From: jxg601@huxley.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Newsgroups: aus.culture.china
Subject: China News Digest (Global), Thu, 10/15/1992
Date: 15 Oct 92 06:36:32 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12
Summary: CND
Keywords: CND

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

                              (News Global)

                        Thursday, October 15, 1992

Table of Contents                                                # of Lines
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1. News Brief (2 Items) .................................................26
2. Chinese Government Attacks U.S. Act Protecting Chinese Students ......43
3. Party Congress Presidium Debates on Electoral System .................44
4. Chinese Officials Admit Layoffs "Destabilizing" ......................77
5. Police Round up Petitioners During Party Congress ....................84
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1. News Brief (2 Items) .................................................26
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[Japan Economic Newswire, 10/14/92] BEIJING -- North Korean leader
Kim Il Sung is likely to visit China at the invitation of the Chinese
government in November with his son Kim Jong Il to confirm the two nations'
friendly relations, North Korean experts in Beijing said Wednesday. The
sources were quoted as saying China feels "indebted" to North Korea for
opening diplomatic ties with Pyongyang's longtime rival Seoul in late
August. Beijing therefore plans to acknowledge Kim Jong Il as his father's
successor during the visit and confirm bilateral ties remain unchanged
despite its establishment of relations with South Korea, they said. China
is also expected to pledge economic assistance to North Korea to help deal
with its financial difficulties. (From: Liu Jian)
                               ___  ___  ___

[Japan Economic Newswire, 10/14/92] HANOI -- Vietnam and China will kick
off negotiations on their border dispute in Beijing on Thursday, reliable
sources here said Wednesday. The talks will be the first centered solely on
the territorial issue since the two countries normalized diplomatic
relations last November after a 13-year suspension. Attention is focused on
whether Hanoi and Beijing can move to ease the tensions heightened by
China's renewed claim over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea,
political analysts said. The Spratlys, which China calls the Nansha and
Vietnam the Truong Sa, consist of hundreds of islets and reefs. Six
countries--China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and
Brunei--claim all or part of the Spratlys. (From: Liu Jian)

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2. Chinese Government Attacks U.S. Act Protecting Chinese Students ......43
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From: A CND Reader 
Source: UPI, 10/14/92 [edited by CND]

BEIJING -- China assailed new U.S. legislation Wednesday granting refuge in
the United States to Chinese students, calling it a "grave step" that
undermines education and culture exchanges.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, in a statement carried by the
official Xinhua news agency, said the bill signed by President Bush last
week was "absolutely unacceptable."

The legislation was designed to provide a safe haven for Chinese dissidents
after the Beijing government's crackdown on the Tiananmen Square
pro-democracy movement on June 3-4, 1989, and largely affects thousands of
Chinese students in the United States.

It allows all Chinese nationals who arrived in the United States on and
before April 11, 1990 and have been staying there since to apply for 
permanent residency beginning next July unless the president determines it
is safe for them to return to China.

"This is a grave step on the part of the U.S. side that seriously
contravenes the spirit of the relevant agreements reached by China and the
U.S., undermines bilateral exchanges in the fields of education and culture
and obstructs the return of Chinese students," said the foreign ministry
spokesman.

"The allegation that it is unsafe for them to return to China and they face
political persecution is simply untenable," he added.

Lack of economic and political freedoms at home has cost China some of its
best and brightest. Only about a third of the students who have left since
the late 1970s have returned.

But the Chinese government has in recent months revived a campaign to try
to lure back students and scholars studying abroad, especially engineers,
researchers and others who could contribute to the country's economic
reform and modernization drive.

"It has been indicated on many occasions that no matter what their
political attitudes were, they are welcomed to return to work for the
socialist construction of the country and will be properly resettled," the
foreign ministry spokesman said.

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3. Party Congress Presidium Debates on Electoral System .................44
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From: Liu Jian
Source: Japan Economic Newswire, 10/14/92

BEIJING -- China's ruling elite met Wednesday to decide whether or not to
continue the recent practice of electing members to the Communist Party
Central Committee through a system of competitive elections.

At stake is the continuation of limited internal party democracy in the
form of elections to central party organs, an experiment first introduced
at the 13th party congress in 1987.

A Xinhua News Agency report said the method of election of full and
alternate members to the 14th Central Committee, as well as the new Central
Discipline Inspection Commission, was formally approved at a second meeting
of the congress presidium. Xinhua did not reveal the nature of this
decision.

Five years ago, a similar Xinhua report on the second presidium meeting
announced specific percentages governing the election process.

It said around 5% of candidates for full membership and 12% for alternate
membership to the Central Committee would fail to be elected. In the
event, some 182 candidates contested 175 full Central Committee seats.

Analysts say the failure to mention percentages this time around suggests
the election system may have been scrapped altogether.

Chinese sources said party elders have been campaigning hard to end the
system of competitive elections, which often works against their
candidates.

They want to revert to the old system whereby all Central Committee members
are chosen in back-room discussions before a formal vote, the sources said.

The most notable casualty in 1987 was conservative theorist Deng Liqun, an
ardent supporter of the fight against "bourgeois liberalization," Chinese
communist jargon for ideas supposedly imported from the West.

The analysts said an end to competitive elections would boost the electoral
promotion prospects of several conservative candidates who cannot count on
the support of reform-minded rank-and-file congress delegates.

It would also give a further indication that political reform has been all
but dropped from the party agenda, they said.

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4. Chinese Officials Admit Layoffs "Destabilizing" ......................77
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From: A CND Reader
Source: UPI, 10/14/92
By: Nick Driver

BEIJING -- Senior regional Communist Party officials admitted Wednesday
that workers laid off under China's economic reforms posed a possible
flash-point for unrest but played down a hard-line party policy on crushing
any dissent.

