chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Bo Chi) (10/28/89)
* C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t *
(ND Canada Service)
-- Oct. 27 (II), 1989
Table of Contents
# of Lines
1) Wang Dan Told His Friend "Keep Up The Effort" ....................... 65
2) Shanghai Mayor Demands Reforms Continue ............................. 50
3) East Bloc Events Alarm Beijing ...................................... 69
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1. Wang Dan Told His Friend "Keep Up The Effort"
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From: hkucs!kwchan@uunet.UU.net (Chan Ki Wa)
[Source: Associated Press, 10/25/89]
ONE of the top Chinese student leaders of the crushed democracy movement,
Wang Dan, has sent a friend a postcard from prison saying: "Keep up the
effort."
Sources from Beijing University where Wang studied, said he asked the
friend to bring soap, winter clothes, a quilt, food and plastic utensils to
the prison in Chang Ping county, north of Beijing.
The sources, who spoke on the condition they not be identified, did not
receive the postcard but said they knew the student who did.
"They talk to me every day," the sources quoted Wang as writing. They
said Wang underlined the word "talk", and interpreted it to mean he was
questioned daily by authorities.
Wang, a slightly built, 20-year-old history student, with a shock of hair
that often fell in his eyes, was one of the best-known figures of the seven-
week student-led demonstrations for a freer society.
He often could be seen with a megaphone at the head of demonstrations and
rallies on Tiananmen Square and was one of a small council of student leaders
who discussed protest strategy.
After the army crushed the protest on June 4, Wang's name headed a
government most-wanted list of 21 students.
He was arrested on July 2 after meeting a Taiwanese reporter to ask for
help in fleeing from China.
The university sources said school officials agreed to allow the friend
and three other history students to deliver the items to Wang's prison on
October 13.
The four were not allowed to see Wang, but were told by prison guards
that he shared a cell with at least 20 other prisoners, was given two meals a
day and was allowed to walk in the prison yard several times daily.
The guards were also quoted as saying that it was likely Wang would be
moved soon to another place to await trial. He has been accused of counter-
revolutionary activities and could face execution.
China has already executed at least 12 protesters since it used the army
to crush the demonstrations in Beijing. The 12 were workers and peasants who
supported the students' protests.
The Government has refused to say how many students have been jailed or
comment on their fate.
The students who went to Chang Ping reported meeting a second group of
students visiting the prison the same day taking supplies for Zheng Xuguang,
a student leader from the Beijing College of Aeronautics who was also on the
wanted list.
People arrested in China do not have the right to communicate with
relatives or friends until they have been sentenced and placed in a labour
reform program in jail.
By allowing Wang and Zheng to ask friends to send supplies, the
Government appeared to be trying to show some leniency.
Sources say all 21 of the students on the wanted list have been arrested
except for two who fled abroad - Wu'erkaixi and Li Lu. However, authorities
have confirmed the arrests of only eight.
Arrest warrants have also been issued for other students and older
intellectuals.
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2. Shanghai Mayor Demands Reforms Continue
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From: hkucs!kwchan@uunet.UU.net (Chan Ki Wa)
[Source: South China Morning Post, 10/25/89]
By Willy Wo-Lap Lam
A major regional official has delivered a thinly veiled warning to
central planners in Beijing not to roll back reform. Mr Zhu Rongji, mayor of
Shanghai, said yesterday: "While there may be short-comings in carrying out
some concrete (reform) policies, readjustment should be made (to the policies
only) on the basis of detailed studies and investigations."
"Otherwise, no changes should be made.
"Maintaining the stability and continuity of the current policy is an
important guarantee of the healthy development of reform and opening to the
outside world in Shanghai."
Mr Zhu, also the party boss of China's largest city, made these remarks
at a meeting on ideological work in local industrial enterprises held in
Shanghai.
"The open and reform policies, as well as the related laws and
regulations approved by the party Central Committee, the State Council and
the National People's Congress should continue to be implemented," he said.
According to analysts, Mr Zhu was deliberately casting his vote for the
continuation of reform ahead of the fifth plenum of the 13th Central
Committee.
The plenum, originally scheduled for early October, has been postponed
owing to disagreement over the extent to which market-oriented reforms begun
by ousted party chief Zhao Ziyang should be replaced by policies stressing
re-centralisation and strict governmental control of all economic activities.
