts said a measure of General Liu's clout was that the "Navy
faction" got six seats on the new Central Committee, as against three or
four for the other departments.

This expansion of the Navy's clout has coincided with Beijing's unannounced
plans to project the nation's powers in the South CHINA Sea.

"(Patriarch Mr) Deng Xiaoping will likely entertain the requests of the Army
because he needs the support of General Liu and other top officers for a
peaceful transition of power after his death," an Asian diplomat said.

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