jshen@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Jun Shen) (01/31/91)
* C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t *
(News General)
January 30th, 1990
Table of Contents # of Lines
News Briefs ................................................................16
1. China's Stock Market Near Collapse, Fear Government Crackdown ...........41
2. South Korea Trade Office to Open in Beijing .............................18
3. "Model Opera" Revived in Beijing .......................................122
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News Briefs ................................................................16
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From: Charlie Li <liq@shark.cs.fau.edu>
Source: Prodigy News Service, 1/30/91
* US Marines and allied forces clash with Iraqi troops along a 12-mile
stretch of the Saudi-Kuwait border Wednesday. The Pentagon reports heavy Iraqi
casualties and a small number of US casualties in the ground conflict.
* Iraq says it shot down 3 allied warplanes during overnight raids. But
Iraqi radio, monitored in Cairo, made no further mention of a report Tuesday
that a captured allied airman had been killed during air raids in Baghdad.
* The US and the Soviets issue a joint statement saying a cease-fire is
possible if Iraq takes steps to withdraw. The statement also said it would be
important to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict shortly after the Gulf war is
over.
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1. China's Stock Market Near Collapse, Fear Government Crackdown ...........41
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From: Yi Li <li%vanity.ncat.edu@cunyvm.cuny.edu>
Source: AP, 1/29/91
HONG KONG (JAN. 29) - China's first stock market in Shenzhen is faced with
collapse after average stock prices fell by 30 per cent recently, a semi-
official Chinese news agency reported here Tuesday.
The bourse in China's largest special economic zone bordering Hong Kong has
failed to recover from severe jitters sparked by rumors of a government
crackdown in early December, despite repeated government efforts to halt the
slump, the Hong Kong China News Service said.
Up to last week, five listed firms in the zone have reported a slump of nearly
30 per cent, the agency said. It quoted analysts as saying this was the
internationally accepted sign of a collapse.
Share prices and trading volume on the Shenzhen bourse had grown explosively
since it opened in May last year, prompting authorities to move to halt black
market speculation and market volatility.
The measures included limiting daily price swings to a one per cent rise and
five per cent fall and imposing a six per cent tax on share transactions.
The news agency attributed the downward trend of share prices to "immaturity,
abnormality and instability" on the part of the government for taking
"unstable and inconsistent measures" in managing the stock market.
It also cited short-sight of investors and speculators, who were not familiar
with the working process of a stock market, by opting for immediate instead
of long term profits.
In the past, the daily turnover has reached from two million yuan (910,000
U.S. dollars) to 40 million yuan (7.3 million U.S. dollars).
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2. South Korea Trade Office to Open in Beijing .............................18
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From: Yi Li <li%vanity.ncat.edu@cunyvm.cuny.edu>
Source: Kyodo, 1/29/91
South Korea's trade promotion agency, Korea trade promotion corp. (Kotra),
will open a representative office in Beijing on wednesday, korean sources here
said monday.
However, an opening ceremony for the office will be held "privately" in
consideration of china's relations with north korea, the sources said.
Roh Chae Won, former vice foreign minister, will be the Kotra representative.
The sources added that half of the office's 20 members are on lease to kotra
from the south korean foreign ministry, and that the office will have a
consular function, such as issuing visas.
The opening of permanent representative offices was agreed on last october
between kotra and its chinese counterpart.
The office of the Chinese trade representative in seoul, however, will not be
opened until about march, the sources said.
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3. "Model Opera" Revived in Beijing .......................................122
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From: "Charles P. Mok 28-Jan-1991 1032" <mok@fortsc.enet.dec.com>
Source: AP, 1/27/91
BEIJING - Madame Mao, otherwise engaged in Beijing jail, was unable to attend
the opening night. But she was there in spirit, hovering in the wings of the
People's Opera House, to enhance the titillation that has begun to add to the
terror of recent times.
It was an occasion the former Shanghai starlet-turned-queen of the Cultural
Revolution would have relished. It was the resurrection after a hiatus of 15
years, of her most celebrated and, after her downfall, most reviled
contribution to Chinese culture: the Revolutionary Model Opera.
For three nights, Beijing's main opera house, a drab and drafty concrete
auditorium on Protect the Nation Street, again echoed to the strident
revolutionary arias of the "Red Lantern," one of a handful of "model" works
promoted by Mao Tse-tung's wife, Jiang Qing, during her heyday as China's
supreme cultural commander.
