chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Bo Chi) (01/17/90)
| +---------I __L__ ___/ \ -------I +----+----+ | ___\_\_ | \./ | | -----+- | | | | | __ \/ | --+-- |--- | |---| | I----+----I | I__J/\ | __|__ | | | |---| | | | _____ \ | /| \ | | | L__-| | I I---------J / J \/ | | V | J * C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t * (ND Canada Service) -- Jan. 17 (I), 1990 Table of Contents No. of Lines Brief News: prominent reformer in Shenzhen to be dismissed, etc....... 51 1. Japan waiting to follow steps of U.S. hypocrites................... 30 2. China attacks U.S. human rights propaganda as hypocritical......... 40 3. Voice of America beaming for new Chinese audiences................. 51 4. China's youths trying their best to go abroad...................... 74 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brief News ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [AP/izzyq00@uclamvs.bitnet] Hong Kong's Ming Pao reported that Yuan Geng, director of the Commerce Bureau in Shekou, Shenzhen, would be dismissed and his economic reform policy would be criticized. Yuan transformed Shekou, a district of the Shenzhen special economic zone, from bare land into a coastal industrial town after the government began its experiments in free-market economics in four coastal cities in 1979. Yuan have said publicly that "the Communist Party needs democracy as it needs air." Shekou News, a liberal weekly published by Yuan's bureau, has been banned since November. Ming Pao also said the top man of a party newspaper Guangzhou Daily will be replaced because "he has not done his best in previous investigations." [The New York Times 1.15.90/simone@nyspi.bitnet] The famous singer and composer Hou Dejian breaks out from silence after returning from hiding in the Australian embassy for seven months. When interviewed by The New York Times reporter in his apartment in Beijing, Hou openly criticized the CCP government and said reforms must be conducted otherwise China would face what have happened in Romania. [Central Agency, 1.14.90/simone@nyspi.bitnet] Hong Kong 'Dang Dai' weekly reports that Cui Guozheng, honored as the 'Guard of the Republic' for having been burned to death in the June 4 crackdown, is now wanted by the public security police. Cui had actually fled away during the suppression, and the death body was mistakenly identified as Cui because of a gun bearing his name nearby. Cui, however, later appeared in his hometown after he was honored as 'Guard of the Republic'. [World Bank Press Summary/cafgm@ibrdvm1.bitnet] The Communist Party today released a lengthy document on economic policy, calling for at least three years of belt-tightening and outlining tough measures to suppress non-essential industries and social demand, Associated Press-Dow Jones reports. The 39-point document was prepared for the plenary session of the party's Central Committee last November and was made public today, after being circulated to party offices. [The Wall Street Journal 1.15.90/baltuch@brandeis.bitnet] Chinese-Americans have not mount any significant humanitarian, intellectual or political effort in support of the exiled pro-democracy movement. This silence carries a message of Chinese-American apathy and impotence. And the message has evidently not been lost on President Bush: the administration has been left free to play geo-politics, without having to worry about domestic realpolitik. Chinese-Americans should take a lesson from Jewish-Americans. (Excerpted by ND) [Radio Liberty report 1.11.90/yawei@aqua.bacs.indiana.edu] The Soviet republic of Latvia's Supreme Soviet voted to delete from the its Constitution the provision about the Communist party's leading role, thus allowing many of the already active political parties in the republic to exist legally. The Baltic republic is the second republic of the Soviet Union to have taken this move, following Lithuania. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Japan waiting to follow steps of US hypocrites ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Boston Globe 1.14.90/SCC/mok@hdsrus.enet.dec.com] (Courtesy of colleague Sherry Lee for the typing) ....The $5.3 billion in economic cooperation loans to China that Tokyo suspended immediately after the Tiananmen incident...will almost certainly go forward, perhaps as soon as next month. "Our position vis-a-vis China remains one of caution," said (Japanese Foreign) Ministry spokesman Taizo Watanabe. "We are still waiting for...further improvements in the direction of economic and political reform." He added, however:"We cannot dictate to China. We can only make our concerns clear, and then watch the situation closely." "We feel that if economic reforms are made, so-called human rights and political reforms will necessarily follow," aid a government official. Japan has been hesitant to take the first step toward rapproachment with China, fearful of criticism from its democratic allies in the West. Tokyo was taken aback to learn that Scowcroft had undertaken a similar secret mission last July, barely a month after tanks and troops had clattered into Tiananmen. "Can you imagine if the Japanese had jumped so quickly to re-embrace?" said an official of the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry. "All the world would scream at us as the worst kind of hypocrites and opportunists." Of course, the official added sarcastically, "America is such a great idealist it can afford to be a hypocrite." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. China attacks U.S. human rights propaganda as hypocritical ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [UPI/izzyq00@uclamvs.bitnet] China, renewing criticism of the United States, attacked the U.S. invasion of Panama Monday in a sharply worded editorial that blasted the Voice of America radio network for allegedly hypocritical and distorted human rights propaganda. The harshly worded editorial in the official Guangming Daily newspaper appeared directed at U.S. action in Panama rather than at VOA in particular. It was the sharpest attack since the United States' recent initiative to smooth strained Sino-American relations. China had criticized the U.S. invasion Dec. 20 of Panama earlier, but not in such strong language. The editorial lambasted the U.S. government radio service for defending the Panama invasion as "just action" while continuing to criticize China over last June's crackdown on the Chinese democracy movement. "The Voice of America (VOA) continues to abuse us ... for cracking down on democracy and blaspheming human rights," said the editorial, written under the pen name Wu Hao, or "anonymous" in Chinese characters. "But when the United States sent troops into Panama and used planes and tanks to carry out wanton and indiscriminate bombing on foreign territory, killing peaceful residents on the streets, VOA said that was 'just action' and 'in American interests.' "We will not send troops to go into other countries and do not regard invasion as being for the sake of 'friendship.' Only VOA and the like slap someone in the face while saying it's for their own good," the article charged. China has stepped up criticism of the Panama invasion in the local press recently. A front-page commentary in Sunday's state-run Beijing Evening News sarcastically proposed that Bush stand trial in Panama for violating Panamanian law. A report on a small group of U.S. demonstrators protesting Bush's decision to send troops into Panama received equally prominent play in the official People's Daily last week, dominating the international news page with a large photograph. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Voice of America beaming for new Chinese audiences ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [The LA Times 1.15.90/SCC/kriz@skat.usc.edu] In an effort to reach millions of new Chinese listeners, the Voice of America, the U.S. governemnt's broadcasting network, has begun beaming a series of new feature programs into China aimed especially at workers, young people and entrepeneurs -- the most restive and disaffeccted elements in Chinese society. The special programs, launched Jan. 1, are the first ones on VOA's Chinese- language broadcasts since the Tien An Men massacre last June. At the time, VOA, which has a huge audience estimated at 60 million people or more inside China, halted its regualr programming except for the teaching of English, in order to concentrate on news broadcasts. One of the new VOA programs, called "Labor Report," is aimed at Chinese Workers. Another, called "the Spirit of Business," is directed at the small-scale entrepeneurs who flourished on the streets of China over the past decade, buying and selling everything from blue jeans to antiques. A third show, called "Washington Express," plays American top-40 music and is aimed at China's 15-to-25-year-olds. David Hess, chief of the Chinese branch of the VOA, said that since the political upheavals last spring, the audience for VOA inside China seems to have increased dramatically. Purchases of short-wave radios in China shot upward, letters to the VOA from China also increased and interviews with Chinese indicated that new, different sorts of Chinese were listening to the broadcasts. "Our traditional audiences in China were intellectuals, students and government and party officials," said Hess. "We found that we were going beyond these audiences. Whole new groups of Chinese were listening to us." The VOA broadcasts have often become a vehicle for disseminating news and information that would not otherwise be available to the Chinese population. For example, last fall, VOA beamed into China a speech written by Fang Lizhi, the Chinese dissident who took refuge inside the American Embassy in Beijing after the Tian An Men massacre. The VOA broadcasts also carried to China the word that Romanian dictatopr Nicolae Ceuasescu had been deposed and executed. Analysts have said the news from Romania proved extremely unsettling to China's Communist Party leadership. Other government radio networks -- including Radio Moscow, which broadcasts to China over a strong signal 24 hours a day -- also broadcast the news of Ceausescu's fate. China began jamming VOA's broadcasts on May 21, the day after the regime imposed martial law on the city of Beijing and called army troups into that city. After China lifted martial law last week, Hess said: "We watched very closely if there was any reduction in the jamming. There was no change." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. China's youths trying their best to go abroad ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [AP/izzyq00@uclamvs.bitnet] Wang has a wife and baby, a secure government job and no particular interest in politics. Until recently, he never thought about leaving China. But since June he has become obsessed with the idea, to the point that he says he can hardly concentrate on his work. He and a friend spend hours debating the best way leave. They think it's best to leave as a student and that the best place to go is Australia. If he succeeds, he will leave behind his wife and child, probably never to return. "She understands," Wang said. "She knows I can't live here." Uncalculated thousands of China's best-educated people, many of them young, have reached the same conclusion since June, when the Chinese army opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing. Their idealistic dreams of saving China shattered, many students now say they are only interested in saving themselves from political repression, cultural tedium and economic hardships of socialist China. Study abroad was popular before June. What has changed is that now virtually everyone with a college degree and many without one are talking about it, even those with little or no foreign language skills. Schemes for getting overseas are getting wilder, too. An artist talked dreamily one week of seeking an invitation to exhibit his work abroad. The next week, realistically dropping that idea, he proposed finding a foreign woman to marry. "I can't paint in this environment," he said. The U.S. Embassy said the number of applications for Chinese government- sponsored study abroad has dropped. But the number of non-government students jumped by one-third compared to the previous year, with 2,424 receiving visas in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The number of Chinese going to visit relatives already studying in the United States more than tripled, to 321 in the last three months of 1989. Student applications to go to Canada, another popular destination, topped 3,000 from June through December, up more than 50 percent from the same period in 1988, the Canadian Embassy said. The embassy tries to screen out anyone they suspect will not return to China. Suggestions that China cannot reform or advance if its brightest youth go abroad rouse little interest. One repeat applicant at the U.S. Embassy, one of few Chinese in his field, shrugged and said, "We can't do anything here now." So eager are many to leave that they were angered when Washington said Chinese students already in the United States could stay beyond their visas: they feared China would retaliate by closing the door on study abroad. The opening in the door already has narrowed, and further narrowing is expected. The government is expected to issue regulations this month requiring applicants for study abroad to first work at least five years in China. Since June, many work units have begun requiring employees who go abroad to pay a personal bond, in some cases as large as 12,000 yuan, or about $2,550, to be refunded when they come back. Applicants for the Test of English as a Foreign Language, required for entry to most U.S. colleges, now must obtain permission letters from their work unit or college department, and students at Beijing University say they have been refused the letters. Beijing University also has refused to give students course transcripts for foreign college applications unless the government is sponsoring their study abroad. Police reportedly are approving fewer passports, although no figures are available. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Executive Editor: yawei@rose.bacs.indiana.edu or yawei@iubacs.bitnet | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- News Transmission chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (or) ----------------------- --------------------- NDCadada Editor: Bo Chi chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------
chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Bo Chi) (01/17/90)
* C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t *
(ND Canada Service)
-- Jan 17 (II), 1990
Table of Contents
No. of Lines
On FR Issue ......................................................... 15
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On FR Issue
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from SAG of FCSSC
via WANGRQ@SSCvax.McMaster.CA 17-JAN-1990 09:54
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FCSSC == Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, Canada
== Quan Jia Xue Lian (2,1,2,2) (in Chinese)
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We are informed that international student's advisors of
Canadian Universities will meet in Ottawa on January 18, discuss-
ing the problem of family reunion concerning Chinese students.
We suggest that all Chinese people who are concerned with
family reunion go to contact with your international student's
advisors, tell them your concerns and problems (TRY TO BE AS
SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE) and ask the advisors to bring your concerns
and problems directly to those officials who are responsible for
making policies. In this way, we can at least get some clear and
direct reply.
With best wishes.
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News Transmission chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (or)
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NDCadada Editor: Bo Chi chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu
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Wed Jan 17 13:32:54 EST 1990