From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Subject: China News Digest (Global), Sun, 9/27/1992
Summary: CND
Keywords: CND
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date: 27 Sep 92 09:48:39 GMT

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

                              (News Global)

                        Sunday, September 27, 1992

Table of Contents                                                # of Lines
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1. News Brief (4 Items) .................................................36
2. Major China Steel Maker to Experiment with Stocks ....................25
3. A One-Man Crusade: Tong Zeng and His Campaign for War Damages ........89
4. China: Last Frontier for Saturated Beer Market .......................54
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1. News Brief (4 Items) .................................................36
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[Reuter, 9/22/92] BEIJING -- China aims to increase steel output to 100
million tonnes by the year 2000, the official People's Daily said.  China's
full-year output is expected to reach a record 77.5 million tonnes this year.
That figure exceeds the current Eighth Five-Year Plan under which output in
1995, the last year of the plan, was supposed to be 72 million tonnes. Steel
output has been at record levels due to a heated domestic market, economists
said. (From: A CND Reader)
			       ___  ___  ___

[The Age (Melbourne), 9/24/92] Beijing published its third in a series of
white papers on human rights repeats Beijing's claim that Tibet is an
inalienable part of China and attacks the "Dalai clique" and "overseas
anti-Chinese forces" for spreading rumors and distorting the human rights
situation in Tibet.  The document, issued by China's Cabinet office, follows
earlier documents defending China's human rights record and its prison and
reform-through-labor detention system. (From: A CND Reader)
			       ___  ___  ___

[Reuter, 9/23/92] BEIJING -- Chinese miners recently found what they termed
an extremely large gold deposit in remote Inner Mongolia, the People's Daily
overseas edition said on Wednesday.  The 80 sq km (31 sq mile) state-run
Hademan Mine near the industrial city of Baotou is expected to yield nearly
400 kg (881 lb) of gold a year, it said. (From: A CND Reader)
			       ___  ___  ___

[Jiji, 9/21/92] Tokyo -- According to a poll conducted by Jijie press, which
was released on Monday, 45.9 pct of Japanese said Emperor Akihito, during
his upcoming visit to China, should express regret by indirectly referring
to the Japan-China war while terming it an unfortunate past between the two
countries, the phrase which the late Emperor Showa used in comment on Japan's
wartime history with China. Those who said the Emperor should clearly voice
Japan's apology for its invasion of China came to 22.1 pct. But 16.3 pct
said there is no need for him to touch on the Japan-China war.  The poll was
conducted for four days from Sept. 10, covering 2,000 adults across Japan.
Of them, 71.8 pct responded. (From: A CND Reader)

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2. Major China Steel Maker to Experiment with Stocks ....................25
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From: A CND Reader
Source: Reuter, 9/24/92

BEIJING -- China's huge Ma'anshan Iron and Steel company and its 100,000
workers will take part in the country's experiment with stocks, the official
Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

The State Council, China's cabinet, has authorised Ma'anshan, one of the
country's eight biggest iron and steel producers, to be a pilot firm in what
Xinhua called a programme of standardisation of share holdings.

The agency did not give further details, but analysts said the state was
sure to maintain a controlling interest in such a key company. The shares
were likely to be issued only to employees, they said.

Ma'anshan produces two million tonnes of iron and two million tonnes of steel
each year.

Hong Hu, vice-minister of the State Commission for Restructuring the Economy,
told the company to "be bold in its reform experiment", Xinhua said.

China has recently turned to the share holding system to try to reinvigorate
many of its inefficient and capital-starved industries and to tap a huge
pool of personal savings.

Many Chinese and Western economists note that China's share holding system
is very different from that in the West: in most cases shares are made
available to employees, who under most circumstances cannot resell them.

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3. A One-Man Crusade: Tong Zeng and His Campaign for War Damages ........89
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From: A CND Reader
Source: Reuter, 9/23/92
By: Andrew Quinn

BEIJING -- China is not an easy place to mount a one-man crusade -- especi-
ally when the campaign touches on one of the most sensitive diplomatic
relationships in Asia.

Man-on-the-street activism is banned. Police and plainclothes security men
keep watch for any sign of political troublemakers.

But this does not deter Tong Zeng. The 36-year-old former law student has
single-handedly organised a campaign to demand billions of dollars in
reparations for Japan's brutal occupation of China during World War Two.

Tong's has been a lonely battle fought on the edges of society and without
official approval from Beijing, which in 1972 agreed to drop demands for
compensation.

For Tong, the need to honour the estimated 10 million Chinese killed and
countless more raped, maimed and brutalised by the Japanese occupiers in
the 1930s and 40s outweighs Beijing's diplomatic drive to keep Tokyo happy.

>From his small flat near Beijing's university district, Tong has run a
national clearing-house for information about the Chinese victims of World
War Two.

"I spend about half of my time on this, and would spend all of it if I
could," he said.