Mr Zhu's views were seconded by Mr Huang Ju, deputy mayor and deputy
secretary of the Shanghai party committee.
In a report on the city's economic development this year, Mr Huang said:
"The practice of the shareholding system and other economic reform
experiments will be continued in Shanghai."
"Further development of the reform and open policies is the key to
promoting our economy," he added.
A diplomatic analyst said: "Shanghai fears that, if the central planners
have their way, local government departments and corporations will lose their
autonomy in doing business with the outside world, thus further affecting
their foreign-trade earnings."
Mr Zhu, who was promoted Shanghai party boss in the summer, is generally
thought to be more reformist-minded than predecessor Jiang Zemin, who became
party General-Secretary last June.
Observers in Beijing say that if the plenum decides to replenish the two
Politburo seats left vacant by the ousting of Mr Zhao and liberal ideologue
Mr Hu Qili, Mr Zhu has a high chance of being inducted to the supreme body.
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3. East Bloc Events Alarm Beijing
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From: hkucs!kwchan@uunet.UU.net (Chan Ki Wa)
[Source: South China Morning Post, 10/25/89]
China is deeply concerned about events in Eastern Europe, Prime Minister
Li Peng was quoted as saying yesterday, expressing for the first time in
public Beijing's misgivings over reforms and unrest threatening communism
there.
Mr Li, a hard-liner instrumental in crushing China's democracy movement
in June, told a visiting Yugoslav official that reforms meant "perfecting the
socialist system", implying they should not be used to dump communism -as
Poland and Hungary have done in recent weeks.
"As a socialist country, China is of course deeply concerned about events
in some East European countries," he said, quoted by the communist partly
newspaper People's Daily.
But he added, in meeting Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Zivko Pregl, each
country should decide for itself "how to proceed along the socialist path".
He did not name any country and Mr Pregl's reply was not published.
China's state-run media has devoted little space and time to events
sweeping Eastern Europe, with coverage limited to brief reports and no direct
comments.
Foreign diplomats in Beijing said Mr Li's remarks revealed concern that
while China was reverting to orthodox communist policies after a save of
unrest swept the country last spring, Poland and Hungary had moved in the
opposite direction with East Germany under popular pressure to follow.
Diplomats said Beijing feared that events in Eastern Europe, perhaps
partly influenced by China's own democracy movement, could rekindle unrest
among the 1.1 billion Chinese.
"The Chinese authorities are worried, and so they should be," one Western
diplomat commented.
East European sources said the Chinese Communist Party was circulating
internal documents saying Hungary-once a model of reform for china - was no
longer a socialist country. Instead the documents denounced stead the
documents denounced Budapest as "bourgeois liberal".
Since student protests were crushed by the army in Beijing in June, an
unmarked police car has been parked close to the Hungarian embassy,
apparently to stop any would-be defectors, an East European diplomat said.
Developments in Eastern Europe have captured the imagination of many
young Chinese whose own hopes of political change have been dashed by the
current crackdown.
Even in remote Tibet, nationalists who took part in pro-independence
protests n the regional capital Lhasa in March were asking recent foreign
visitors for the latest news about East Germany and its mass exodus of
citizens to the West.
East European sources said that despite its concerns, China had turned
down a recent proposal by Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu that a summit
of communist leaders be help to sort out problems in East Europe and chart a
communist future.
The sources said they believed Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had
also opposed the idea.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman denied that Rumania had proposed
such a summit.
With his own brand of orthodox communism, Mr Ceausescu is one of the few
East European leaders China can still count on for support in its hardening
ideological battle against what Beijing denounces as Western subversion.
The People's Daily also published attacks by the Bulgarian and North
Korean communist party newspapers on what they called attempts by the West to
subvert communism.
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| Executive Editor: Deming Tang E_mail: Tang@ALISUVAX.bitnet |
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Editor's Note:
--------------
Hi, Dear Friend:
Thank you for your concern and reading News Digest. To keep more of our
Chinese friends informed, you are kindly asked to help introduce the
News Digest to more of your close friends. Your great help would
benefit many Chinese now and the future of China. You will be certainly
remembered then.
Have a very good weekend! (nice weather with you)
Best regards
-- Bo Chi
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News Transmission chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (or)
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Local Editor: Bo Chi chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu
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