From: xu@hydra.maths.unsw.oz.au ()
Subject: CND-Global, January 11, 1993
Organization: school of Mathematics UNSW
Distribution: aus
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 08:56:40 GMT


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

                                (News Global)

                          Monday, January 11, 1993


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1. News Brief (3 Items) ................................................. 34
2. Bank of China Set to Expand in East Asia ............................. 42
3. Fifty-Seven Executed for Murder, Robberies in Train in Southern China  36
4. Beijing Weekend Reports Gays in China ................................ 63
============================================================================

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1. News Brief (3 Items) ................................................. 34
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[Reuter, 1/9/1993] HONG KONG -- China's booming  southern province of Guang-
dong exported $18.05 billion worth of goods in 1992, up 32 per cent  on  the
year and  accounting for a  quarter  of the  national total,  the China News
Service reported. Guangdong, which borders the British colony of Hong  Kong,
trades  with 164 countries and areas, the Beijing-controlled agency said. It
accounted for 20 per cent of China's exports in 1991. (Forwarded by: Deming)
                                ___ ___ ___

[J.E.N., 1/10/1993] SINGAPORE -- Police on  Sunday boarded a Taiwanese-owned
cargo ship carrying 128 illegal  Chinese emigrants  who were allegedly being
smuggled  from China  to the  United  States,  officials said.  Police  were
notified about  the 499-ton  Galahad after  the ship's  captain  sent  out a
distress call reporting trouble on board last Friday, said  Chua  Chin Kiat,
Singapore police operations director.  Police initially thought the ship was
attacked by pirates  or hijacked,  but an investigation by  Singapore marine
police who  boarded the vessel  early Sunday indicated  that the  passengers
were being transported illegally.  A total of 138 people were on the vessel,
including nine crew members and 128 Chinese passengers accompanied by a Hong
Kong citizen.  Although  the crew  declared the ship to be  a cargo  vessel,
police found the ship specially fitted with makeshift bunkers to accommodate
passengers, officials said.  (Forwarded by: A CND Reader)
                                ___ ___ ___

[AP-DJ, 1/9/1993] -- China plans to  set up a special  economic zone for 1.3
million people who will be flooded out of their homes by construction of the
world's largest dam, an official newspaper reported today.  The dam is to be
built  across  the  Yangtze  River at the site of the renowned Three Gorges.
Critics say the project to build the world's largest hydroelectric  facility
will  damage  the  environment as well as destroy the Three Gorges, famed in
Chinese  art and  literature  for its beauty.  The  dam was  approved by the
legislature last spring, but a record number of legislators voted against it
or abstained. Construction will cost at least $10 billion and take 18 years.
The  China Daily  newspaper  said the 1.3  million  displaced people will be
compensated  for their lost farmland with an  economic zone that  will offer
breaks  and  other  preferential  policies to foreign investors.  (Forwarded
by: Zhao Hua)

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2. Bank of China Set to Expand in East Asia ............................. 42
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Forwarded by: Deming
Source: Reuter News, 1/9/1993

SINGAPORE -- The Bank of China (BOC), a state-owned commercial giant growing
as rapidly  as China's  booming economy,  will expand  into South  Korea and
Southeast Asia this year, its managing director said on Saturday.

The BOC,  which handles  China's foreign exchange and trade financing, is in
talks  to  open  branches  or joint  venture  banks in  Vietnam,  Indonesia,
Thailand and South Korea, BOC managing director Zhao Bing-de told Reuters.

"We are pushing for the plans at the moment. They are all under  negotiation
now,"  said  Zhao, in Singapore to visit BOC subsidiary Kwangtung Provincial
Bank. "We hope our bank will expand largely in the Asia  Pacific  region  in
1993."

The BOC now has about 430 branch offices overseas, nearly all in  Hong  Kong
or Macau,  but also  in London,  New York,  Tokyo,  Luxembourg,  Sydney  and
Singapore.

Regional bankers have said BOC may expand aggressively at home and  overseas
after receiving a recent capital boost.

The BOC raised its paid-up capital to 30 billion yuan ($5.26  billion)  from
18 billion yuan ($3.16 billion) at its board meeting in November in Beijing.

Zhao said BOC may join domestic partners in some Asian Pacific countries  to
set up joint venture banks, depending on banking regulations.

"I prefer to open branches but some countries don't allow foreign  banks  to
set up branches, they only allow joint venture banks," he said.

Zhao declined to give details, aside from saying the Vietnamese branch would
be located in Ho Chi Minh City.

BOC's representative office in Moscow will be upgraded to be a  branch  this
year, he added.

The bank's deposit base at overseas branches at the  end  of  1991  totalled
42.15  billion  yuan  ($7.39 billion),  up about  16 per  cent  from  a year
earlier.  Assets  were 1,107.74 billion  ($194.3 billion),  up an  annual 28
percent in 1990-91, Zhao said.

