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-JUNE, 1999- |
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Beijing denies embassy bombing victims were spies
REUTERS
Tuesday, June 29, 1999
China denied on Tuesday a US newspaper report that two of the three Chinese citizens killed in the Nato bombing of its embassy in Belgrade last month were spies, not journalists.
"The status of the three journalists [is] clear," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "No matter what lies the US media fabricate, it cannot exonerate the United States of responsibility for bombing the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia."
The New York Times reported last week two of the three killed in the May 7 bombing were spies.
One of the victims worked for Xinhua and the other two for the Guangming Daily.
A US official has said the bombs dropped by US B-2 stealth bombers "hit a part of the embassy that was involved in intelligence gathering".
But a spokesman for Guangming Daily said the report was "sheer nonsense".
"The New York Times report does not conform with reality," a Xinhua spokesman said.
On Monday, George Tenet, director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said he "would not hide behind excuses such as strained resources or time pressures".
"It is precisely when the pressure is intense ... that the president and the American people expect us to provide the best intelligence available. Clearly, in the case of the Chinese embassy, that did not happen. No excuses," he said.
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Mainland passes law on stationing army in Macau
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, June 29, 1999
Macau can call on Chinese troops to maintain security under a new law governing the garrison Beijing is to station in the enclave after it reverts to Chinese control in December, Chinese media reported.
The law, passed on Monday by China's legislature, also allows Macau to ask for Chinese troops to help with emergencies and law enforcement, Xinhua said.
Under the new garrison law, the troops "will not intervene in local affairs," Xinhua said. "Since Macau is an international city, good social security and order are necessary conditions for social and economic development."
China has not said how large the Macau garrison will be.
Under the new law, land used by the Chinese garrison will be provided by Macau for free. The law also requires Macau authorities to "stop any organisations or individuals from sabotaging or damaging military facilities".
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Politics holds up plans for visit by envoy
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Tuesday, June 29, 1999
Taiwanese and mainland officials tried yesterday to hammer out the details of an autumn summit between their top negotiators but were hampered by disagreements on political issues.
Taipei, which went to the Beijing talks pushing for a date to be set for Wang Daohan's meeting with his island counterpart Koo Chen-fu, offered Beijing a choice of two dates for Mr Wang's trip to Taiwan, said Jan Jyh-horng, deputy secretary-general of Taiwan's semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation.
Mr Jan said the dates offered were September 12 to 19 and October 12 to 19.
Officials at the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) said they would "report back to their leaders" before giving Taiwan an answer.
Both sides agreed in principle that the proposed visit should be for seven days and that Mr Wang would arrive in Taipei and travel to the southern port of Kaohsiung.
ARATS negotiator Li Yafei said Beijing would "probably fix a date for the trip eventually", adding: "There is still time."
While Taipei appeared eager to forge ahead with the practicalities of Mr Wang's trip, ARATS officials were impatient with Taiwan's reluctance to discuss the contents of Mr Wang's meeting with Mr Koo.
Mr Li said: "We should talk about the content. It should be a natural part of the arrangements. Only then can the relationship between the two sides improve and develop."
Mr Li said Taipei's unwillingness to discuss anything of a political nature was "the main thing" affecting relations. "How are we going to solve these differences unless we have a dialogue?"
Beijing is keen to move towards talks on political negotiations that would eventually lead to reunification.
An ARATS statement after yesterday's morning session said: "Firstly, we asked for the establishment of a cross-strait forum and secondly for a removal of political obstacles to a free exchange of opinions." But Taiwan is reluctant to discuss political issues other than as one sovereign state to another.
"There are no political obstacles from our point of view," Mr Jan said. "The remit of the meeting was not on our agenda."
Mr Li said Taiwan had not responded to several invitations to discuss Mr Wang's trip at a higher level at the end of August, although it had issued a similar invitation to Beijing.
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Heavy security for Panchen Lama ritual
REUTERS
Tuesday, June 29, 1999
The nine-year-old boy picked by Beijing as Tibet's second holiest figure is under heavy police protection because of fears for his safety on his first return to the region.
The Panchen Lama, Gyaincain Norbu, was yesterday escorted in a 21-vehicle police motorcade to a sacred Buddhist ritual in his own monastery in Shigatse.
Monks with walkie-talkies patrolled the grounds of the Tashilhunpo monastery and Buddhist pilgrims were kept at a distance.
The motorcade included an emergency medical vehicle and three police cars.
During the ceremony, a giant Tibetan tanka, a satin embroidered icon roughly 15 storeys high, was unfurled by horn-blowing monks behind the monastery.
Authorities are using the visit to try to boost the legitimacy of the 11th Panchen Lama against a rival named by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.
According to accounts of witnesses and interviews with monks, security precautions have been elaborate and the reaction of Tibet's devout Buddhist population has been wary.
In Lhasa, troops with machineguns ringed the Jokhang temple when the boy visited earlier this month under cover of darkness early one morning, one monk said.
The main road to Lhasa's international airport was sealed off.
Wang Dui, the second ranking administrative official at the Jokhang temple, said the boy was welcomed "very warmly and with great pomp".
But a red-robed monk, speaking out of earshot, said: "Of course he doesn't have any support. He came at night and there were troops everywhere. He just sat there looking uncomfortable.
"I really felt sorry for him. He's being used as a pawn."
Yesterday, a group of Western reporters was allowed to watch the boy's motorcade arrive at the Tashilhunpo monastery, but it was impossible to see him through heavily tinted car windows.
Asked what he thought about the boy, one monk jabbed his thumb towards a thickset official in a trench coat then pressed a finger to his lips.
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Serb Opposition Leader:
Milosevic May Go To China
BONN, Jun 28, 1999 -- (Reuters) The leader of Serbia's main opposition party told a German newspaper he suspected that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had received an offer of political asylum from China.
"I have indications that Milosevic has received an offer to flee to China, get asylum there and therefore not be handed over to the Hague," Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic said in an interview due to appear in the Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
Milosevic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal which has its headquarters at The Hague in the Netherlands.
On May 7, U.S. aircraft participating in NATO's 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia attacked the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three people and wounding about 20. NATO called the incident a tragic error.
Despite repeated U.S. apologies, the bombing of the embassy severely damaged U.S.-China relations. U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering went to China last week to explain what happened, but China dismissed his explanation as unconvincing.
Djindjic told the newspaper that, once peaceful demonstrations against Milosevic had begun in Yugoslavia and the public had access to a free media, the 58-year-old leader would bow out within six months.
"We are demanding new elections in the spring of 2000 since we reckon that by then Milosevic will have given into the pressure," Djindjic said. Elections are due in Yugoslavia in the latter part of next year.
In order to prepare the country for democratic elections and in view of the extremely split opposition, Djindjic said he would like to see someone with no party affiliation take over the political reins for a transitionary period.
"I suggest the former national bank governor Dragoslav Avramovic," Djindjic said, adding that Avramovic had the trust of socialists and had been fired by Milosevic for wanting to deal with the World Bank.
"Avramovic is the right man for the transition period, until democratically chosen party politicians can come to power," he told the paper.
The advance copy of the interview provided by the newspaper did not say where it took place, but Djindjic was quoted as saying he planned to travel to Kosovo on Sunday and then on to Belgrade. He was in London on Tuesday for a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.
By Reuters
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Taiwan Seals WTO Pact With Canada
TAIPEI, Jun 28, 1999 -- (Reuters) Taiwan said on Monday it has inked a pact with Canada on the island's bid to join the World Trade Organization, leaving Hong Kong the only WTO member that has yet to put a formal agreement in writing.
Taiwan's economics minister Wang Chih-kang signed the agreement with Canadian representative Bob Speller at an APEC trade ministers' meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, the economics ministry said in a statement.
Taiwan has completed all required bilateral negotiations with the 26 member nations, and Monday's signing with Canada left China-ruled Hong Kong the only one that has yet to sign a formal pact.
Under WTO accession rules, any WTO member can request "bilaterals" with a proposed member and effectively block its entry until bilateral trade differences are resolved.
Taiwan said it has agreed to Canada's demands to further liberalize its agriculture sector and cut tariffs in exchange for Canada's support for Taiwan's membership.
Taiwan has said it hoped to become a full WTO member in 1999, ending a quest of nearly a decade.
But the WTO entry for the Nationalist-ruled island likely would hinge on a parallel drive toward WTO entry by its rival, China.
Beijing, which enforces a diplomatic embargo on Taiwan in a bid to force it under mainland sovereignty, has said it does not oppose the island's entry as a non-sovereign customs territory like Hong Kong -- but only after China itself gets in.
But China recently froze its WTO negotiations with Washington after NATO bombed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade on May 7, killing three Chinese reporters.
China came close to sealing the crucial part of its bid to enter the WTO in April, when Premier Zhu Rongji made significant concessions to U.S. trade negotiators during a visit to Washington.
U.S. President Bill Clinton, however, balked at the last minute. Nevertheless, Clinton said he believed China could be admitted to the WTO this year.
Failure to join the WTO before a new round of global trade in November could mean a delay of several years.
By Reuters
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China Unearths 123 Tombs Dating Back 2,500 Years
BEIJING, Jun 28, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Chinese archeologists have unearthed 123 tombs, some as much as 2,500 years old, official media announced Sunday.
The Xinhua news agency said the tombs in Liulin county, in northern China's Shanxi province, dated to as far back as the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.) and to as recently as the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
Preliminary findings indicated 78 tombs dated to the Warring States Period, 36 to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) and nine to later dynasties, Xinhua said.
Chambers in the Warring States tombs were three to five meters (nine to 15 feet) long. They were found at a depth of between four and seven meters (12 and 21 feet).
Most of the brick Han Dynasty tombs had been looted and heavily damaged, with only one containing recoverable relics such as carved doors and pillars, the agency said.
Archeologists did manage to recover some pottery, stone, bone, jade, bronze, lacquer and porcelain from the site, however, Xinhua said.
By Agence France Presse
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Pakistan PM Begins China Trip Amid Kashmir Crisis
BEIJING, Jun 28, 1999 -- (Reuters) Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Beijing on Monday for talks with Chinese leaders expected to focus on the crisis in Kashmir.
Sharif's five-day visit to China, a key ally and major source of military technology, follows an earlier visit by Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz which brought Beijing diplomatically into the worst confrontation in South Asia for nearly 30 years.
Sharif is slated to hold talks with Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji and meet President Jiang Zemin and parliamentary chief Li Peng. He will also travel to the southwestern city of Kunming and to Hong Kong before returning to Pakistan on July 3.
He is expected to brief the Chinese side on developments in Kashmir, where a flurry of U.S.-led diplomacy has failed to halt artillery duels between Pakistan and India, which rejects outside mediation in the Kashmir dispute.
The shelling, the latest phase of a long-running deadly conflict, erupted just 12 months after both India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons.
During his visit to China early this month, Foreign Minister Aziz said mediation by China in the conflict was unlikely.
While a key supporter of Pakistan, China has been at odds for decades with India. They fought a brief border war in 1962 in which the Indian army was humiliated, and the world's two most populous countries still eye each other's military ambitions warily.
India said last year that China's help for Pakistan with nuclear and missile technology was a concern, and its defense minister, George Fernandes, described Beijing as New Delhi's "potential threat number one".
China holds a slice of northern Kashmir that Pakistan ceded to it in 1963. New Delhi says China is occupying the area illegally, and also claims the Aksai Chin region further east which China has held for 40 years.
By Reuters
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Ownership of knives, guns, banned in Lhasa
VIVIEN PIK-KWAN CHAN in Lhasa
Monday, June 28, 1999
Public security officials in Lhasa have banned the ownership of guns and ordered the confiscation of civilian-use explosives and knives.
The aim is to prevent such weapons "falling into the hands of terrorists", according to an official circular.
It comes ahead of the October 1 National Day and the sixth ethnic games in August in the Tibetan capital, part of activities to mark the 40th anniversary of the setting up of the Tibet Autonomous Government.
Lhasa public security officials have ordered shops and residents to hand in all guns, knives and explosives. Even legally owned guns will be confiscated without compensation.
"All illegally possessed guns or individually possessed guns approved by the Government according to the Guns Management Regulations of 1981 should all be handed to the Lhasa Public Security Bureau by June 24," a circular said.
"The ban will include all guns such as hunting guns, pistols, firearms and self-made guns," the circular said.
Those who did not turn in the items before the deadline face jail terms from three to seven years, it said.
Public security officials called on the public to "sacrifice their own interest" to hand in all these weapons, adding that "it would create endless troubles if terrorists got hold of them."
Beijing is guarding against the chances of a new spate of "anti-Beijing activities" in Tibet ahead of the Ethnic Traditional National Games and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.
Extra paramilitary troops have been deployed.
Surveillance at the airport and other checkpoints has been stepped up.
The central Government has spent 22 million yuan in building facilities for the Lhasa games. It is expected more than 1,200 athletes will take part.
Of the 13 events, archery, horse racing and two other traditional games will be held in Lhasa and the rest in Beijing.
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Warning on merger plan for two Macau councils
HARALD BRUNING in Macau
Monday, June 28, 1999
The Governor of Macau, General Vasco Rocha Vieira, has warned that the proposed merger of the enclave's two municipal councils after the handover could undermine their ability to handle urban management.
General Vieira said the proposed merger of the peninsula's Leal Senado (Loyal Senate) and the Municipal Islands Council of Taipa and Coloane could reduce the "creativity, capacity, competence and dynamism" of the two councils.
He said the move should be tackled "with great caution".
General Vieira was apparently reacting to proposals by several members of the 100-strong Beijing-appointed Preparatory Committee to merge the two municipal councils to save public funds and improve efficiency.
