From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Subject: CND-EP 17-8-92 TUE
Summary: CND
Keywords: CND
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date: 18 Aug 92 07:28:52 GMT

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===================  Europe / Pacific Section (CND-EP)  ===================
                               August 17, 1992

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

1. News Brief (1 Item) ................................................. 10

2. China, Kazakhstan Sign 7 Pacts, Including Investment Deal ........... 24

3. Asia Still Fears Resurgent Japanese Military ........................ 58

4. Australian - Two More Chinese Boatpeople Leap from Building ......... 33

5. Long Days, Hard Labour for Women Left on the Farm .................. 158
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1. News Brief (1 Item) ................................................. 10
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[PR Newswire, 8/7/92] UK -- A new industrial gases company has been
established in Northern China by the BOC Group (Windlesham, U.K.), Airco's
parent company. Tianjin BOC Industrial Gases Company Ltd. started business
on Aug. 1, 1992 and is the result of a joint venture agreement between BOC
and Hua Bei Oxygen in Tianjin. Airco Gases is a leading manufacturer and
supplier of industrial gases and gas handling technology in the United
States. Airco is a member of the BOC Group, the worldwide industrial gases,
healthcare, vacuum technology and distribution services company operating in
more than 60 countries and with sales last year of $5.2 billion. (From: a
CND reader)

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2. China, Kazakhstan Sign 7 Pacts, Including Investment Deal ........... 24
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>From: Jian Liu
Source: AP-DJ 8/10/92

BEIJING -- China and Kazakhstan strengthened bilateral relations Monday with
the signing of seven agreements, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Kazakh Foreign Minister T.S. and his Chinese counterpart, Qian Qichen,
signed the agreements on the last day of Suleimenov's four-day visit to
Beijing.

The agreements were a consular treaty, protocol for consultations between
the Foreign Ministries of the two countries, and agreements on educational
cooperation, cultural cooperation, opening border trade ports, encouragement
and mutual protection of investment and railway crossings, Xinhua said.

During Suleimenov's visit, he held talks with Premier Li Peng and Qian.
Suleimenov invited both leaders to visit Kazakhstan, but no dates have been
set.

The two foreign ministers also discussed border issues, including disputed
portions of their 1,700-kilometer border. Both agreed that continuous border
talks and negotiations on disarmament along the border areas should be held.

'The talks between the two foreign ministers demonstrated the two peoples'
willingness to be friendly and good neighbors,' the report said.

China and Kazakhstan established relations in January, and Kazakh Prime
Minister Sergei Tereschenko visited Beijing the next month.

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3. Asia Still Fears Resurgent Japanese Military ........................ 58
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>From: A CND Reader
Source: UPI 8/11/92

TOKYO  -- Fears that Japan is on the road back to militarism are not dying
out in Asia, according to an opinion poll released by the Foreign Ministry,
and officials say that was due in part to a new law sanctioning the dispatch
of Japanese soldiers overseas for the first time since World War II.

However, the survey, released Tuesday, also shows satisfaction in Asia with
Japan's present role in the region.

More than 30 percent of Malaysians, Singaporeans and Filipinos were worried
about a resurgent Japanese military, but fears in Thailand are rapidly
waning, according to the survey, which polled about 800 people in each of
five countries -- Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and
Thailand -- during the first six months of the year.

The survey also found a steady number of people who say they "will never
forget the wrong deeds of Japan."

Thirty-five percent of Malaysians said Japan "will become so strong a
military power that she will be a threat to other countries." That figure
was up 5 percentage points from the previous poll in 1987.

Thirty-four percent of Singaporeans expressed the same fear, also up 5
percentage points from 1987. However, the figure for Filipinos fell 15
percentage points to 32 percent. The percentage of Thais who fear Japanese
militarism receded from 53 percent to 24 percent. In Indonesia, 23 percent
of respondents were of the same opinion, up 2 percent from the previous
survey.

Foreign Ministry officials said continued fear of Japan's military has been
prompted by the new peacekeeping law, memorial ceremonies throughout Asia
commemorating 50th anniversaries connected to the war and the prominence of
cases involving Asian women forced by the Japanese government into brothels
during the war.

The new legislation, which took effect Monday, puts strict limitations on
sending troops overseas. The soldiers can only be dispatched to U.N.
peacekeeping missions, and will not be allowed to take part in conflicts
such as the war in Iraq.

Worry about Japan's military was not confined to other nations, as two
opposition parties fought the legislation to the bitter end in Parliament,
claiming it violates Japan's "peace constitution."

And in June, after damning evidence was unearthed in a military library,
Japan was forced to change its version of history and concede it was the
driving force behind the setting up of wartime brothels where as many as
200,000 girls and women were confined and forced to provide sex for
frontline Japanese soldiers.

But when asked if Japan is now playing an appropriate role in Asia's
development, 93 percent of Filipinos said yes, followed by 90 percent of
Indonesians, 82 percent of Thais, 77 percent of Malaysians and 61 percent of
Singaporeans.