BOC net  profit  was 9.76  billion ($1.71 billion) in 1991, he said. China's
economy posted 12 per cent real growth in 1992, powered by capitalist market
reforms and an export boom.

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3. Fifty-Seven Executed for Murder, Robberies in Train in Southern China  36
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Forwarded by: A CND Reader
Source: UPI, 1/10/1993

BEIJING -- Authorities executed at least 51 people in a weekend crime crack-
down  in  south  China's Guangdong province and six others were put to death
separately in Shanghai for a series of train robberies, the  official  media
reported Sunday.

The 51 people executed in Guangdong included  people  convicted  of  murder,
serious robberies and large thefts and were among more than 1, 000 convicted
offenders sentenced by local courts on Saturday, the Yangcheng Evening  News
reported from Canton (Guangzhou).

The official Xinhua news agency said the six other offenders were  "executed
by  shooting"  on Saturday morning under a sentence of  the  Shanghai Inter-
mediate Railway Transportation Court.

Xinhua said the six were members of a gang that committed robberies on train
on  nine trunk  rail lines  in southern  and eastern China  between 1988 and
1992.  In a series of 32 incidents,  it said,  they stole money and property
worth more than $115,000.

Twelve other members  of the gang were  also arrested.  Xinhua  said one had
been  given a  suspended  death  sentence,  another  was  sentenced  to life
imprisonment and eight others received jail terms.

The Yangcheng Evening News said that in  Canton,  the  Guangdong  provincial
capital,  among  45  people executed were three habitual offenders who led a
gang that  committed  more than  100 robberies  over five  years in  several
cities.

Six more offenders were executed in the city of Huizhou, including a  "woman
highway  lord"  who led an all-female gang that repeatedly robbed passengers
on buses along a major thoroughfare, the newspaper said. The other five  put
to death in Huizhou were members of another highway gang that robbed drivers
and passengers at gunpoint.

The Yangcheng Evening News said a total of 1,163 offenders were sentenced to
various  penalties  Saturday  by  18  municipal  intermediate  courts and 85
county-level courts.

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4. Beijing Weekend Reports Gays in China ................................ 63
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Forwarded by: Zhao Hua
Source: AP, 1/8/1993

BEIJING -- A state-run newspaper published a rare glimpse of homosexuals  in
China,  acknowledging  their   deep   fears   in  an  underground  life  and
saying a government  health agency has set up an unprecedented support group
for gay men.

The  report,  carried Friday in the  English-language  Beijing  Weekend,  an
entertainment  weekly published by the government-run China Daily newspaper,
was  a surprisingly compassionate account of gays' worries about  discovery,
AIDS and other problems.

"I  feel very sad for myself and all those who are like me," lamented a  26-
year-old   gay   man   in   the article. "There is no future for us. In this
country or anywhere else in the world, homosexuality is something that  will
probably never be really understood or accepted by the society."

Although the weekly is aimed at foreigners and has a small circulation,  the
article   was   unusual   for   the   state   media,  which  rarely  discuss
homosexuality and then only in negative terms.

China  claimed to  have eradicated  homosexuality  after the  1949 communist
revolution,  and  the   practice  remains  illegal and highly sensitive. But
economic  and  social  liberalizations, along with the threat of AIDS,  have
begun to force more open discussion.

The  Beijing  Weekend said  China's  National  Health  Education  Institute,
which   has led government AIDS awareness efforts, last November established
"Men's World," an unprecedented support group for gay men in the capital.

The  group  has met to discuss AIDS prevention and other problems  faced  by
homosexuals,  whose  biggest  fear  is that of discovery as they struggle to
protect their secret and their social status.

"I  cannot  imagine  what would happen if my wife knew that I was gay," said
a factory  education  specialist in his mid-30s. "My male companions usually
live outside of Beijing, and I only meet them when I'm on business or during
holidays."

The  article  said  gays'  sensitivity   was   highlighted  at  a  gathering
sponsored   by  Men's World in late December, which erupted when some of the
two   dozen   men  attending  hurled  chairs  and  "stormed  out"  after   a
photographer snapped pictures of them.

But one of those attending said he ultimately stayed "in order to learn some
self-protection knowledge."

"I'm afraid of AIDS, but like a drug addict, I cannot change my habit," said
a  25-year-old  physician.  "The  biggest  pressure,  however, comes from my
parents. They are giving me a hard time over what I have to be."

The  article  gave  no  figures, but  homosexuality  in  Chinese  cities  is
known   to be far more common than is officially acknowledged. The number of
AIDS  carriers  nationwide  is also believed to be much higher than the  969
reported by the government.

"Gays  are very, very sensitive and easily agitated," noted  Wan  Yanhai,  a
research  assistant with the National Health Education Institute and the or-
ganizer of the support group and a pioneering AIDS  information  hotline  in
Beijing.

"We've  got  to  be  very  careful  and  sensitive,  too,  in  dealing  with
them," Wan said.

However,  one gay man told the newspaper: "We don't need sympathy.  What  we
need is tolerance and understanding."

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