The committee's political affairs working group started discussing the two municipal councils last week but failed to reach a consensus.
Working group member Philip Xavier said some members had suggested the setting-up of two "provisional" urban councils until a solution was hammered out.
The two councils, as separate entities, are each headed by a president acting as a de facto mayor.
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Top appointments planned for August
HARALD BRUNING in Macau
Monday, June 28, 1999
Macau chief executive-designate Edmund Ho Hau-wah said yesterday he planned to appoint his five policy secretaries in August.
The five will replace the Government's current seven under-secretaries at midnight on December 19, when the enclave returns to Chinese administration.
Mr Ho said the names of the five would be submitted to Beijing for approval in accordance with the Macau Basic Law.
He said he would appoint other officials, such as the chief judge, chief public prosecutor, commissioner against corruption and commissioner for audit, the seven to 11 members of his executive council and seven appointed members of the legislature "in a second phase" in autumn.
He said the Customs chief would be appointed after the handover. Macau's Customs service is part of the security forces.
Mr Ho said he expected Macau and Hong Kong would have closer ties after the handover in areas such as security, tourism, business and professional training.
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Rebel trio challenge Protestant leader
DANIEL KWAN
Monday, June 28, 1999
In an unprecedented challenge to top Christian leader Ding Guangxun, three members of the mainland's most prestigious seminary have resigned in protest against what they say is religious persecution.
Liu Yichun, Li Zhimin and Luo Yunfei quit the Jinling Seminary last week.
The Protestant seminary in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, is seen as the breeding ground of official church leaders. There are fewer than 100 seminarians.
Christian sources said provincial church leaders had been told to attend a national conference next month where the problem would be discussed. According to the sources, those who refused to support Bishop Ding at the conference would be purged.
In an open declaration, the rebels accused Bishop Ding of preaching liberal theology which emphasised the human nature of Jesus Christ and shunned theology that stressed evangelism and miracles. They accused the bishop of running a witch-hunt in the seminary through a six-month appraisal exercise.
Members considered rebellious towards the 84-year-old former president of the seminary were told to leave.
As a result of the appraisal, three graduate students had been asked to quit the seminary in May. At the same time, a cadre from the Jiangsu Religious Affairs Bureau had been permanently posted to the seminary to oversee the teachers and trainees.
The declaration said leaders of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, one of the two official Christian bodies, had "betrayed the trust of believers and driven Christians underground".
"Because of corruption and alienation of the Three-Self movement, we urge the Government to stop relying on it to lead Christians," the declaration said.
"It should allow churches outside the movement to exist legally. That churches not belonging to the Three-Self movement exist is an undeniable fact. We hope the Government can take them seriously."
Government control of the Protestant church is mainly exercised through the Three-Self movement and its sister body, the China Christian Council.
Sources said the row was a significant blow to Bishop Ding and the official Protestant church and could drive more Christians underground.
Bishop Ding is regarded as the mainland's most respected Christian leader. He is also a vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
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Clinton 'knew of spy claims in July 1995'
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Washington
Monday, June 28, 1999
The Clinton administration was first told China may have stolen US nuclear secrets nine months earlier than it originally admitted, a newspaper said.
Throughout the uproar over allegations that China stole secrets to every key US nuclear warhead made since the 1970s, Republicans have claimed the White House failed to react quickly or strongly enough to the charges.
The White House says it learned of the possible spying in April 1996.
But unnamed current and former US officials told the New York Times the administration was informed of the apparent theft in July 1995.
Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch was convinced by late 1995 that China had stolen design information on the most advanced US nuclear warhead and had briefed President Bill Clinton's national security adviser on the matter, the report said.
The probe was stalled for four years because of what the officials called bureaucratic miscommunication, inertia and mishandling, the paper said.
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Taipei team arrives to plan envoy's trip
JASON BLATT in Taipei and REUTERS
Monday, June 28, 1999
A delegation of Taipei officials arrived in Beijing yesterday for talks on a planned Taiwan trip by the mainland's top envoy.
The head of the delegation, Jan Jyh-horng, said its main task was to discuss the proposed Taiwan visit by Wang Daohan, chairman of the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
"We hope that we will be able to set a concrete time as to when chairman Wang will be visiting Taiwan so that we can make all the necessary preparations without being rushed," Mr Jan, deputy secretary-general of the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), said in Beijing.
Shortly after his arrival, Mr Jan met his counterpart, Li Yafei, deputy secretary-general of ARATS, to set an agenda for meetings to be held today.
The two sides agreed that today's talks would be devoted to discussing Mr Wang's trip.
SEF officials had indicated earlier that Mr Jan might raise other issues, such as the repatriation of mainland illegal immigrants from Taiwan and fishing disputes.
Mr Wang's trip, expected to take place this autumn, would be the first time he had been to Taiwan. Mr Wang is a close associate of President Jiang Zemin .
Before leaving Taipei, Mr Jan said he was "willing to discuss just about anything" in addition to Mr Wang's itinerary.
But Mr Jan warned against expecting any major breakthroughs on his delegation's visit, which ends tomorrow.
"We can only have patience and hope for the best," said Mr Jan.
Meanwhile, Washington's chief official for Taiwan affairs has assured the island that the United States was not following a policy of forcing Taipei and Beijing to reach what it earlier called an "interim arrangement".
Three months ago, Stanley Roth, Undersecretary of State for Asia-Pacific affairs, called on the sides to be "more creative" in their contacts and reach some kind of "interim arrangement" that would normalise peaceful ties in the absence of formal agreements.
However, in a weekend speech to the annual convention of North American-based Taiwanese businessmen in Chicago, Richard Bush, chief of the American Institute in Taiwan, said Washington was merely offering "a suggestion", rather than stating policy goals.
He said the US still maintained the same principles with regard to cross-strait relations. Both sides should peacefully resolve their differences, the US would encourage cross-strait dialogue but refrain from becoming involved in it or applying pressure to either side, and any cross-strait agreement would have to be acceptable to the people of Taiwan.
Taiwan's Foreign Minister, Jason Hu Chih-chiang, also at the gathering, said: "We would like to try to see if this works."
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Spirit of May 4 lives on in daughter of the movement
OLIVER CHOU
Monday, June 28, 1999
This year has seen the passing of three literary giants associated with the 1919 May 4th student movement - writers Bing Xin and Qian Zhongshu and translator Xiao Qian.
The heir of one is continuing the fight in her own way, hoping to propagate science and democracy just as her mother did 80 years ago in the movement which pushed mainland politics toward nationalism and socialism.
She is Wu Qing, youngest daughter of Bing, China's most famous woman writer, who died in February aged 99.
Professor Wu described her sense of mission during a visit to Hong Kong, a role inspired by family memories.
Visiting the SAR to promote a memorial collection of her mother's works, Professor Wu said: "She was a good mother and my umbrella of protection, although as her children we suffered during the Cultural Revolution because of our parents' intellectual background."
The 62-year-old professor of English at Beijing Foreign Studies University has been an activist on international and domestic women's issues for two decades.
She is a voluntary consultant at a home for young female factory workers in Beijing, and founded a vocational training school for village women.
"Mother taught us to speak the truth and put it into practice," she said.
Professor Wu has been a member of the people's congress of Haidian district for five terms and of Beijing city people's congress for three terms.
"Some deputies take the title as an honour, but that's not for me," she said. "I have no affiliation to any political party and, thus, have nothing to lose and nothing to gain."
Despite commitments to various causes, she holds weekly consultations with any district resident who chooses to call on her.
Professor Wu said: "I believe there is life in grassroots democracy. Transparency and cohesiveness go hand in hand. People come closer to you when they know you better."
But she believes more generations will pass before the mainland can move from the long years of rule by man to the rule of law - before the goals her mother advocated 80 years ago will become common.
"We need supervision. People in China have always hoped for a Judge Bao Qingtian, [a municipal judge during the Song Dynasty (420-479), revered for his honesty] an epitome of justice. I think by the time everyone is a Qingtian, China will indeed be a nation of law."
For Professor Wu, the first step is to train officials and then assess the effects.
"At present, whether a person's rights are respected or not depends largely on the competence of local officials. China's economic reform is like a new game that requires new rules and the new rules are the rule of law."
Professor Wu criticises officials who concern themselves with statistics but neglect the human factors behind them. She also sees a need to create a checks-and-balances system as well as strengthening the NPC.
"I don't believe in self-discipline or self-perfection," she said.
"We need a system of do's and don'ts which should be abided by, complete with rewards and penalties."
Professor Wu believes supervision should be written into law to ensure proper operation of the legal system.
"Everyone needs to be supervised. The Chinese Communist Party needs even more supervision because it is the ruling party," she said.
She regards the present reform of state-owned enterprises to be part of a process of gradual change.
"The introduction and authorisation of private ownership is significant, for it implies a strong sense of individual rights," said Professor Wu.
As to when her mother's ideals might take effect, she said: "While I don't think my generation or the next generation will live to see it happen, the May 4th spirit should be carried forward. There should be no end to it."
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South leaves with nothing but a date
AGENCIES in Seoul and Beijing
Monday, June 28, 1999
A South Korean delegation left Beijing yesterday after the first high-level talks with the North in more than a year.
But delegates had nothing to show for their efforts except a date to resume discussions on Thursday.
South Korea had expectations of reaching an agreement on a specific timetable for the reunion of about 1.2 million families separated by the 1948 division of the Korean peninsula.
Returning to Seoul without any progress is expected to further damage South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the communist state.
Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday that the North had told the South: "Even if an agreement is reached on the issue of separated families, it will be difficult to put it into practice in the strained situation."
It said the recent Yellow Sea stand-off between its own and Seoul's navies showed the need to replace a 1953 armistice accord with a peace treaty as soon as possible.
"The present situation calls for finally choosing between a lasting mechanism capable of ensuring peace on the Korean peninsula and a war," said the KCNA.
"A lasting peace mechanism should be established between the DPRK [North Korea] and the United States, as consistently demanded by the DPRK, for the sake of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and, moreover, world peace and security," it added using Pyongyang's old tactic of trying to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.
For his part, Mr Kim repeated that failure to settle on family reunions would mean the second half of a 200,000-tonne delivery of fertiliser to the famine-hit North would not be made.
Before the end of the Beijing meeting, Pyongyang released a South Korean housewife held for five days in the North for allegedly attempting to lure a North Korean guide into defecting.
The release of Min Yong-mi, 36, was seen as a move to save the cruise tour project, which has earned the North US$150 million (HK$1.1 billion) since November.
But Mr Kim stressed the tours to North Korea would remain suspended until guarantees to protect tourists had been worked out.
"The incident marked a turning point in our policy," he said, expressing anger at Ms Min's detention.
More than 70 rounds of talks on reuniting families have taken place since 1971 but to little avail.
Discussions last year on the same subject also broke down when Seoul demanded a specific timetable before offering aid.
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China, Taiwan prepare for historic meeting
From Beijing Bureau Chief Rebecca MacKinnon
June 27, 1999 Web posted at: 6:12 p.m. EST (2312 GMT)
BEIJING (CNN) -- Taiwan's senior negotiator Jan Jih-hong landed in Beijing on Sunday as the two Chinas prepared for a historic visit to the island by a top mainland official.
Jan is on a mission to work out the details of a visit later this year by Wang Daohan, Beijing's top envoy on Taiwan affairs. The visit will make Wang the highest-ranking official of the People's Republic to visit the island since Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party was defeated on the mainland by Mao Tse-tung's communist revolution in 1949.
Taiwan's senior statesman Koo Cheng-foo made an unprecedented visit to Shanghai and Beijing last fall, and Wang's trip would return the gesture. It would also symbolize Beijing's willingness to hold a regular dialogue with the island it considers a renegade province.
But while Jan was welcomed by his Beijing counterparts, the diplomats were not expected to see eye-to-eye on how those talks should proceed.
Taiwan wants a regular dialogue on practical issues, like the repatriation of illegal mainland immigrants and hijackers. The government would also like to discuss other problems such as trade disputes, smuggling, drug trafficking and fishing disputes.
Beijing, on the other hand, says routine discussions are not appropriate without first holding political talks on Taiwan's return to mainland Chinese rule.
Beijing broke off earlier attempts at talks after Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui visited the United States in 1995. Tensions mounted further when Beijing conducted missile exercises off Taiwan's coast the following spring.
Lee continues to insist the island is not interested in reunification until China becomes a democracy - just like Taiwan.
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DELICATE MISSION
TO CHINA
A U.S.
envoy explains the embassy bombing
By Claire Macdonald and David Hsieh / Beijing
During an unplanned stopover in London last week, Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen had a brief meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Britain's leader apologized for NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7. The moment was sealed with a photo opportunity of the pair smiling fondly at each other. If only things were as smooth for U.S. undersecretary of state Thomas Pickering, who met with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan three days later on June 16.
The latest turn in Sino-U.S. relations is being watched closely worldwide, as a deepening rift between the two nations could set back key trade and security issues. However, before Pickering could apologize for what Washington terms a "tragic accident," the Chinese seemed to have made up their minds. "The Americans will never admit that they deliberately bombed [the embassy]," says Guo Chun, a young Beijing journalist with access to the Internet and foreign news sites. "Whatever they say, it will be a shameless excuse."
Whether Pickering is the man for the job is also in question. "By dispatching a lower-ranking official, the U.S. is sending a sacrificial lamb," says Zhao Di, a senior majoring in Arabic at the Beijing Languages and Culture University. "There is no way he'll be able to give an adequate explanation." Armed with the U.S. position that NATO used outdated maps, Pickering could not have hoped for friendly photo calls any time soon.