Japan is the world's second largest donor of aid, and many countries in Asia
benefit from the Japanese program.

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4. Australian - Two More Chinese Boatpeople Leap from Building ......... 33
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>From: A CND Reader
Source: Reuter 8/5/92

CANBERRA -- A Chinese man and a woman leapt from the roof of a two-storey
detention centre in northwest Australia on Wednesday, bringing to five the
number who have jumped since being refused asylum.

Four were slightly hurt and a fifth is in hospital for checks, an
Immigration Department official said.

Four more Chinese, refusing food and water, remain perched on the roof. They
went up with the other five early on Monday and are refusing to climb down
or talk to Immigration Minister Gerry Hand until given refugee status.

The nine people from southern CHINA arrived in a leaky boat off the north
Australian coast in May. They have been held at Port Hedland refugee
detention centre since then.

They have been refused refugee status but have lodged appeals, set to take
several weeks.

Hand had travelled from Canberra to meet them.

"If you are unsuccessful in your claims, you have no basis on which to
remain in the country. Demonstrations and other dramatic action cannot alter
that situation," he said in a statement passed to the group, who have three
times refused to meet him.

Hand had some good news on Wednesday for eight other Chinese at the tightly
guarded camp, who arrived with 48 compatriots in another boat in January.
The eight were told they had been granted permanent residence. They were
immediately flown to Perth to join nine other people from their boat also
granted permanent residence in recent weeks.

An immigration department official said the 17 had been allowed to stay
after checks on their claims of persecution if sent home.

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5. Long Days, Hard Labour for Women Left on the Farm .................. 158
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>From: Joe Huang
Source: Christian Science Monitor Aug 5, 1992
By: James Tyson and Ann Scott Tyson,

Xiaodan Village, Henan, China -- Morning chores began early along the broad
main street that runs through this sleepy farming village in China's
heartland.  A tractor rattle past, churning up a pile of golden wheat spread
on the road-turned-threshing ground. Young married women walk by with their
arms hooked through baskets full of fragrant, fried dough twists - a
customary harvest-time gift for mothers back in their home villages.  In
nearby fields, peasant women like Zhao Xinlan hurry to reap bundles of
ripened grain.

This summer, as in many summers past, Ms. Zhao will bring home the harvest
alone, without help from her absent husband. Across China's countryside,
farming is rapidly becoming women's work as market-driven reforms spur tens
of millions of men to quit the land in less developed regions and migrate to
lucrative jobs in cities and towns.

Women now shoulder between 60 and 70 percent of farm work nationwide. In
many villages, such as Xiaodian in central China's Henan Province, the ratio
is higher, surpassing 80 or 90 percent, according to Chinese officials.  As
a result, the decade of reform is creating a vital new economic role for
China's 430 million rural women. For the first time women must occupy what
has been a male domain in China for centuries: the grueling, never-ending
production of food.

But country women shoulder other burdens. Along with farming, they often
must raise children, keep house, and care for aged parents alone. Bound by
deep-rooted Confucian ideals to serve their husbands and children, many
women seem resigned to hard work and, at times, to cruel abuse. The
husband's absence adds emotional strain to the hours of toil. Many migrant
men are unfaithful, according to Chinese experts and the official media.

The state-run Chinese Women's News recently reported on a dozen peasant
women who left their villages in search of errant husband.  "These women are
broken-hearted when they discover their husbands with another woman," says a
Chinese professor in women's studies who requested anonymity.

In Xiaodian, most men spend only a few days in the fields each year, when
their factories close down during the busiest farming seasons. Others leave
all the farm labor to their wives, as does Zhao's husband, a coal miner in a
distant city.  "My husband is good to me, but he can't handle anything
here," Zhao says.  In the past, jobs like threshing grain and plowing were
reserved for men, even in the 1960s and 70s when Mao's muscle-bound "iron
girl" with cropped hair and baggy clothes was the feminine ideal.

Not so today.  "I do all the work, the man's half as well as the woman's,"
Zhao says, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "If I didn't do
it, who would?" New responsibilities on the farm have helped to boost the
self-esteem of rural women. Zhao takes pride in her farming skills - in the
easy, graceful way she swings a hoe, in her deftness at tending cotton on
the family's one acre of land, and in the two kids born to her herd of snowy
goats one June morning.

Many women have learned about new farming technology, fertilizers, and the
use of more productive seeds. A few have become highly successful
entrepreneurs, leading whole villages to prosperity.  Ten miles from
Xiaodian, a large, headstrong woman named Liu Zhihua has transformed the
village of Jinghua into a rural corporation that last year made profits of
$500,000.  Jinghua's 360 villagers now earn double the average per capita
income of Chinese peasants.

But despite the central role of women on China's farms, their independence
and opportunities remain limited. Men control the purse and decide what
crops to grow in more than half of rural households, according to a 1991
survey. Moreover, the tasks of growing food, cooking, sewing, washing, and
caring for children keep women bound to land and home.  In Xiaodian, peasant
women are often seen shepherding children down dusty, tree-lined paths
leading to the fields. As their mothers farm, youngsters play, throwing
rocks or digging up soil.