The acknowledgement came as the party held a week-long national congress,
convened once every five years. The Chinese leadership is using the
congress to pledge a move toward a market-oriented economy, soft-pedaling
the challenges posed by the change.

The three officials, members of the younger generation of leaders and all
from areas at the vanguard of reforms, declined at a news conference to
discuss directly an internal party document calling for crushing dissent
resulting from worker layoffs or dissatisfaction among students.

But Wu Bangguo, the party secretary for Shanghai, acknowledged that the
millions of Chinese being put out of work as the country modernizes
bloated, inefficient industries pose a threat.

Asked about the party policy paper, published last month as Central
Committee Document No. 7, Wu instead attempted to appear conciliatory
towards these "factors."

"We on our part have taken a very cautious and positive attitude to solving
these problems," Wu said.

The document was much tougher, targeting factories for additional political
education and detailing measures the government would take to quell any
worker-related protests.

"Law and order agents must actively uphold the deepening of the enterprise
reform ... actively help enterprise leaders in their thought education work,
be vigilant against the occurrence of destabilizing factors, and guard
against those people with ulterior motives inciting workers to make
trouble," the report said.

Along with Wu, the party trotted Guangdong province party secretary Xie Fei
and Shandong province party chief Jiang Chunyun to showcase some of its
next generation of leaders. All have been rumored to rise in the hierarchy
when the congress elects a new Central Committee on Sunday.

Other party officials said Wednesday that the new Central Committee would
probably not name the new upper leadership, the ruling Politburo and its
Standing Committee, until early next week.

The three denied any form of political unrest existed in their provinces.
But Jiang Chunyun acknowledged some student dissatisfaction.

The internal document, first circulated among the top leadership in July,
warns college administrators to "nip any problems on campus in the bud."

"University party authorities must greatly strengthen their work on
students and young teachers' political education," the report said.

"At the first sign of any disturbance, they must immediately take resolute
measures," it said.

The Chinese leadership is profoundly fearful of students and workers, who
organized the largest protest movement in modern Chinese history before it
was crushed by the army on June 4, 1989.

Jiang cited an increase in on-campus political education work in the last
three years, praising educators work during the last three years in
remolding students who once opposed the government.

"The students have reflected and rethought about the June 4th event, and
they have realized that that movement was wrong, because it was detrimental
to the country and the people have come to such a realization," he said.

"The students and teachers in the universities have further realized that
the leadership of the Chinese communist party is correct and this is very
stable in their minds," Jiang said.

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5. Police Round up Petitioners During Party Congress ....................84
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From: A CND Reader
Source: UPI, 10/14/92

BEIJING (UPI) -- Living in the dirt on the streets of Beijing, Wang Baifang
is scared. The police patrol that has been arresting people like him for
the past week is due, and he still hasn't found a place to hide.

"They come round at 10, midnight and two in the morning," Wang said
nervously, eyes scanning the litter-strewn street. "They arrest you if they
catch you and send you to the detention center."

On the other side of town from the Communist Party's national congress,
where leaders repeated calls this week for honest government, police have
detained many ordinary Chinese like Wang who came to the capital seeking
help against corrupt officials.

Most have horrific tales, some dating back to the 1966-1976 Cultural
Revolution, of injustice and physical abuse suffered at the hands of local
officials, who, because of strong connections with the local police and
judiciary, are often above the law.

Wang -- a pseudonym -- fled his home in south China's Jiangxi province when
two policemen, whom he had witnessed steal a large sum of money, tried to
kill him.

For him and the others, the only recourse was a long trek to Beijing to
seek central government justice at a "petitioners' office" tucked away in
an alleyway in a rundown area of south Beijing.

Usually these "petitioners" build makeshift shelters near the office to
protect themselves from the cold while they wait, often for months on end,
for their case to be heard.

But with the party elite convened this week in the capital, the
petitioners, often dirty from life on the street, are an embarrassing
eyesore against the red bunting and flower displays erected in celebration
of the meeting.

The police have made nightly roundups, sweeping up the petitioners,
disposing of their meager belongings and bundling them off to detention
centers on the outskirts of Beijing. Some are then sent home, others are
simply put out on the street again.

"This congress has been one of the worst times," said one of the
petitioners, a young peasant woman.

The polluted river bank that acts as home once the sun goes down has been
unusually deserted. The daytime line at the petitioners office has also
dwindled.

"Everyone's very scared at the moment. Usually there are hundreds queueing.
At the moment there aren't three or four people a day," said a 22-year-old
peasant, too scared to give his name.

"My mother and elder sister have been detained," he said.

The young man, his mother and two sisters arrived in 1987, seeking help
against village officials in east China's Shandong province who confiscated
the family's profitable plot of land.

Their father, too sick to make the trip, died two years later when the
officials, furious with the family for seeking redress, cut off his
medicine supply and state support.

The family, like everyone else outside the office, must wait.

The office, with direct links to the State Council, China's cabinet, is
empowered to resolve cases, but is snowed under "sacks of mail," an office
official said.

Bitter petitioners say the office is inefficient. One said it is staffed by
officials who "don't care if they resolve your case or not because they
still get their 300 a month salary."

"I've been here five years and no one I know has had their case resolved,"
said the young peasant, who "grew up on this street" while the family tried
to get their case heard.

His sister, waiting with him, then helped him as they struggled to hide the
family's belongings in an unused shack, leaving them unburdened and free to
dodge police patrols until the following morning.

"We find somewhere to sleep if we can, or just wander all night until the
sun comes up," she said. "They don't dare arrest us in daylight."

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