Whether the error lay with the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, some American experts say the bombing is the result of an overly complex and outmoded intelligence bureaucracy. But the "obsolete-map" story is not credible to Chinese scholars, says Yang Dazhou, a retired senior fellow at the Academy of Social Sciences and China's top Balkans expert. "I have an old map [of Belgrade]. There was nothing at the site of the present Chinese embassy. But on the new map, the embassy is clearly marked. Why would the Americans bomb something that wasn't there?"
Just before Pickering's arrival, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official repeated Beijing's demand that the U.S. conduct a "thorough and responsible" probe and "punish the perpetrators." China also reserved the right to take further action if it is dissatisfied with U.S. findings. Will the Americans agree to any punishment? "The question of accountability will be addressed when we've finished our investigation," said a U.S. official. But it remains unclear if individuals will be named and chastised. "The Americans want to quietly hand over their report and China to accept it," says a senior analyst (and ex-diplomat to North America) at the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Institute of International Studies. "But the U.S. must publicize its findings. The people demand an explanation because there was loss of life." The Pickering team has indicated a willingness to discuss compensation for the three Chinese journalists killed in the attack.
If China is unhappy with the results of the U.S. investigation, security in the Asia-Pacific region could be affected. Chinese fears of U.S.-led "hegemony" have been intensified not only by NATO's air assault on Yugoslavia, but also by a recent strengthening of Washington's defense ties with Japan. One result may be a more assertive Chinese foreign policy. Beijing is playing a role in the Kashmir coflict between India and Pakistan, and has been stepping up contacts with other neighbors ranging from Russia to North Korea.
Like the Chinese, Pyongyang is worried that NATO's military intervention in a sovereign state could be replayed on its own doorstep. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has accepted an invitation to visit Beijing later this year. That comes on the heels of a trip there by Pyongyang's No. 2, Kim Yong Nam. Though the formal agenda featured talks on food relief for North Korea, Kim reportedly asked China for arms supplies. But Beijing, say insiders, denied the request as it did not wish to further inflame its ties with Washington.
In another conciliatory gesture, China abstained from voting on the United Nations motion authorizing peacekeeping forces in Kosovo. A Chinese veto would have torpedoed the West's peace plan and worsened tensions with NATO countries. The U.S. is also keen to get ties back on track. Says Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "We have made very clear that we consider our relationship with China an important one that needs to get beyond this." Beijing is likely to want substantive amends to follow the U.S. apology. For Washington, they will not come easy, particularly in the wake of recent allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage. The world waits for a handshake.
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Extending US visit ban 'only natural'
GLENN SCHLOSS
Friday, June 25, 1999
Beijing yesterday defended its decision to extend the ban on Hong Kong visits by United States warships to American military aircraft landing at Chek Lap Kok airport.
It signals it is not yet willing to let Washington off the hook over the Belgrade embassy bombing controversy.
An application for a US navy aircraft to land at the airport has been rejected by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the South China Morning Post revealed yesterday.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said in Beijing: "Under the present circumstances, it is only natural China does not allow the US ships or planes to port or land in Hong Kong."
Despite the ban, a US Air Force jet carrying Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering from Japan was allowed to land in Beijing last week.
Beijing rejected Mr Pickering's explanation that the bombing was "accidental".
Applications for six warships to berth in the harbour have also been rejected as part of the row.
"The Chinese Government has the right to approve their access or not, Ms Zhang said.
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CIA man queried embassy attack
REUTERS in Washington
Friday, June 25, 1999
A mid-level intelligence officer assigned to the CIA repeatedly questioned the targeting during the air war against Yugoslavia of a building that turned out to be the Chinese Embassy, The Washington Post said yesterday.
Quoting an unidentified senior US intelligence official, the newspaper said the officer's concerns went unheeded inside the spy agency and at the US military's European Command.
''I'm not sure that's the right building,'' the senior official quoted the analyst as saying.
Although Nato war planners say they meant to strike the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement, American B-2 bombers instead hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on May 7, killing three Chinese civilians, wounding more than 20 others and causing strains in US-Chinese relations that have yet to heal.
Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering travelled to Beijing last week and gave Beijing a formal, detailed explanation of how the building was mistakenly targeted. But Chinese officials did not accept his explanation and have suggested that the United States deliberately bombed the embassy.
According to the Post's source, the analyst had ''some familiarity'' with the Directorate of Supply and Procurement and was not sure that his colleagues had correctly located it on a map.
''He was concerned, raised some questions, and they didn't get resolved,'' the official said.
Another intelligence officer said the analyst ''raised his doubts with working-level counterparts'' at both the CIA and the European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, but the questions ''were never raised to senior levels before the strike took place''.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, June 25, 1999
The departing US Ambassador, James Sasser, was praised by China yesterday for promoting bilateral ties, after a 3.5-year tenure that began and is ending amid crisis.
Mr Sasser arrived during tensions over Taiwan when Beijing launched missiles near the island and Washington responded by sending in aircraft carriers.
He departs with relations rocky over the May 7 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by Nato. In between, he helped engineer two presidential summits that brought a sense of direction to relations.
"Mr Sasser has made many positive efforts to promote the smooth development of China-US relations," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.
In a show of appreciation, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan held a banquet for Mr Sasser at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Tuesday. Talk there was mostly of social pleasantries, not of the rage and accusations China has largely hurled at the United States since the bombing.
Mr Sasser, who spent four days last month trapped inside the walled US Embassy compound by angry mobs, is due to leave next week.
Admiral Joseph Prueher, the former US commander of the unified Pacific Command, has been nominated to succeed Mr Sasser.
Among his final duties, Mr Sasser accompanied Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering to the Foreign Ministry last week to explain how faulty intelligence and unconventional targeting techniques caused Nato to bomb the Chinese Embassy. China immediately rejected the explanation.
Ms Zhang said yesterday that while China had "taken note" of US apologies for the bombing, its explanations so far were "anything but convincing".
Concluding that the bombing was a mistake "is by no means acceptable to the Chinese Government and people", Ms Zhang said.
She again called for a "comprehensive and thorough investigation" and severe punishment of anyone who was responsible, "so as to give with concrete actions a satisfactory account and explanation" for the bombing.
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Missile defence system necessary: Lee
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Friday, June 25, 1999
Taiwan will join plans for a US-led theatre missile defence system as long as Beijing's weapons are perceived as a threat, President Lee Teng-hui said yesterday.
"It is unreasonable to ask us not to come up with self-defence counter-measures while we are gravely threatened," Mr Lee said in a Taipei meeting with Karen House, head of the Dow Jones group's international division.
The anti-missile defence system was originally intended to shield American allies Japan and South Korea from any North Korean missile threat. The programme is only at the development stage but, in recent months, plans have been floated to include Taiwan.
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'Splittist' monastic loyalties remain
VIVIEN PIK-KWAN CHAN in Lhasa
Friday, June 25, 1999
Some lamas and nuns have remained loyal to the Dalai Lama even though authorities have tried to "correct" their attitude through "patriotic education programmes", a senior Tibetan official in charge of religious affairs said yesterday.
"Patriotic education was started in 1996 to counter infiltration by the Dalai Lama after some major and minor disturbances occurred," said Taerqing, director of the Nationalities and Religious Affairs Committee.
"The education campaign has basically been completed this year."
The programme was first implemented in Tibet's three major monasteries, then extended across the region.
Special work teams with up to 100 cadres were sent to the monasteries to conduct "classes, meetings and individual consultations".
Mr Taerqing said the cadres "educated" lamas and nuns on "anti-splittism", law, religious and political policies set by the Government, and Tibetan history.
TV monitors were set up in monasteries to reinforce the message, but were seldom watched by lamas and nuns.
Mr Taerqing admitted that many lamas and nuns initially resisted, but said the situation had improved.
While some became less defiant after one or two "education sessions", others took longer and needed more "intensive consultations".
For example, when cadres told lamas and nuns not to support the Dalai Lama's "splittist" activities, they would say they did not back such activities, but also refused to associate the Dalai Lama with them, said Mr Taerqing.
He quoted some lamas as saying: "Some may say the Dalai Lama is our religious leader. I am wearing a lama robe. How can I wear such a robe and oppose him at the same time?"
The director denied that lamas and nuns had been expelled after they refused to denounce the Dalai Lama.
Last year, the European Union said thousands of lamas and nuns had been expelled in the previous three years.
Mr Taerqing said some had been sent home because they engaged in "other illegal activities".
"They left because they shouted anti-Government slogans, put up pro-independence or anti-government posters on the street, or were not up to the requirements of the monasteries," Mr Taerqing claimed, adding that only a "few" lamas and nuns had been expelled.
Official sources in Lhasa say there are about 46,000 monks and nuns in about 1,700 monasteries.
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Falun Gong petition goes right to the top
DANIEL KWAN
Friday, June 25, 1999
More than 13,000 Falun Gong followers have petitioned President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji protesting against harassment by officials, a rights group reported.
The followers - all from Hebei province - handed in the letter to the Petition Office in Shijiazhuang, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said yesterday.
The letter said many followers were being harassed and persecuted for practising Falun Gong and claimed that some members had been warned of expulsion from the Communist Party unless they withdrew from the sect.
It said central Government circulars forbade administrative units and businesses from opening their facilities to Falun Gong followers.
Quoting from the letter, the centre said five leaders of the sect in Shijiazhuang were detained for 24 hours on June 4 and 42 sect members who worked for an armaments factory in the city were warned they would be laid off if they continued their activities.
The letter said Falun Gong was not a religious cult and asked the leaders to stop the persecution. It asked them to allow sect leader Li Hongzhi, who lives in New York, to publish his work in China.
A Buddhist and qi gong sect, Falun Gong claims to have more than 100 million followers worldwide. In April 15,000 followers staged a shock 12-hour sit-in at the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing, demanding official recognition of their religion.
This week, official media carried strong editorials reminding Communist Party members they were atheists and that they must not become "superstitious".
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China Defends Tibetan Religious Freedom After Return Of Panchen Lama
BEIJING, Jun 25, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Tibetans enjoy complete religious freedoms, China's state media said Monday, just days after the disputed Beijing-appointed Panchen Lama was returned to Lhasa in a bid to secure loyalty.
"Tibetan Buddhist believers enjoy complete freedom of religious belief," said Bomi Kamdalozhub, vice-chairman of the China Buddhist Association, quoted by the official Xinhua news agency.
Since the "democratic reforms" of 1959, all major festival activities have been restored and were held on an even greater scale.
The government has also issued regulations to protect religious places and relics, thousands of which were destroyed by Mao Zedong's Red Guards during the disastrous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
China seized full control of Tibet after an abortive anti-Communist uprising in March 1959.
In the aftermath, the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India and set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala.
On Thursday, nine-year-old Gyaincain Norbu returned to Lhasa after years of seclusion under the protection of Chinese authorities following the furore raised over his appointment as the 11th Panchen Lama.
The Dalai Lama had chosen another boy, Gedhun Choeki Nyima, as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995, but he was promptly placed under house arrest by Chinese police.
"It certainly seems like a further attempt to encourage loyalty to the Chinese choice of the Panchen Lama and drum up support for him," Kate Saunders of the London-based Tibet Information Network said following Norbu's return.
"The Panchen Lama issue has been a major flashpoint in Tibet for the last few years and there had been tremendous resistance amongst Tibetans to the Chinese selection," she added.
Kamdalozhub, who chaired the lot-drawing ceremony in November 1995 to select Beijing's choice of Panchen Lama, told Xinhua on Monday that "the selection was carried out strictly in line with religious rules and practices."
Norbu, following his return to Lhasa, had also traveled to Tashilhumpo monastery in Shigatse, where he was greeted by an honor guard of 600 lamas blowing ceremonial horns, Xinhua added.
By Agence France Presse
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Taiwan's Mainland Policy Maker: Political Talks With China Not Ruled Out
Thursday, Jun 24 at Prague 06:18 am, N.Y. 12:18 am
TAIPEI, Jun 22, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Taiwan's top mainland policy designer said Monday political negotiations with China had not been ruled out for more than a year.
"We've not refused to hold political talks (with China) since February last year," said Su Chi, chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC).
Taipei and Beijing resumed contacts in February 1998 after a hiatus of nearly three years following a historic trip to the United States by Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui.
But Su, who spoke to a group of Taiwanese businessmen with interests on the mainland, repeated the island's official line in talks with China.
"What we have in mind about dialogues is that they should be held on a continuous and gradual basis, with the levels of talks be raised step by step."
Otherwise, he warned, conflicts could erupt unexpectedly.
Beijing has pressed for political and economic negotiations to be held during an autumn visit to Taiwan by China's top negotiator Wang Daohan, chairman of the quasi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
No exact date has been fixed for Wang's trip.
Jan Jyh-horng, deputy secretary-general of ARATS's Taiwanese counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation, is due to depart for Beijing Sunday to discuss Wang's visit.
Beijing has repeatedly called on Taiwan to reunite with China under "one country, two systems" -- the formula under which Hong Kong's capitalist system was guaranteed for 50 years after it ceased to be a British colony in 1997.
Taipei has demanded democracy as a prerequisite for reunification. Taiwan and China were split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.
By Agence France Presse
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ENTIRE MAINLAND CHINA MAY BE 'TAIWANIZED': LEE
Taipei, June 24 (CNA) President Lee Teng-hui said on Thursday that the Republic of China's existence is critical to developments in mainland China, Asia and the entire world.
Lee made the statement while meeting with a delegation from the American Assembly, a public policy research think tank founded by Columbia University in 1950.
The ROC president told his American guests that if Taiwan can establish a peaceful, liberal and prosperous democracy, mainland China is unlikely to maintain its status quo forever.
"Inspired by the Taiwan experience, the whole of mainland China is likely to be 'Taiwanized,'" Lee said, adding that should Taiwan cease to exist, mainland China's hegemony would expand further and pose a serious threat to Asia and the entire world.