"When the children were young, I had no one to help me," Zhao says. She
recalls most vividly the task of transplanting rice seedlings in 1980, when
her youngest son was still a baby.  "Before dawn, we left for the fields.
They are about three li [one mile] away.  When we got there I had to lay the
baby on the dirt and let him cry. After coming home we were all hungry, but
there was no one to make food for us." One day not long afterward, the baby
crawled over to the brick hearth and burned his face, disfiguring it
permanently around the left eye.

Women can manage - though with difficulty - to rear and nurse their children
while farming, but they say factory work is impractical. "You can put the
baby on the field, but if you put it on the factory floor it will be
crushed," Zhao says.  Many peasant women, restrained by ancient prejudices
about their proper role in China's patriarchal society, fail to pursue
greater opportunities.

Today, as in centuries past, a prime obligation of Chinese women is to bear
sons.  Women are often snubbed by their husbands' families if they fail to
give birth to boys. Girl babies are more frequently abandoned after birth
than boys, and female infanticide has not been eradicated, say Chinese
experts in women's studies.  Girls are also more likely to be kept out of
school. In 1988, 83 percent of the children unable to go to school were
girls. Nearly one out of three rural Chinese women is illiterate.  These
women are three times as likely to die during pregnancy than literate women.

Blatant abuses of women are arising from the revival of traditional marriage
practices in the countryside. Concubinage, outlawed after the 1949 communist
revolution, is reappearing in the southern province of Guangdong, officials
say. A labor contractor, Jiang Jinmin, was recently sentenced to jail for
taking six concubines in addition to his wife since 1978.  Moreover, the
sale of women as brides or prostitutes, which was widespread in China before
1949, has reemerged as a major problem since Beijing began freeing market
economic forces in the late 1970s.

China each year reports at least 10,000 cases of rural women being abducted
and sold, mainly as brides. The total number of abductions is believed to be
much higher, especially as local cadres and police in some areas assist the
"people mongers," according to official reports.  Abductors often lure women
from poor mountain villages in Sichuan, Guizhou, and other hinterland
provinces with promises of lucrative city jobs. Most are sold as wives for
less than $1,000 to farmers in slightly better-off areas who cannot afford
the exhorbitant cost of formal weddings.

The sale of women is widespread in rural Henan, provincial experts on
women's issues say.  In Xiaodian, several men have bought brides from
Sichuan in recent years, although they prefer to say their wives were
"introduced" to them.  Li Jun, the youngest son in a large family, says he
could not spend the more than $2,000 required for a respectable marriage in
Xiaodian. So last year, he paid $200 to a "matchmaker" who delivered him a
21 year-old bride from Sichuan.

Like many farmers who buy and se]l women, Mr. Li (not his real name) sees
nothing wrong with the trade.  "She's pretty, she can till the land better
than a northern Chinese man, she's a good housekeeper, and she saved me a
lot of money," says Li. Hunched shirtless over a bowl of noodles in his dim,
two- room hovel, Li admits that he kept a close watch on his new bride at
first to make sure she did not run away.

Villagers in many areas view the women as legitimate purchases, cooperating
to prevent escapes and protesting when they are rescued. "The cries of those
who are sold, molested, and insulted are soon extinguished," write the
authors of a 1989 reportage on abduction in the Shanghai magazine Encounter
Monthly.  "Instead, they are occupied by a shallow satisfaction, a happiness
inside the pain, and a recognition of their fate." Indeed, women in Xiaodian
seem inured to the hardship and discrimination, content that they lead
easier lives than did women in decades past.

At Zhao's house, village ladies shoo the only man out of the room and sit
chatting as they clean basketfuls of spring onions. Guo Yunfang, a
white-haired grandmother with tiny, bound feet, describes how, at the age of
10, her toes were all broken and feet wrapped in a long strip of cloth. "Why
did they do it? Well, when a girl married in those days, everyone looked at
her feet, not at her face. If she teetered along 'ta-ta-ta' on tiny feet she
was considered pretty," Mrs. Guo says.

"My sister's marriage was arranged when she was two years old, she couldn't
even talk. Mine was settled when I was 14," Guo says. "Of course, I hadn't
set eyes on my husband before our wedding night. We were two strangers in
one bed." Another village woman, Wang Shenglan, breaks in. "We really had a
hard time. I had 12 children, but only seven of them lived. I just kept
getting pregnant.  Every year I had to spin and weave to make shoes and
clothes for them. I felt so irritated, with all the children crying."

My mother's life was miserable," Zhao says. 'When she was nine years old,
her parents died. Her uncle married her off to the son of a family with some
money. But she was unhappy. She was just like a slave in their home.  "One
day she ran away. She hid in a dugout and ate ground-up peanut shells. But
the family found her and took her back.  "In 1979, just when things were
getting easier for her, my mother died of exhaustion and hunger. She was
only 59 years old," Zhao says. "I am a lot better off than my mother."

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