The letters that pour in contain stories like that of Hou Donge, a 71-year-
old woman from Shanxi province who has become the first Chinese to step
forward publicly with her experiences as a "comfort woman" in Japan's
wartime military brothels.

The comfort women issue has already strained Japan's ties with North and
South Korea, where women were also forced into sexual slavery by Japanese
occupiers.

But China has remained silent, though thousands of Chinese women were also
victimised.

Hou, whose 40-day-old baby died of starvation after the Japanese captured
her, wants reparations. But most of all, she wants an apology.

"She said she would have committed suicide a long time ago, but felt she had
to live until the Japanese apologised," said Li Xiupin, a Chinese journalist
who recently interviewed her.

Tong says Hou and tens of thousands of people like her should be granted
their request. Together with other activists, he has collected the signatures
of about 300,000 Chinese who say Japan owes them indemnities.

"We are all Chinese, we all share the same bitter memories," Tong said. "The
victims are now old and in the last years of their lives. They need this
resolved."

Tong reasons that the 1972 agreement referred only to the government's claims
to war reparations, and that individuals can still bring suit against both the
Japanese government and Japanese firms active in China during the occupation.
By his calculations, this means individual Chinese might claim damages of as
much as $180 billion for Japan's actions, which included bombing civilian
areas, massacring workers, performing medical experiments on unwilling
subjects and forcing women into prostitution.

After intensive lobbying, Tong in March managed to get members of China's
rubber-stamp parliament to register a bill backing individual claims to
reparations. But the bill is now officially "under study," and could remain
there indefinitely.

Tong's vendetta presents a delicate problem for Beijing's leaders, who would
rather be clinking glasses in toasts of friendship with Emperor Akihito or
signing new, multi-billion-dollar deals with Japanese investment groups.

The government's cautious attitude has resulted in a de facto news blackout
on Tong's activities, but word-of-mouth has still made him something of an
underground hero for elderly Chinese who believe they were wronged by Japan
and resent their own government's failure to stand up for them.

"Everything we are doing is thanks to Mr Tong," said Xu Yiru, one of Tong's
newly-founded civilian group, the Chinese Popular Committee for Japanese
Reparations.

"We plan to make our demand known to the Japanese," Tong said. "We do not
know if the Emperor will apologise, but if he is a man of honour, he will."

Even if no apology is forthcoming, Tong says he will continue to campaign
for redress of one of the world's great injustices regardless of China's
official position on the issue.

"The Japanese government likes to brush off reality. They do not face the
truth of their history," Tong said. "But if they do not face the facts of
what they have done, they may do it again."

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4. China: Last Frontier for Saturated Beer Market .......................54
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From: A CND Reader
Source: Reuter, 9/24/92
By: Janet Snyder

BEIJING -- It might not be the Munich Oktoberfest, but Beijing is holding
its first beer festival to encourage a boom in sales in what foreign brewers
see as the market's last frontier.

The city has built sidewalk cafes and trellised beer gardens as part of the
festival, which runs from September 20 to October 4.

Foreign brewers and farmers are smacking their lips at the new market.

Brewers in the United States and Europe, whose home markets are saturated,
look eagerly to the huge potential of the world's most populous country.
For barley farmers in Australia, Canada and the United States, China is a
giant market for barley malt, a basic beer ingredient.

China is expected to buy almost a million tonnes of the malt this year, said
Jeff Brown, Beijing representative of the U.S. Feed Grains Council.

In the 13 years since Beijing began economic reforms, the beer industry has
seen explosive growth of more than 1000 per cent, Brown said.

In 1979, total beer output was 700,000 tonnes. Last year it reached 8.13
million tonnes.

China is now the world's third largest beer brewing nation, after the United
States and Germany. The United States last year produced 23 million tonnes,
Brown said.

But unlike the United States and Germany, whose beer markets are mature and
consumption growths flat or declining, China has one of the fastest growing
markets in the world, he said.

American per capita beer consumption is about 80 litres (21 gallons) a year,
while Germany's is a hefty 160 litres (42 gallons).

China's consumption is a tiny eight litres (two gallons) a year -- but
growing by about 10 to 15 per cent annually. "It was virtually zero 10 years
ago," Brown notes. "Beer consumption in China has no place to go but up."
Domestic brewers have seen sales grow 20 per cent so far this year over
1991, a Beijing Beer Festival press release says.

Young people find beer a good substitute for the 100-proof hard liquor
called "baijiu" traditionally favoured by their elders.

"The general impression among younger Chinese is that compared with baijiu,
beer is good for you," Brown said.

It's also much cheaper than hard liquor. A bottle of local beer costs one
or two yuan (20 to 40 cents) over a shop counter against 30 to 100 yuan
($6 to 20) for a bottle of baijiu.

Foreign brands have already begun brewing in China under licence.

One of the most recent newcomers to the country is Becks of Germany, whose
beer was first made under licence here in April.

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