Lee went on to say the ROC fully understands that the Clinton administration's "engagement" policy is mainly aimed at pushing mainland China to accept international norms and regulations.
Nevertheless, Lee said, the ROC hopes that the United States will maintain parallel relations with the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Lee further said the "three wins" concept unveiled by US President Bill Clinton when mainland Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Washington, D.C. in 1997 is same as the ROC's goal.
The "three wins" refer to balanced developments in three sets of bilateral relations -- Taipei-Washington, Washington-Beijing and Taipei-Beijing ties.
Lee said he is hopeful that the US government will fully implement provisions and spirit of the Taiwan Relations Act, further enhance bilateral cooperation for mutual benefits, and help safeguard peace, stability and prosperity in the Taiwan Strait area.
For years, Lee said, the United States has been one of the ROC's most important allies. Despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, Lee said the two countries share the same ideal of upholding democracy, enjoy longstanding friendship and maintain close exchanges and cooperation in economic, cultural, academic and technological fields.
In 1998, ROC-US trade amounted to US$49 billion. Taiwan is now America's seventh largest trading partner, seventh largest import source and export outlet.
The American Assembly has set up a China Factor forum and has sponsored many seminars in the United States and on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, respectively, in recent years to discuss issues related to Taipei-Washington-Beijing relations.
The assembly is co-sponsoring in Taipei a seminar on cross-strait ties with the Institute of International Relations under National Chengchi University.
The assembly delegation to the seminar was led by David Michael Lampton. And its members included Daniel A. Sharp, Ezra F. Vogel, William Clark, Karen Elliott House, and William P. Fuller.
(By Sofia Wu)
By CNA
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China defends Tibetan religious freedom after return of Panchen Lama
BEIJING, June 21 (AFP) - Tibetans enjoy complete religious freedoms, China's state media said Monday, just days after the disputed Beijing-appointed Panchen Lama was returned to Lhasa in a bid to secure loyalty.
"Tibetan Buddhist believers enjoy complete freedom of religious belief," said Bomi Kamdalozhub, vice-chairman of the China Buddhist Association, quoted by the official Xinhua news agency.
Since the "democratic reforms" of 1959, all major festival activities have been restored and were held on an even greater scale.
The government has also issued regulations to protect religious places and relics, thousands of which were destroyed by Mao Zedong's Red Guards during the disastrous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
China seized full control of Tibet after an abortive anti-Communist uprising in March 1959.
In the aftermath, the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India and set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala.
On Thursday, nine-year-old Gyaincain Norbu returned to Lhasa after years of seclusion under the protection of Chinese authorities following the furore raised over his appointment as the 11th Panchen Lama.
The Dalai Lama had chosen another boy, Gedhun Choeki Nyima, as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995, but he was promptly placed under house arrest by Chinese police.
"It certainly seems like a further attempt to encourage loyalty to the Chinese choice of the Panchen Lama and drum up support for him," Kate Saunders of the London-based Tibet Information Network said following Norbu's return.
"The Panchen Lama issue has been a major flashpoint in Tibet for the last few years and there had been tremendous resistance amongst Tibetans to the Chinese selection," she added.
Kamdalozhub, who chaired the lot-drawing ceremony in November 1995 to select Beijing's choice of Panchen Lama, told Xinhua on Monday that "the selection was carried out strictly in line with religious rules and practices."
Norbu, following his return to Lhasa, had also travelled to Tashilhumpo monastery in Shigatse, where he was greeted by an honour guard of 600 lamas blowing ceremonial horns, Xinhua added.
bur/jkb
210428 GMT JUN 99
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Taiwan's Lee reaffirms China policy, avoids reform questions
June 21, 1999 Web posted at: 1:27 PM EDT (1727 GMT)
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan's president on Monday demanded that China recognize Taiwan as an equal in his state-of-the-nation address, which covered familiar ground and drew criticism from opposition party members who favor government reform.
President Lee Teng-hui's address to the National Assembly reviewed his achievements in democratization and asserting Taiwan's de facto independent status in the world.
"Our diplomacy has long encountered problems and challenges resulting from communist Chinese pressure," Lee said, "but with pioneering thinking and practical action, we will maintain the nation's security and dignity."
The speech likely will be the last such address of Lee's career. He has said he will not seek re-election next year, setting off a competition between two candidates in the ruling Nationalist Party.
Taiwan will continue seeking entry in the United Nations and other international organizations, despite China's furious objections, Lee said.
The two sides separated in a 1949 civil war, and China considers Taiwan a renegade province with no right to international representation.
Lee's speech, at the assembly's hall in the mountains north of Taipei, drew a mostly negative response from opposition assembly deputies. They criticized Lee for failing to chart a course for his last year in office.
Members of the Democratic Progressive Party displayed cards on their desks reading "bounced constitutional reform checks" when Lee's speech displeased them. The cards read "go, president" on the other side to encourage Lee to introduce new ideas.
They were alleging that Lee has reneged on promises to make government more efficient and less corrupt. Among the party's proposals is to do away with the assembly, which serves mainly as a constitutional congress that meets each summer, in favor of a single representative body.
"What we want is constitutional reform. Without the vision for constitutional reform, what use is his speech?" asked Lee Chin-i, a leader of the party's assembly caucus.
Politicians from the smaller New Party held up banners in protest during Lee's speech. Nationalist delegates hold a strong majority in the assembly.
By The Associated Press
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China Tells US To Fix Relations
BEIJING, Jun 18, 1999 -- (Reuters) China said on Friday it still values ties with the United States despite rejecting an official U.S. explanation that the bombing of Beijing's embassy in Belgrade was a mistake based on intelligence blunders.
But Beijing said "principles" came first in Sino-U.S. ties, and left it up to Washington to sort out the severely strained relationship.
"China attaches importance to the development of Sino-U.S. ties, which is in line with the fundamental interests of the peoples of the two countries and beneficial to world peace, stability and development," a front-page commentary in the People's Daily said.
But "principles must be upheld", the commentary said.
"The development of Sino-U.S.ties must be based on the basic norms for international relations -- especially the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in each other's internal affairs," it said.
On Thursday, China rebuffed an explanation by U.S. envoy Thomas Pickering that the May 7 NATO bombing was a result of outdated maps, faulty databases and violations of standard targetting procedures by intelligence officers.
"The Chinese side refuted this report and so far the explanations by the U.S. side are not convincing," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said in a statement.
The bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists and injured 20 people, sparked nationwide anti-U.S. and anti-NATO protests.
The People's Daily said China's response to the embassy bombing had been "rational and restrained".
In a sign of fairness that contrasted with weeks of virulent anti-U.S. rhetoric in the state media, the commentary listed the key points of the U.S. explanation.
But it also laid out China's rebuttal point by point, emphasizing how Beijing had demolished the U.S. explanation.
Besides an explanation, the U.S. must make sufficient compensation for loss of life and property and punish those responsible for the bombing, the commentary said.
"This is the only way to create necessary conditions and an atmosphere for returning bilateral relations to a normal track," it said.
"We will wait and see if the U.S. take such a step," it said.
By Reuters
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US: Pickering Gave "Sufficient" Proof China Embassy Bombing A Mistake
WASHINGTON, Jun 18, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) A top US diplomat meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing gave "sufficient" proof that NATO's bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade was a mistake, the State Department said Thursday.
"We believe that the information Ambassador (Thomas) Pickering provided is sufficient to demonstrate that the bombing was a horrible mistake," said US State Department spokesman James Foley.
China has firmly resisted NATO's persistent explanation that the May 8 bombing, which left three Chinese journalists dead and sparked huge anti-US demonstrations across China, was a mistake.
On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan told Pickering that the explanation for the raid was "unconvincing," the official Xinhua news agency said.
"We certainly did not expect that the Chinese authorities would change their minds merely on the presentation of this report, Foley told reporters.
But Foley said Pickering had broached the thorny issue of compensation to China for the destroyed embassy and that "we have offered to provide payment to the injured" and the relatives of those killed.
Asked whether the meeting had addressed whether China should make restitution after protests left the US embassy in Beijing severely damaged, Foley said "the issue did come up" but offered no further details.
Further talks on compensation were to take place through normal diplomatic channels, according to Foley, who said Pickering was off to Europe to brief US President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
By Agence France Presse
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Embassy Bombing To Haunt Sino-U.S. Ties
BEIJING, Jun 18, 1999 -- (Reuters) Despite signs that China is seeking a thaw in Sino-U.S. ties, the bombing of Beijing's embassy in Belgrade last month could haunt the relationship for years, diplomats said on Friday.
The immediate fall-out of the NATO airstrike on May 7 was bad enough: A suspension of talks with the United States on WTO membership for China, weapons proliferation and human rights.
But the long-term damage could be widespread anti-American sentiment that keeps Chinese moderate leaders on the defensive in the middle of intense nationalist emotions.
"I think the most important lasting effect of the attack may be on popular attitudes toward the United States," said one Beijing-based diplomat.
He said the situation was comparable to the way positive U.S. images of China were savaged overnight by the military crackdown on demonstrators at Tiananmen Square 10 years ago.
China rejected on Wednesday U.S. envoy Thomas Pickering's explanation that the bombing was a tragic mistake caused by a series of intelligence blunders. State media have called the bombing deliberate -- a view most Chinese share.
Despite the rebuff of the U.S. explanation as "unconvincing" and its demand that those responsible be punished, China has said it values its ties with Washington.
"Tang Jiaxuan, when he met Pickering, also talked at length about the need to rebuild the relationship," said a diplomat of a NATO country familiar with the talks, referring to China's foreign minister.
"There's a clear intention to improve the relationship."
But some analysts said the price could be a seemingly schizophrenic policy whereby Beijing rails against the U.S. in public while maintaining a workable relationship backstage.
"The Chinese are quite capable of having a high level of rhetoric against a country" while maintaining a working relationship, said another diplomat.
China has maintained such a relation with Japan for years, vilifying its politicians for atrocities committed in World War II while encouraging its businessman to conduct trade and investment.
"I think they could do that with the U.S.," the diplomat said. "They'll move to maintain the rhetoric to a certain extent" without putting ties into a deep freeze.
Other diplomats expressed doubt China could gain mileage from a such a policy, saying Americans were exasperated with Chinese demands over a bombing they believe was an accident.
"Where does it take you to continue to imply the U.S. bombed deliberately?" asked one diplomat.
"Not very far, really. Especially when you have such overwhelming reasons to drive a relationship with the U.S.," he said.
Washington is also in an uproar over allegations that China stole American nuclear secrets for 20 years, charges that Beijing flatly denies.
But few disagree there is enormous pressure on President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji and other moderate leaders to make a stand against perceived U.S. bullying and defend their credibility against attacks by a nationalistic public and foes within the Communist Party.
"The next few weeks should give us a good indication of whether the Chinese just want to turn the page and resume negotiation on WTO. If that does not happen in July, then I think the likelihood of them getting into WTO this year will be greatly diminished," said the diplomat of the NATO country.
By Reuters
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China Extends "Military Diplomacy" In Face Of Regional Crises
BEIJING, Jun 18, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) The growing number of security crises in Asia has forced China to develop "military diplomacy" with its neighbors, especially Russia, state media said Friday.
General Zhang Wannian, vice-chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, has just returned from a 10-day visit to Russia and the Xinhua news agency said the two countries had reached an "extensive consensus."
It said the visit was "the latest development in China's busy military exchanges with neighboring countries."
Senior Chinese military figures have also visited Pakistan, Malaysia and Australia in recent weeks. Army chiefs from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and North Korea have been in China.
"China has used its influence to urge those involved countries to avoid crisis situations through dialogue," Xinhua said.
But China has made it clear that its "military diplomacy" is mainly aimed at Russia a country like China, which Xinhua said "bear major responsibility for maintaining world peace."
It said Zhang's talks in Moscow had been "a major step toward the establishment of their strategic cooperative partnership."
Since the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7, China has moved closer to Russia's position on Kosovo and the UN role on solving regional crises.
China has not gone so far however as to call for a united anti-American alliance.
"Maintaining and developing healthy and stable bilateral ties is a practical approach for assuring regional peace and security, as is strengthening military exchanges," said Xinhua.
According to Russian military sources, Zhang said in Moscow that China intended to keep buying the latest Russian equipment, including military aviation and radar, submarines, ships and cruise missiles.
The two countries are involved in cooperation and research projects over the next five years that are estimated to be worth between five and six billion dollars, according to western experts.
By Agence France Presse
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India And China To Hold Border Talks Soon
NEW DELHI, Jun 18, 1999 -- (Reuters) India and China, which fought a brief border war in 1962, will discuss their mountainous "Line of Actual Control" this year, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said on Friday.
A military and diplomatic expert group was expected to hold discussions in July or August in Beijing ahead of a full-fledged official meeting in October, he said.
"We also decided to initiate a security dialogue with China," he told reporters.
China holds a slice of Kashmir, which New Delhi says Pakistan ceded illegally, and the Aksai Chin area farther east which India also claims. China defeated India the 1962 clash.
Singh, who returned on Wednesday from a three-day visit to Beijing, said India was concerned about China's military aid for arch-foe Pakistan, but that was not a deterrent to bilateral relations.
"Notwithstanding the concerns there is sufficient foundation for India and China...to move forward.... where there are areas of harmony and agreement," Singh said.
Singh's visit to Beijing, a traditional ally of Pakistan, was the first by a senior Indian official to China since New Delhi conducted nuclear tests last year.
"We have our difficulties with China. But we are talking to each other about the difficulties," he said on Thursday. "The talks were very significant."
India, which rules two-thirds of Kashmir, has launched air and artillery strikes against what it says are says the infiltrators, mainly Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistan, which controls the remainder, says they are Kashmiri freedom fighters.