Tickets were sold out weeks in advance, as Beijing got its first chance since
1976 to relive an era that, for all its horrors, still grips the minds of
people who lived through it.
Concurrent with the production of the opera, the government has been
conducting trials of dissidents in an ironic counterpoint. Results of the
trial were announced Saturday.
The Beijing University student who helped sparked China's 1989 democracy
movement, Wang Dan, was sentenced to four years in prison. Longtime dissident
Ren Wanding got a seven-year sentence.
A total of five activists were sentenced to prison, three were convicted but
released and 18 were released without trial. Also, 45 people who apparently
had been jailed but not charged were let off.
"Red Lattern," first performed in 1964, became the soundtrack for the Cultural
Revolution, an ear-splitting musical accompaniment to Mao's frenzied drive to
purge China of its past and build a new socialist utopia.
The role of Jiang Qing in its creation was minimal. She changed a few lines
and ordered more realistic patches put on the actor's proletarian costumes.
She made it her anthem nonetheless, dragging baffled foreign visitors and
grimacing Chinese leaders to admire her handiwork.
Politics on stage
Officially, at least, the revival has nothing to do with politics: The "Red
Lantern" is merely one of dozens of works being staged as part of a two-month
festival to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beijing Opera, a unique and,
to the non-connoisseur, often unfathomable blend of acrobatics, piercing
singing and elaborate rituals.
In China, though, art and politics are never completely separate. "It's not
up to us to decide what we perform," said Gao Yuqian, a verteran opera star
called out of semi-retirement to play Granny Li, the main female role in the
"Red Lantern." "They (officials) decide what we do and what we don't. It's
been like that here."
Presiding over the Beijing Opera festival is He Jingzhi, a Maoist poet
appointed culture minister after the military crackdown of June 1989, with
instructions to bring rebellious artists back into line.
According to He, the resurrection of the "Red Lantern" is designed to "reclaim
something that has been stolen" - in other words, to show that Mao's
revolution, though tainted by the excesses of his wife, must never be
forgotten.
"Long live the Communist Party, long live Mao Tse-tung," cries the "Red
Lantern" hero, Li Yuhe, a railway worker and underground Communist, as
Japanese soldiers drag him to the execution ground. Filled with passion for
the revolution and rage against the Japanese, his beautiful foster daughter,
Li Tiemei, goes on to avenge him.
It is a tale typical of the genre - a revolutionary Punch and Judy show set
to a mix of Chinese music and slushy Hollywood style songs.
A subversive message
But officials who ordered it got more than they bargained for. Rather than
a lesson in revolutionary zeal and obedience, it seemed to many in the
audience to contain a more subversive message.
"You can't kill all the Chinese people," sings the hero, "a debt of blood must
be paid in blood." Powerful lines in a city bludgeoned into submission by the
People's Liberation Army 19 months ago.
The crowd loved it, shouting, "Hao, hao" (bravo) and applauding wildly when
Granny Li recalls the day "when all the workers took to the street in
protest."
On opening night, the audience stormed the stage. "I haven't seen that for
years," said Gao Yuqian, who coached by Madame Mao, played Granny 25 years
ago.
Some in the audience, too young to remember the Cultural Revolution and bored
by gestures and archaic language of traditional opera, had never seen its
like. They came out of curiosity and delighted in its message of vengeance.
Others had seen it dozens, even hundreds, of times before and knew the lines
by heart. For them, it was a night of ghoulish nostalgia, a fascinating peek
at a part of their lives they have been told to forget.
Even the cast was familiar. Gao and several others had all performed in a
film version made of the opera in 1970.
But the part of the martyred railway worker had been given to someone else.
The original star, Qian Haoliang, is too tainted by "political mistakes" to
be allowed back on stage.
Popular at last
For more than a decade, the "Red Lantern" and other models monopolized the
Chinese stage, reducing one of the world's richest operatic traditions to a
dreary procession of wooden Communist heros, cowardly class enemies and
acrobatic Red Army platoons singing the praises of Mao Tse-tung. All other
works were banned.
"With hammer in hand, I set out to smash all old conventions," boasted Mao's
wife of her drive to reform the Chinese arts. The results was a slim
repertoire of four operas, two ballets and one symphony.
In 1976 the constant drone of revolutionary art stopped. Mao died. His wife
was jailed. Her model operas were banished with her. Ironically, her
political foes seem to have achieved what she had always tried but failed to
do: make the "Red Lantern" genuinely popular.
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