By Reuters
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HK Activists Demand Freedom After Tiananmen Anniversary Round-Up
HONG KONG, Jun 18, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) A group of pro-democracy activists on Friday urged the Hong Kong government to pass on their demands that Beijing release all detained activists, including 170 held for trying to mark the 10th anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre.
Some 20 slogan-shouting members of the Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China marched to the government headquarters to hand over their demand for the release of all dissidents on the mainland.
In a statement, the group said the Hong Kong government had a responsibility to air their demand under the Basic Law, a China-promulgated mini-constitution for post-handover Hong Kong.
It said more than 170 mainland dissidents had been rounded up since May prior to the commemoration of the June 4, 1989 crackdown, and had not yet been released.
The Chinese authorities enforced a massive security clampdown to prevent any public commemorations of the Tiananmen anniversary.
The alliance, considered by Beijing to be a subversive group aimed at toppling the communist government, said some 70,000 people attended its annual candle-lit rally held on June 4 to mark the 10th anniversary of the massacre.
By Agence France Presse
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TRANSFORMING
TIANANMEN
To heal the wound, a respect for history is necessary
Despite the bravado, it is a safe bet that neither Zhu, nor the tens of thousands who observed the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in Hong Kong, nor ordinary Chinese everywhere will ever forget what happened in Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989. It remains a festering wound deep in China's soul, one that must be salved eventually. Hopefully, a resolution will not require anything like five decades. That was how long it took the Kuomintang just to acknowledge the "2-28" (Feb. 28) Incident, a comparably traumatic and bloody suppression in 1947 of a rebellion in Taiwan.
Last year, President Jiang Zemin made a rare public statement defending Beijing's decision to use force in 1989. He said to visiting U.S. President Bill Clinton: "Had the Chinese government not taken resolute measures, we could not have enjoyed the stability that we are enjoying today." That stability, however, is somewhat tenuous. Key issues that drove students and workers to protest in 1989 remain unresolved. Corruption? It is more widespread than ever, despite countless campaigns to stamp it out. Economic pain? The economy may have been growing, but real hardship confronts the millions made jobless by the ongoing restructuring of state-owned enterprises with only a minimal social safety net.
Since 1989, China has made some progress in creating a civil society. Among other things, "counter-revolution" - which is how the 1989 events are still officially described - is no longer a crime. Advances have been slower toward one of the students' main demands: greater freedom of expression. Even so, people who do not directly challenge the authorities are able not only to speak more uninhibitedly, but also to pursue their lives free from the day-to-day control of the Communist Party. That includes university graduates, who now can choose their jobs rather than having them assigned by the state.
The greatest change may have been in the attitudes of ordinary people. Since the heady days of '89, most have sobered up. They no longer believe that change can happen in China in any other way than slowly and incrementally. They understand that in the long run, real, sustainable progress is accomplished in stops and starts, peppered with frustrations and setbacks. They know that China must find its own means to make its leaders more accountable. Call it democracy with Chinese characteristics. That, however, does not diminish the need to address the monumental tragedy that was Tiananmen.
Following the death of Deng Xiaoping two years ago, Jiang dropped hints that a rethink might be possible. During the funeral oration, he specifically linked Deng's name to Tiananmen and described the protests as "disturbances," rather than the official "counter-revolutionary riot." But not much has happened since. And recently, the leadership has become more obsessed with maintaining stability by suppressing political dissent. That is not likely to change in the near future as China enters perhaps its most difficult and potentially disruptive period of reform, centering on state-enterprise overhaul.
Nor are Chinese leaders likely to undertake a public reversal while Li Peng, premier in 1989 and now legislature chief, remains politically active. Ten years ago, he had taken upon himself the brunt of the opprobrium that fell on the party. Perhaps, too, Beijing believes not enough time has passed since Deng's demise. The timing of a re-evaluation is one thing, but its necessity is another. In China itself, facing up to Tiananmen would heal a deep psychological and emotional wound and foster new respect for the leadership. Abroad, it would improve Beijing's relationships and deprive its critics of a perennial stick with which to beat it.
The Chinese are hardly strangers to rewrites of their turbulent modern history. Deng himself led a re-evaluation of the Cultural Revolution. The leadership does not need to go as far as to call Tiananmen's students heroes or martyrs for democratic expression. Most had only the foggiest notions of democracy, and some leaders among them behaved recklessly as they succumbed to the media-fueled vainglory of the moment. But Beijing needs to acknowledge that most of the protesters acted from noble, even patriotic, motives. As the students publicly proclaimed then, their aim was not to topple the party, but to spur it toward positive change - a goal entirely consonant with the political hierarchy's own position.
Fortunately for China's leaders, the ultimate responsibility for Tiananmen can fairly be attributed to Deng Xiaoping. That would serve more than political expediency, for who can doubt the essential veracity of such an assessment? Deng's place in Chinese history is sufficiently secure for his reputation to survive even such a blot. By bearing the blame and thereby exorcising the ghosts of Tiananmen, he can perform one last service for his nation.
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REUTERS
Friday, June 18, 1999
China said on Friday it still values ties with the United States despite rejecting an official US explanation that the bombing of Beijing's embassy in Belgrade was a mistake based on intelligence blunders.
But Beijing said "principles" came first in Sino-US ties, and left it up to Washington to sort out the severely strained relationship.
"China attaches importance to the development of Sino-US ties, which is in line with the fundamental interests of the peoples of the two countries and beneficial to world peace, stability and development," a front-page commentary in the People's Daily said.
But "principles must be upheld", the commentary said.
"The development of Sino-US ties must be based on the basic norms for international relations - especially the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in each others's internal affairs," it said.
On Thursday, China rebuffed an explanation by US envoy Thomas Pickering that the May 7 Nato bombing was a result of outdated maps, faulty databases and violations of standard targetting procedures by intelligence officers.
"The Chinese side refuted this report and so far the explanations by the US side are not convincing," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said in a statement.
The bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists and injured 20 people, sparked nationwide anti-US and anti-Nato protests.
The People's Daily said China's response to the embassy bombing had been "rational and restrained".
In a sign of fairness that contrasted with weeks of virulent anti-US rhetoric in the state media, the commentary listed the key points of the US explanation.
But it also laid out China's rebuttal point by point, emphasising how Beijing had demolished the US explanation.
Besides an explanation, the US must make sufficient compensation for loss of life and property and punish those responsible for the bombing, the commentary said.
"This is the only way to create necessary conditions and an atmosphere for returning bilateral relations to a normal track," it said.
"We will wait and see if the US take such a step," it said.
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Friday, June 18, 1999
It would have been in China's best interests to accept the explanation offered by US Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering for the Belgrade embassy bombing.
The account which he gave may seem almost too incredible to be true. That one of the maps used to pinpoint targets was 10 years out of date smacks of gross incompetence. So too was an intelligence officer's use of an army field technique to locate the target. Washington admits this was totally inappropriate for precision air bombing.
To some extent, it was understandable that China should find the explanation to run counter to common sense and "difficult to believe". But this does not make it false. Nor does it justify the rejection of this genuine attempt to end a crisis that has bedevilled bilateral relations for the past month.
The truth may not be easy to swallow. But the central Government is deluding itself if it really believes the US would put the incompetence of its intelligence services on such public display unless this was what really happened.
Nor is it clear what China hopes to gain from turning away this peace offering. Its response was simply to repeat the same four demands originally made after the bombing.
These are now little more than meaningless rhetoric. The US long ago agreed to pay compensation to the families of the victims. Its promise to address the "issue of accountability" seems to have convinced the Chinese that those responsible will be punished.
The demand for a full investigation has also been met. So Beijing is left simply complaining it has still not received a "satisfactory explanation". But having rejected this account of what really happened, it is difficult to see how any explanation that Washington gives can ever be judged satisfactory.
The reality is that the central leadership, for its own reasons, is not yet ready to allow a resumption of normal bilateral relations.
Worse still, it is not willing to quarantine this dispute. Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng indicated that talks on entry into the World Trade Organisation cannot resume until this issue is resolved.
Such unnecessary linkage is bad for Hong Kong and all of China. If the faltering mainland economy is to continue to prosper then entry into the WTO is vital. Unnecessarily prolonging this dispute also risks further intensifying anti-Beijing sentiment in the US Congress.
China would have done better to draw a line under this tragic incident. But the central Government shows no signs of being prepared to do this.
So the SAR, and all those affected by Sino-US relations, must face the reality that ties are unlikely to improve in the immediate future.
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Top envoy should visit US, says critic
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Washington
Friday, June 18, 1999
If Beijing wants compensation for the embassy bombing a senior Chinese official should go to the United States to seek it, a key American lawmaker said.
"China should send an envoy of [Under-Secretary of State] Thomas Pickering's rank to the United States to request it," said Republican Congressman Ben Gilman.
Mr Gilman, head of the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, is a frequent China critic.
Complicating President Bill Clinton's position is the fact many US lawmakers have reserved their outrage for China which, they say, backed violent protests that left the US Embassy in Beijing and consulates across the mainland damaged, and therefore owes Washington compensation.
"I am gratified that the Clinton administration sent Thomas Pickering to Beijing reportedly to seek compensation for damaged US facilities in the People's Republic of China," Mr Gilman said.
"These facilities were intentionally damaged with the clear encouragement of the Chinese Government," he said, stressing that he would be "dismayed" if Mr Pickering offered China compensation.
A White House spokesman would only say Mr Pickering had gone to Beijing "prepared to talk about compensation", without offering further details.
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REUTERS
Friday, June 18, 1999
Britain's trade minister hailed his meeting with top Chinese officials in Beijing yesterday as positive and said relations severely strained by the embassy bombing in Belgrade were back on track.
Stephen Byers, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, is the first British cabinet minister to visit China since Nato's attack, in which three Chinese journalists were killed.
At one point it looked as though President Jiang Zemin's visit to London in October was in doubt, but Mr Byers said Chinese officials told him they were actively planning for the trip.
"Both in tone and content, the meetings that I've held have been positive," he said.
Mr Byers met State Councillor Wu Yi and Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng . He said they both mentioned the Sino-British "partnership" forged during Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to China last year.
Both Chinese officials said "very clearly that the Chinese wanted to move forward with that partnership agenda", Mr Byers said.
Mr Shi would go ahead as planned with a visit to Britain this year, he said.
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Strategic partnership 'still possible'
WILLY WO-LAP LAM
Friday, June 18, 1999
Beijing has indicated a strategic partnership with the US is still possible if Washington satisfies demands regarding the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
In an apparent effort to prevent the further deterioration of ties, the Ambassador to the United States, Li Zhaoxing, said it was possible for both countries to maintain a relationship of constructive, strategic partnership.
Diplomatic sources in Beijing and Washington said despite Beijing's rejection of the explanations of envoy Thomas Pickering, fences could still be mended if the US was willing to make concessions on other fronts. The semi-official China News Service quoted Mr Li yesterday as saying that, given the many "common points", ties "were, of course, of a strategic nature".
The ambassador said it was to the benefit of both nations to promote peace in the Asia-Pacific region, to maintain economic growth and to work together in areas including the environment, drugs, illegal immigrants and non-proliferation.
Mr Li pointed out that building up a constructive, strategic partnership was a "process that requires joint efforts over the long-haul".
The senior diplomat cited as a stumbling bloc to bilateral ties the May 7 bombing and Washington's failure to give a full explanation or punish the culprits.
"The key is the US must give a comprehensive account and satisfy the serious and fair demands of the Chinese Government and the people," Mr Li said.
A Beijing source said President Jiang Zemin was under heavy pressure from hardliners in the party and army to give up the goal of a strategic partnership.
"Jiang has been criticised for pursuing a so-called big country diplomacy through forming a special partnership with the US," the source said.
"He has been faulted for departing from Deng Xiaoping's instruction on keeping a low profile and never taking the lead." Diplomatic sources said top cadres including Mr Jiang and Premier Zhu Rongji were still convinced improved Sino-US ties would work best.
The sources said Beijing and Washington were engaged in an elaborate horse-trading through unpublicised emissaries and channels.
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Beijing's response: inconceivable account lacks credibility
Friday, June 18, 1999
Excerpts from Beijing's response to the US explanation:
FAULTY MAPS
The Chinese side finds it difficult to believe why the United States put so much value on, and faith in, the outdated maps published by Yugoslavia. The US also acknowledges there are many maps which show the correct location of the Chinese Embassy. Why then did the US not use these maps?
The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (Nima) pointed out "recent news reports regarding the accuracy of Nima maps have been inaccurate or incomplete".
Therefore, the US argument that the Nima map contributed to the mistaken bombing does not hold water.
Many diplomats have visited the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP).
There is a long distance between the FDSP and the embassy and no exterior resemblance between them.
What's more, the embassy building is of a distinct traditional Chinese architectural style with clear markings.
The US claim of locating the FDSP by employing a method that is used in the field by the army is not logical. Why was the army technique of land navigation used to locate what the US believed to be an important target?
It took the US military command and its intelligence community and Nato a long time to plan and identify this target.
How could they explain that an American intelligence officer would suddenly adopt a totally different target-locating technique in violation of operational rules?
FLAWED DATABASE
The US targets database is updated frequently with a clearly distinguished target list and a no-hit list. The US argument that the embassy was mistakenly fed into the database as the FDSP does not hold ground.
REVIEW LAPSE
The explanation is inconceivable. Many people in the US know the locations of the embassy and FDSP. For the target list, the US has always claimed it has a whole set of review procedures. With such procedures, why did errors occur at every stage with none corrected?
Efforts were made to avoid bombing foreign embassies located a short distance from targets. This shows the US was clear about the intended targets.
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Washington's excuse: we had wrong maps, failed to update data and missed errors
Excerpts from Washington's explanation for the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade:
Friday, June 18, 1999
FAULTY MAPS
The US' intended target was the headquarters of the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP).
To locate the target, two maps produced by Yugoslavia in 1989 and 1996 respectively and a 1997 National Imagery and Mapping Agency map were used.
None had any reference to the FDSP building, and none had accurately identified the current location of the Chinese Embassy.
The 1997 US government map shows the embassy in Old Belgrade. In the process of locating the target, a US intelligence officer, in breach of operational rules, employed techniques that are used in the field by the army.
These techniques involve the assumption of target locations of a street by comparing the pattern and numbering system of its parallel streets. They can only be used for general geographic location, but are totally inappropriate for precision targeting for air attacks.
Using this process, the intelligence officer mistakenly determined that the building of the Chinese Embassy was the FDSP headquarters.
FLAWED DATABASE
Despite the fact that US officials had visited the embassy at its new address on a number of occasions in recent years, the new location was never fed into targeting databases.
Therefore, when the incorrect location of the FDSP building was fed into several US databases for review, none detected the error. The US satellite photos did not indicate clear markings of the Embassy.
REVIEW LAPSE
The target review process failed to detect and correct the aforesaid mistakes.
While this target of what was believed to be the FDSP facility came under review, the system of checks that US and European command forces had in place to catch target errors did not reveal the mistake. As the embassy was not connected to the intent to strike FDSP, no one consulted those who knew the embassy address.
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North accuses US of escalating tensions
Friday, June 18, 1999
North Korea on Friday accused the US of escalating tensions between the two Koreas by sending naval ships and planes to waters off the peninsula.
''The US manoeuvre to reinforce its armed forces and tighten its vigilance raises tensions over the situation on the Korean peninsula,'' Korea Central Radio said.
North Korean ships avoided the disputed area in the Yellow Sea yesterday as US warships and aircraft headed for the region.
But South Korea boosted its patrols of the tense buffer zone where the two sides exchanged fire on Tuesday and a North Korean torpedo boat was sunk. Military in the area remained on a heightened state of alert to thwart any North Korean reprisals.
"About 10 North Korean patrol and six fishing boats have been spotted between 3km and 5km inside their own waters but have not approached the buffer zone," the US joint chiefs of staff announced.
The US ordered a missile ship and another boat as well as four surveillance aircraft to monitor tensions between the Cold War rivals following the clash in which a communist torpedo boat was sunk.
"In view of the recent incident between North and South Korean naval vessels in the Yellow Sea, ships from the US 7th Fleet will deploy near [South Korea] to monitor the situation and contribute to peace in the west Pacific region," a spokesman for the 36,000-strong US forces in Korea said.
Apart from the cruiser Vincennes, a number of EA-6B surveillance and electronic warfare planes were dispatched. The Vincennes, normally stationed in Japan, carries guided missiles.
No decision has been taken yet on the other navy vessel that will be sent to the region.
In addition, the aircraft carrier Constellation will leave its base in San Diego today for Korea.
News reports said two US nuclear-powered submarines had also arrived in the South Korean port of Chinhae to join in patrols of the Yellow Sea, but US military officials in Seoul declined to confirm the report.
Meanwhile Pyongyang, warning the peninsula stood on the brink of war, banned South Koreans from visiting its capital and cancelled the planned handover of remains of US war dead.
It also condemned Seoul for "reckless military provocations" by allegedly attacking its vessels and intruding into its waters. North Korea does not recognise the UN-declared sea border where the territorial dispute is unfolding.
Pyongyang said the "patience and self-restraint" of its forces had averted an "all-out war", but warned: "There is a limit to our patience."
The United Nations Command said a planned handover of the remains of US troops killed in the Korean War had been cancelled.
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China's First Foreign Monkey King Dreams Of Journey To The West
BEIJING, Jun 17, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) The yellow-clad figure of the first foreigner to play the mischievous Monkey King in traditional Chinese opera leaps across the stage, creating havoc in heaven and -- as legend has it -- winning immortality.
Beijing opera is a complex and cast-iron discipline which begins in childhood and has changed little in 200 years, but a former computer scientist from Britain -- just like Monkey -- appears to have gatecrashed the party.
Ghaffar Pourazar, 38, said he first entered the magical world of Sun Wukong the Monkey King while watching a youth troupe from China perform "Havoc in Heaven" in London six years ago.
"I went to see the performance, and that was it," said Pourazar, who had taken part in mime and theatre workshops across Europe in his spare time until then. "I was just struck by the magic, really. It had everything."
Since his arrival in Beijing in 1993 without a word of Chinese, he has spent six poverty-stricken years in the grueling training program that produces Beijing opera performers, alongside classmates less than half his age.
Pourazar -- known in Chinese as Ge Fa -- has appeared in the role of Monkey across China, as well as being frequently featured on national and local television.
Now, as a graduate student, he wants to take Beijing opera to a wider audience -- in the West.
He is working on a proposal to the European Union (EU) that it fund a pan-European production of Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" in Beijing opera style.
The show has already been performed in Beijing, and uses non-Chinese actors speaking their own language for the parts of the mortals, while using traditional Chinese performers and music to represent the dream-like world of the fairies.
"The play changes depending on which culture you're in, but the dream stays the same," Pourazar explained after a recent training session in a Beijing park.
He is currently rehearsing the part of Wu Song, a hero from the classic martial arts epic, "The Water Margin."
As well as learning the high-pitched singing style, a Beijing opera performer must master Chinese martial arts and learn a host of stances, clothing movements and facial expressions which are minutely prescribed for each character.
"I am very strict with him. We are not playing games," trainer Wang Delin said at the rehearsal, during which he corrected Pourazar on everything from his posture to the way he flicked the long sleeves of his costume and moved his eyes.
"He started too late in life -- but he works very hard and has a high level of culture," said Wang, adding that he applied the same standards to Pourazar as to his Chinese students.
"Chinese people are very forgiving of a foreigner performing Beijing opera, but I don't agree with that attitude."
Wang, who was trained from the age of nine at a local opera school before going to opera college, recalled the tough training methods used on him and his classmates.
"In those days, they didn't call it learning opera, it was having opera beaten into you," he said, describing scenes reminiscent of the Chen Kaige film "Farewell to my Concubine," where young boys were beaten regularly until all mistakes were ironed out.
Despite the tough discipline, Pourazar said he had understood what it was to be an actor through his experiences in China.
"It is more disciplined, but it means you can take your costume off and be a normal person after each performance instead of taking it home with you. It keeps you sane."
Pourazar has also translated the part of Monkey in "Havoc in Heaven" into English to make the opera more accessible to non-Chinese audiences, while staying as close as possible to the rhythms and poetry of the Chinese.
But he has had to negotiate his way with care in an environment where innovation on the part of all but the greatest is frowned on, and wade through a sea of red tape to make his ideas happen.
Traditional forms of opera were targeted during the Cultural Revolution, with many performers sent to do menial tasks and the repertoire restricted to the Six Revolutionary Model Operas by Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing.
Now, performances can still be cancelled at the last minute if they are judged to be pushing artistic and political limits too far.
China last year pulled the plug on a production of a 17th century Kunju opera "The Peony Pavilion" which was scheduled to tour New York, Paris, Sydney and Hong Kong, saying it was pornographic, and its Chinese-American director Chen Shizheng had "changed the spirit" of the original.
By Agence France Presse
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US scientists staying away from forums
RHONDA LAM WAN
Monday, June 14, 1999
American scholars invited to attend conferences in Hong Kong have either pulled out or been denied access amid strained Sino-US relations, academics say.
It is understood at least five conferences have been hit. The five are all science forums, and have been organised for this summer by Baptist University, City University and the University of Science and Technology.
The news followed claims in the Cox report produced by a US House committee probing alleged mainland spying that strategic commodities were being smuggled into the mainland through Hong Kong. Scientists in Hong Kong have since appealed to President Bill Clinton to protect exchanges.
"We don't know if they [the withdrawals] relate to the tense atmosphere between the two countries . . . the organising committees must spell out their reasons," said Professor Nora Tam Fung-yee, chairman of the Society of Hong Kong Scholars. "But we will say the [number of] cancellations is abnormal."
She would not disclose the numbers involved.
Baptist physics department head Professor Bambi Hu said a noted US physicist had been barred from addressing the "Dynamics Days Asia-Pacific: First International Conference on Non-Linear Science" to be held next month.
"His air ticket has been booked. He was rejected from attending even after appealing to the highest authority at Los Alamos," he said.
Taiwan-born scientist Lee Wen-ho worked at the Los Alamos national nuclear laboratory in New Mexico before being sacked amid claims he was a spy. He has not been charged.
Scores of other guests have delayed confirming their attendance, Professor Hu said.
"It's obvious that normal bilateral scientific exchanges are seriously hampered, as it used to be quick and easy to seek approval for such basic research conferences," said the professor, who has just finished a six-month US stay. "The influence is no longer confined to lab researchers but general scientists and engineers."
The US had contravened its own principles, he said.
"It has changed its basic principle from innocent until proven guilty to guilty until proven innocent."
A spokeswoman for the US Consulate said it had received a letter from the Society of Hong Kong Scholars and the Hong Kong Institution of Science and was looking into the issue.
Legislator Ng Ching-fai, a Baptist science faculty head, said Legco's House Committee would write to Congress.
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US envoy on way to explain bombing
AGENCIES in Washington
Monday, June 14, 1999
American envoy Thomas Pickering will travel to China today to offer an official apology and explanation for the Nato bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Mr Pickering and an inter-agency team of United States officials would reiterate that the bombing was "a tragic accident".
"We have made very clear that we consider our relationship with China an important one that needs to get beyond this," Ms Albright said on US television yesterday.
There have been reports in Washington of differences among various agencies about what Under-Secretary of State Mr Pickering should say on his visit and confusion about when he would go.
The May 7 bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists, came as relations between Washington and Beijing, which had been improving under President Bill Clinton, were experiencing setbacks, including disputes over trade and allegations of widespread spying by China on US nuclear facilities.
The bombing led to a severe downturn in Sino-US relations, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese taking to the streets for days last month to protest against "US hegemony and aggression against China".
China has demanded the US to publicly apologise, conduct a thorough investigation, publicise the investigation results and severely punish those responsible for the attacks.
Ms Albright acknowledged that relations had "clearly taken some steps backward".
But she added: "I believe we must move forward, as do they, in terms of rekindling the WTO [World Trade Organisation] talks and other issues. We'll take it step by step."
Ms Albright said the espionage charges had been "clearly a serious issue".
"There has been some damage, but I do not believe that this is anything that seriously damages the security of the United States," she said.
Speaking at a trade promotion function in New York at the weekend, Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing said who Washington sent was not important.
"What's important is not the person chosen," Mr Li was quoted by the semi-official China News Service as saying. "What's important is the quality of the investigation report, whether it is convincing."
Earlier reports in the US said different government departments - the intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and the State Department - were unable to agree on how much detail to reveal to Chinese officials.
Mr Pickering is considered one of Washington's most experienced diplomats. He has been ambassador to India, Russia and the United Nations.
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Beijing willing to mend Washington ties
WILLY WO-LAP LAM
Monday, June 14, 1999
Beijing has signaled its willingness to improve relations with the US despite the mainland's decision to deploy more resources to fight "hegemonism".
Official newspapers yesterday quoted Vice-Premier Qian Qichen as saying Beijing would not pursue an adversarial policy towards the United States.
On a visit to Uzbekistan, Mr Qian said: "China will not adopt a confrontational policy towards America. China and the US have normal diplomatic ties."
The Politburo member said the fact that Premier Zhu Rongji had visited America even after NATO started bombing Yugoslavia showed "there is no change in Chinese diplomacy and that its reform and open-door policy also remains unchanged".
Mr Qian said Beijing would continue to differ with the US over Kosovo. However, he highlighted the fact that in the United Nations Security Council, Beijing abstained from voting on the motion authorizing peacekeeping forces in Kosovo.
Analysts said Mr Qian's largely conciliatory statement signaled the leadership's willingness to patch up ties with Washington in the run-up to the Beijing visit by US envoy Thomas Pickering.
In internal discussions, leaders including President Jiang Zemin had said that Beijing had not abandoned Deng Xiaoping's policy of "not seeking to confront the US".
Mr Jiang quoted another Deng dictum at an internal meeting: "While relations with the US will not be extremely good, there are limits to how far they can deteriorate."
The official media yesterday quoted former US secretary of state Dr Henry Kissinger, an architect of US-China rapprochement, as saying in Wuhan, Hubei province, that the latest crisis in bilateral ties "will be resolved very well after efforts by the two governments".
A diplomatic source said Beijing was sending messages to Washington that it wanted to resume normal economic, trade and technological co-operation.
He said progress in bilateral ties depended on whether, given the "anti-Chinese" sentiments of Congress and the American public, the administration of President Bill Clinton could make concessions to Beijing on issues such as the latter's accession to the World Trade Organization.
A Beijing source said both Mr Jiang and Premier Zhu were under pressure from hardliners who wanted to revise Deng's "pro-US policy".
The source said while Mr Jiang was committed to repairing ties with the US, he felt it necessary to make hawkish statements on the need to boost national defense and to counter a Washington-led "anti-China containment policy".
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Veteran dissident seeks US asylum
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, June 14, 1999
A veteran dissident flew to the United States to seek asylum yesterday, joining a growing number of pro-democracy activists driven into exile by the Government.
Shipyard worker Zhou Jianhe, 50, was one of the last active pro-democracy campaigners in Shanghai. He was detained by police twice last year.
Mr. Zhou left on a Northwest Airlines flight to New York via Tokyo, fellow exiled dissident Bao Ge said from New York. Traveling with Mr. Zhou were his wife, Zhou Jinpei, and their son, Dewei, 20.
The Government has pressured its most prominent critics to move abroad, where they often lose their effectiveness. Many dissidents who remain on the mainland are in prison. Some have been freed on condition they leave the country.
Mr. Zhou said he asked US officials for asylum in January after fellow activists were sentenced to prison terms of up to 13 years for trying to set up the China Democracy Party.
He said Washington gave him a visa and promised to consider his request.
On Friday, Mr. Zhou said: "It's too dangerous in Shanghai. It's more dangerous than it was two or three years ago."
The activist said authorities had pressured him to leave and arranged passports and exit permits for his family.
Mr. Zhou was detained in June last year after he and five other people sent President Bill Clinton a letter asking him to meet dissidents during his trip to China.
He was picked up again in August after applying for permission to gather signatures on a petition calling for an end to labour camps.
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Taipei policy-maker urges gradual polls
REUTERS
Monday, June 14, 1999
A senior Taiwan policy-maker suggested yesterday that Beijing hold elections in more developed cities and gradually extend democracy to the entire mainland.
Su Chi, chairman of the cabinet's Mainland Affairs Council, said mainlanders had yet to experience genuine democracy despite the initiative for village elections with multiple candidates, not all of whom were communists.
Mr Su, whose council formulates policies towards Beijing, said: "The so-called local elections are confined to the countryside on a very small scale. People neither enjoy the freedom of speech nor can they form political parties. It is still a long way from real democracy."
He called on Beijing to allow economically developed cities in coastal areas, where residents are more affluent and better educated, to participate in elections and extend democracy gradually to other places.
It was not until 1987 that Taipei, facing intense pressure for political liberalisation, allowed the lifting of martial law and made opposition parties legal. Taiwan held its first direct presidential election in 1996. "Once the mainland fully democratises, its politics, economy and society can have long-term stability and cross-strait relations can have a new breakthrough in the 21st century."
He reiterated Taiwan's desire to resume functional talks focusing on less-sensitive issues such as criminal repatriation and fishing disputes, saying the island was in no hurry to enter into full-blown political negotiations with Beijing.
Mr Su believed Chinese rulers in Beijing would not try to manipulate Taiwan's 2000 presidential election with intimidating war games.
"If the mainland side interferes in our election like it did in 1996, it will pay a price and bring an adverse effect," he said. "I believe the communists will not make the same mistake again."
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ASSOCIATED PRESS in Manila
Monday, June 14, 1999
Philippine President Joseph Estrada voiced anger yesterday over China's criticism of a visit by three Taiwanese navy ships - and told his people not to worry about it.
The ships entered the port of Manila on Friday on what was described by both Taiwan and the Philippines as a goodwill visit.
"Don't worry about China's anger, be more concerned about my anger," Mr Estrada said. "They should not tell us what to do here in our country. We are not telling them what to do in their country."
Chinese Ambassador Fu Ying had told the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs that China would be unhappy if the ships were allowed to fly Taiwanese flags. Philippine officials responded that it would be "unfriendly and inhospitable" to tell the Taiwanese not to hoist their flags.
Beijing frowns upon any official contact between Taiwan and the Philippines, which do not have formal diplomatic ties.
Mr Estrada said he had not personally approved the visit and planned to meet Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon today to find out what happened.
China and the Philippines are already embroiled in a territorial dispute over the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said the ship visits reciprocated a "hospitable gesture" given to two Philippine navy ships allowed to seek shelter at the Keelung Naval Base in Taiwan in October 1998 while on their way back from port calls in South Korea and Japan.
The two Taiwanese missile frigates and one 17,000-tonne command and supply ship, which also houses a museum on Chinese culture and Taiwan's economic, technological and military progress, belong to Taiwan's Midshipman Cruising Training Squadron.
Taiwanese naval officers said Manila was the last stop on a four-nation tour of the Pacific and the South China Sea. They visited Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Singapore, and were to return to Taiwan today.
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Embassy Protests A wake-Up Call To US Companies In China
HONG KONG, Jun 13, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) In the days immediately following NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the atmosphere was tense at American factories and offices in China.
Workers at a plant near Beijing refused to work. A staffer at /another company threw rocks at the US embassy.
The experience jolted US executives who took for granted the loyalty of their Chinese workers, according to China-based expatriate executives.
"Everyone is more conscious of the importance of communicating. There were some managers who were surprised their staff took the opinion they did," said Jeffrey Muir, director of external affairs for Seagram Asia Pacific.
Muir was one of many US businessmen who realized foreign companies had a problem on their hands.
"It's not good when workers and other colleagues have such serious feelings towards your country," Muir said.
"Businesses have a very important role in the next several months to reassure people we do business with to understand what happened. We must recognize that the Chinese people's reaction was genuine, not entirely manipulated."
The bombing ignited angry protests outside US diplomatic missions in several Chinese cities.
Expatriate managers responded by trying to share information and talk to their staff about the events.
One manager downloaded articles from international papers, such as the International Herald Tribune and the Asian Wall Street Journal, into staff's e-mail accounts, hoping they would receive another perspective.
US heavy equipment maker Caterpillar suspended work on the day the bodies of three journalists killed in the Chinese embassy bombing returned home as a mark of respect.
Nandani Lynton, managing director of consultancy firm Lynton John and Associates, said Chinese people's furious reaction to the bombing was a reminder to Western companies that they needed to work on improving relations with their staff.
"For Chinese workers, the loyalty is not towards the company, but the individuals," Lynton said.
"So the more social activities you have, such as volleyball games after work, the better, because that kind of interaction is incredibly important to Chinese people," she said.
Traditionally, Chinese people expect their workplaces to care for many of their social needs.
In state-owned companies where most urban Chinese work, the labor union's main job is to organize social events, Lynton said.
During Lunar New Year, the companies hand out a box of oranges and traditional red packets containing money. At other times of the year, factories give workers a box of washing powder, she said.
"We tell our clients not to underestimate social events, annual picnics, a holiday dinner, a dumpling-eating evening. Those activities shows the boss cares about you as a person."
But expatriates in China said they had a fine line to tread in dealing with staff misconceptions and mistrust of Americans or other Westerners.
"It would be a bit dangerous to get in there and try to shape people's thinking. The Chinese government can very easily misunderstand it as propagandizing," Muir said.
"There's a lot of work that should be done to build up staff understanding about Americans, but you can't do it in an organized way."
Lynton agreed: "It's much better to talk casually by the drinking fountain than to hold a staff meeting."
Executives say they are also more conscious of the image they project to their staff and colleagues, as they are probably the only contacts the workers have with Westerners.
By Agence France Presse
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Taiwan Appeals For Talks With China, Not War
TAIPEI, Jul 13, 1999 -- (Reuters) Taiwan urged rival China on Tuesday to solve their differences through talks, not war, and vowed exhaustive efforts to persuade Beijing to accept the island's controversial junking of its "one China" policy.
"We certainly will try every channel possible to explain to Beijing our constructive intentions," Lin Chong-pin, a senior policymaker, told Reuters Television in an interview.
"To resolve these differences by war is not a post-Cold War behavior of all nations. We should do things by talks."
Lin said Taiwan would try even harder to persuade Beijing to go ahead with a landmark October visit to the island by its top Taiwan straits negotiator, Wang Daohan, and said it was up to communist China to make or break cross-strait relations.
Lin said a visit by Wang could foster a "more cooperative relationship between the mainland and Taiwan in the next century" and held out hope that Wang's tour would proceed, saying he had heard no "formal" word of a cancellation.
"The final determinant is Beijing's behavior," he said when asked about Beijing's charge that Taiwan was risking "monumental disaster". "We hope to see a more sensible and responsible behavior from Beijing, as all great powers do."
Lin said Taiwan's dropping of the "one China" policy, which has underpinned cross-strait and Asian security for decades, had resulted from a two-year review, reflected popular thinking and had nothing to do with domestic politics or Taiwan's March 2000 presidential election.
By Reuters
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Chinese "Ghost-Town" To Disappear For Good In 2003
FENGDU, China, Jun 12, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Fengdu, dubbed "the ghost town" because it controls the gates of hell in Chinese tradition, will disappear for good in 2003 when it is destroyed by the advance of the massive Three Gorges dam project.
The town of 60,000 residents is on the banks of the Yangtze river and will be swallowed by the reservoir formed by the dam, which is to be completed in 2009.
But Fengdu will be blown up six years earlier and a new settlement developed high on the opposite bank of the river, a move to ensure no-one remains in "the ghost town."
"The destruction of the buildings will also guarantee security for navigation of the river and for fishermen," said Xu Bendong, director of the resettlement bureau in the neighboring town of Fuling.
A dike has always protected the "royal palace of hell," as well as a multitude of Buddhist and Taoist temples constructed on the heights of the town since the seventh century.
The legend associated with the town goes back more than 2,000 years, when the names of two residents, Yin and Wang, were confused with "Yinwang," the Chinese name for "king of hell," and they became celebrities in Fengdu.
With their frightening creatures busy roasting the damned, the restored sights of Fengdu became the premier tourist attraction in the Three Gorges.
Despite the rising waters, the town intends to safeguard its principal source of revenue.
On the opposite bank, cranes are constructing the new town where Fengdu residents will live.
"My future apartment will cost 35,000 yuan (3,700 dollars)," said a souvenir seller at the entrance to the "palace of hell."
"The state doesn't take responsibility for this sum."
Those who don't have the means to pay the difference in the price of resettlement with state compensation must be content with "inevitably smaller homes than those they have to leave," the trader added.
The Three Gorges dam, which will be the biggest hyrdo-electric plant in the world, will create a 632 square kilometer (253 square mile) reservoir, forcing the resettlement of 1.2 million people.
By Agence France Presse
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Taiwan Recommends China Visit By Senior Negotiator Late June
TAIPEI, Jun 11, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Taiwan proposed Thursday its senior negotiator visits the mainland in late June to help arrange the scheduled historic visit to the island by China's top envoy Wang Daohan.
The quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said its deputy secretary-general Jan Jyh-horng and other officials would like to visit Beijing June 27-29 "to discuss matters relating to Wang's Taiwan visit".
Beijing and Taipei have agreed Wang's visit to Taiwan in the autumn, but details still need to be ironed out.
The Taiwanese side would be anxious "to hold talks on such topics as repatriation of hijackers and illegal immigrants," SEF said in the letter responding to the invitation issued on May 26 by its Chinese counterpart Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
China has said the time was not yet ripe for cross-straits talks "on routine matters due to differences over whether political discussions could take place.
Taiwan-China ties swung to a low in 1995 after China called off rapprochement talks and held war games in the Taiwan Straits following an historic trip to the United States by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.
Beijing claimed the visit was part of Taipei's efforts to split from the "motherland".
Beijing has proposed reunification with Taiwan under the "one country, two systems" mechanism it uses to rule Hong Kong, but the peace overture has been turned down by Taipei which fears it would be downgraded to the status of a local government in any talks with Beijing.
The Nationalist government in Taipei has demanded democracy as a precondition for reunification.
Taiwan and China have been split since 1949 at the end of a civil war.
By Agence France Presse
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China Abstains From Kosovo Peace Plan Vote
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 11, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China abstained from voting on a peace plan for Kosovo here Thursday, saying the UN Security Council resolution failed to reflect China's concerns about foreign intervention in what it called internal matters.
The resolution passed 14-0.
In addressing the council, China's deputy representative, Shen Guofang, reiterated Beijing's opposition to NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia as punishment for its ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
Ethnic conflict, he said, "shall not be used as an excuse for external intervention."
Shen said China did not favor discrimination or oppression of any ethnic group, adding that "at the same time, we are also opposed to any act to create division between different ethnic groups and undermine national unity."
NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia is an especially sensitive subject for China.
Beijing fears it could be used to justify future international intervention should tensions erupt in its autonomous region of Tibet or over the self-governing island of Taiwan, which China still claims as its own.
"Respect for sovereignty and non-interference in each others internal affairs are basic principles of the UN Charter," Shen said.
The Chinese envoy said the resolution on Kosovo failed to fully reflect China's position, noting that "it has failed to impose necessary restrictions on the invoking of chapter seven of the UN charter."
The invocation of that chapter, Western diplomats say, would allow the NATO force -- known as KFOR -- to use military power to enforce the peace agreement, to which China is bitterly opposed.
However, "in view of the fact that the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) has already accepted the peace plan," China opted to abstain from the vote, he said.
Earlier, Shen told reporters that the addition of a reference in the text of "the principles and purpose" of the UN charter and the "primary responsibility of the Security Council for international peace and security" had addressed Beijings main concern.
That paragraph was of "utmost importance" to Beijing, Shen said, adding that "it shows that in the future, any use of force should get the authorization of the Security Council."
By Agence France Presse
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Philippines Arrests Two Chinese Fishermen
MANILA, Jun 11, 1999 -- (Reuters) Philippine authorities have arrested two Chinese fishermen in waters around the disputed Spratly Islands in the third such incident in two weeks.
The two fishermen were arrested on Wednesday night, hours after the government filed charges of illegal fishing and entry in a local court against 27 Hong Kong Chinese fishermen who were caught southeast of the Spratlys early this week.
"The two Chinese were arrested last night...approximately about 300 yards from the shoreline of Pag-asa island...one of the islands in the Spratlys," said Colonel Jose Balane, provincial police director of Palawan in southwest Philippines.
The Spratlys, in the South China Sea, are claimed wholly or in part by the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
Balane said the two Chinese were part of a group of fishermen on board several boats spotted by Philippine naval patrols fishing in the Spratlys. He said charges of illegal entry and fishing were being prepared.
A Chinese fishing boat sank on May 23 after an encounter with a Philippine Navy patrol ship near Scarborough Shoal, north of the Spratlys. Its three crew survived.
By Reuters
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China Party Document Denies Crackdown On Sect
BEIJING, Jun 11, 1999 -- (Reuters) The Communist Party has issued a document dismissing reports of a crackdown on the Falun Gong sect, which came under a spotlight when its members besieged China's leadership compound in April, party sources said on Friday.
Authorities were on alert against sect members flocking to Beijing this week, the sources said, asking not to be identified.
Days off for policemen were cancelled, and train stations and main roads leading to Beijing were manned by police who stopped and questioned travelers at random.
"Stability is the overriding task," the first source said.
On April 25, in a show of strength that shocked the leadership, more than 10,000 sect members from all over China turned up on the doorsteps of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing to demand official status for their faith.
The sect claims to have 100 million members -- a figure doubted by critics but certain to worry the ruling party, which has only about 60 million members.
The Communist Party's General Office began circulating a document on Thursday denying reports that authorities have begun or will launch a crackdown on sect members, the sources said.
But the document did not say whether Falun Gong was considered a cult, which would make it an illegal organization under Chinese law and warrant a clampdown, the sources said.
"The authorities do not want to intensify contradictions," one source said.
But "Falun Gong is a big headache", said a second.
"A lot of time and energy is wasted on trying to control Falun Gong," the source said. "The pressure is huge on localities to prevent them from coming to Beijing."
The authorities have begun to clean up their own ranks, banning party cadres, government officials and soldiers from joining the sect, which was born out of a form of martial arts known as qigong -- an array of breathing exercise and meditation based on the theory of inner energy designed to heal.
Its charismatic U.S.-based leader, Li Hongzhi, bars followers from consulting doctors when ill and says they could be cured by reading his books, which are banned in China, or by practising qigong.
Li placed half-page advertisements in Hong Kong newspapers this week asserting that Beijing was seeking his extradition in exchange for slashing China's bulging trade surplus with the United States by $500 million.
Li's letter, available on the Internet at http://falundafa.org, said he was not interested in politics but told Beijing not to mistake the sect's magnanimity and restraint for fear.
The State Council, or cabinet, denied the government sought Li's extradition and reports of mass arrest of sect members.
But government sources said entry and exit records showed that Li was in Beijing days before the April 25 sit-in.
"The authorities are convinced Li Hongzhi was behind the sit-in," one said.
Yi Rong, a U.S.-based spokeswoman for Li, said it was not necessary for Li to give any orders.
"Disciples all know what they are supposed to do," she said by telephone.
On Sunday, about 250 sect members from the northeastern province of Liaoning and the coastal province of Shandong were rounded up in Beijing when they attended the national flag-raising ceremony outside Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, at dawn, sources said.
They were held for one day at a stadium in suburban Beijing and bussed home in the evening, the sources said.
By Reuters
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Report: Mass Murder In Southern China Linked To Triad Rivalry In Macao
HONG KONG, Jun 11, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) The mass murder of seven people in a luxury villa in southern China's Guangdong province has been linked to triads in Macao or Hong Kong, press reports said Friday,
Initial investigation by Guangdong police into the mass murder of seven people showed the slayings were linked to triads in the Portuguese enclave of Macao, the mass-circulating Chinese-language Oriental Daily News said.
One of the victims, identified as Hong Kong businessman Wu Zhenhui, was reportedly to be active in Macao's casino industry, it said.
Chinese authorities were on the hunt for four killers to prevent them from leaving the country. Macao and Hong Kong police were also asked to help in the investigation, the paper said.
Another paper The Sun, said the killings in Panyu were linked to Hong Kong triads attempting to seize control of prostitution and gambling business in the mainland.
Five women and two men were slain in the execution-style bloodbath.
The other male victim was an American Chinese named Tang Kung.
The five female victims were reported to be one of the victim's daughters, daughter-in-law, and mothers-in-law. They were found dead on Monday in a three-story house at Panyu, 150 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of Hong Kong on Tuesday.
Macao has been rocked by gangland crime as rival triad groups compete for domination of gambling and prostitution rackets.
Eleven people have been killed and another 11 injured in some 27 separated triad-related attacks in Macao this year.
By Agence France Presse
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THE SHOCK FROM COX
A U.S. report on alleged nuclear spying
by Beijing triggers a fresh trans-Pacific furor
By Tim Healy
JUST WHEN IT SEEMED THAT China-U.S. ties had hit rock bottom with NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade - the rocks gave way. Less than three weeks later, a U.S. congressional committee released a long-awaited report alleging that Chinese agents had stolen design secrets from American nuclear-weapons laboratories over more than two decades. Suddenly, a relationship that is frequently frayed threatened to unravel entirely. The report provided fresh ammunition to those in the U.S. who see China as the greatest post-Soviet Union threat to the world. On the other side, it further incensed a nation of 1.3 billion people already inclined to believe that Washington was intent on keeping it down.
Hardliners dominated the acrimonious trans-Pacific dialogue. Their shouting sometimes seemed more befitting a pair of aggrieved motorists at an accident than leading politicians from two of the planet's linchpin powers. The noise drowned out concerns about critical matters such as whether China would gain entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO), whether Washington would renew normal trade relations (NTR) with Beijing, or to what extent either side had a right to be angry about the other's transgressions.
In time, such matters will again take center stage. But for now, scare tactics and overblown rhetoric rule the day. First came the U.S. with the report from a committee headed by Christopher Cox, a Republican congressman from California. The 983-page document charged that the Chinese had an "insatiable appetite" for U.S. technology and were on the verge of constructing a nuclear-weapons program "on a par" with America's. Beijing responded in kind. It lambasted the Cox committee for "clinging to the Cold War mentality" and for trying to "disturb and destroy" bilateral relations.
If true in both its findings and conclusions, the Cox report's allegations would be serious. It says China could use stolen secrets to accelerate the development of nuclear weapons from a "1950s-era program" to a sophisticated, modern force. Critics both in China and the U.S., however, accuse Cox of trying to demonize Beijing. Li Zhaoxing, Chinese ambassador to the U.S., answered the charges bluntly: "China does not have a policy of stealing high-tech or anything from other nations."
Later, Beijing's counter-attack became more sophisticated. At one press conference, a Chinese representative used a computer to access the Internet and call up diagrams and other technical information on some of the weapons that were allegedly the objects of spying. "Performance data on [several] types of nuclear warheads . . . have long been openly published," said Zhao Qizheng, information director of the State Council, or central government. "They are no longer secret, so there is nothing to steal." The demonstration did not actually prove or disprove anything except that the Internet is a vast source of information. But it does represent a sea-change in the kind of public relations employed by Beijing these days.
There seemed to be plenty of scope for rebuttals of the Cox report. Many U.S. experts slammed it for saying that important weapons information had been stolen and would be applied by the Chinese. In fact, say U.S. intelligence sources, no one in America can be sure of what was stolen. "The conclusions of the report have been written in a worst-case fashion," acknowledged Representative Norm Dicks, the document's co-author and a Democratic member of the Cox committee. Dicks said it was not clear what secrets were obtained by China or whether Beijing's scientists would be able to successfully apply what they did get. "And remember," he said, "[the U.S.] has about 6,000 nuclear warheads. [China] has about two dozen." In other words, there is no near-term danger.
Chinese officials denied their nation had any use for American nuclear technology. Said Beijing's embassy in Washington: "China has developed a limited nuclear capability through self-reliance." However, a better argument might have focused on the fact that most nations spy on others - and it is up to the one with the secrets to keep them safe. Jonathan Pollard, an American, is currently serving time in the U.S. for spying on behalf of Israel. Just weeks ago, an Australian citizen was charged with espionage. And one U.S. Commerce Department official told Asiaweek that French spying in America is more extensive than Chinese.
Perhaps even more potentially damaging than the espionage charges was a Cox committee assertion that China had as many as 3,000 "front companies" in the U.S. Their supposed aim: to acquire sensitive and secret military technology. Says one Los Angeles-based advocate for Asian firms in America: "Put yourself in the shoes of a business from mainland China that imports and exports. Automatically, they will be suspect, and people are not going to want to trade with them." The U.S. State Department previously stated that there were no more than 30 such Chinese companies in the country.
Similar problems may be in store for U.S. businesses in China. According to reports from Beijing, government authorities had taken American television programs that might depict the U.S. in a positive light off the air. Days after the release of the Cox Report, the Chinese National People's Congress, in a statement that had the ring of hurt feelings, restated an old accusation: American authorities had incited pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square 10 years ago. (The anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown is June 4.) Many Americans in China, already trying to maintain a low profile after the Belgrade bombing, fear that their businesses would be systematically frozen out of possible contracts for political reasons.
One likely effect of the billowing controversy is a dramatic slowdown of technology sales from the U.S. to China. Originally, Cox and his committee were assigned to examine whether American companies had transferred sensitive technology to China that could be useful militarily without obtaining proper authorization. Hughes Electronics, in particular, was criticized for helping Beijing assess what had gone wrong in a series of unsuccessful satellite launches in the early 1990s - failures that cost Hughes several sophisticated communications satellites. Hughes and another U.S. aerospace company cited in the report, Loral Space and Communications, deny violating export-control laws. Nonetheless, Washington is expected to tighten its control over technology exports. Even legitimate commercial products may become harder to ship.
Business people in both countries have reason to wonder what will happen with China's potential entry into the WTO. When Premier Zhu Rongji visited the U.S. in April, he carried an array of concessions his government was willing to make provided he could get a WTO deal on the spot. It did not happen, more because of U.S. domestic politics than the quality of Zhu's commitments. Even before the Belgrade bombing and the Cox report, China was having second thoughts about some of its market-opening pledges. Now, though WTO talks may resume soon, the U.S. may not see anything like Zhu's offer again - at least not in the near future.
That the WTO talks seem to have lost their hard-won momentum will be counted as a victory for anti-Zhu forces in China, who thought he was giving away too much (see story page 24). As usual, domestic politics in the U.S. is also playing a big role. The Cox report is being cited regularly, especially by Republicans, as evidence that the engagement policy embraced by President Bill Clinton toward China has failed. Not mentioned is the fact that every U.S. president since Richard Nixon has essentially adopted the same approach to China - or that the alleged spying actually took place over the last four presidential administrations, two of which were Republican. Politics is expected to rear up again if Clinton, as expected, recommends an extension of NTR (renamed from MFN, or most-favored nation) status for China on June 3. Congress will debate the issue, though it is not expected to be able to muster the two-thirds majority vote required to deny Beijing NTR.
All of which suggests that the controversies dogging Sino-U.S. relations will not go away soon. For one thing, Chinese are likely to remember the embassy bombing much longer than Americans will recall the spying. Washington has apologized for the attack, which it says resulted from the use of an out-of-date map to identify targets in Belgrade. Most average Chinese simply don't believe this explanation, and even those who do are angry that the U.S. had not taken greater care to ensure that China's embassy would not be touched. The Cox report, said the State Council's Zhao, "is another adverse current against China among the series of anti-China events created by some people in the U.S." Their purpose, he added, was to "divert public attention, fan anti-China feelings, defame China's image and try to hold back Sino-U.S. relations so as to stop China's development."
For some people in America, that might indeed have been the desired result of the report. But this is a minority of China-demonizers. Cox and the other members of his committee may have been trying more to shock the American people - and the Clinton administration - into realizing that earnest action is needed to improve security at U.S. nuclear laboratories. If so, they seem to be succeeding. But such an approach is, at the same time, proving poisonous in terms of both political and commercial relations with China.
Some of the worst ramifications may also be the longest-lasting - damage to business ties often cannot be patched up quickly. Laments Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers in the U.S.: "It seems easier to breach our national security than to penetrate the regulations and bureaucracy that control our commercial exports." If so, both America and China will end up the losers.
With reporting by David Hsieh/Beijing and Samuel Gilston/Washington
EXPLOSIVE MILESTONES
The Cox Report contends that China will use stolen information to improve its next generation of weapons. Beijing says it has pursued its own nuclear-arms program for decades and doesn't need stolen material. How China's nuclear capability has progressed:
JUNE 1964
The People's Liberation Army test-fires China's first surface-to-surface missile
OCTOBER 1964
The Chinese explode their first atomic bomb
JUNE 1967
Beijing detonates its first hydrogen bomb
APRIL 1970
China launches a domestically made satellite
MID-1980S
According to the Cox Report, Chinese authorities obtain critical design information about the W-88 nuclear weapon, a miniaturized warhead considered the most sophisticated in the American arsenal
1988
China explodes a neutron bomb
1990
China launches its first international commercial satellite, using the first generation of the Long March rocket as the launch vehicle
JULY 1996
China conducts its 45th nuclear test and shortly afterward signs the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
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CHINA'S HOME
TRUTHS
Astute filmmakers
have found a way to live with the censors
By Richard James Havis/Udine, Italy
IF YOU JUDGED CHINA by the Chinese films screened abroad, you might think it a nation obsessed with its past. Movies from directors such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou routinely deal with historical issues: the Cultural Revolution, the war against the Japanese, Shanghai in the Twenties, and back further into a variety of dynasties. Yes, the Chinese value their history, but do they honestly like to dwell on it for a night's entertainment?
Not really. They prefer movies that reflect their own experiences. The problem is, there aren't many like that around. Independent productions such as Zhang Yuan's East Palace West Palace and Beijing Bastards, which parade the problems of modern Chinese life, are rarely approved for the domestic market. And even if they were, they would be too heavy for the Saturday-night popcorn-munching crowd. And those movies that are approved stick so close to the Party line that audiences reject them.
Slowly, though, filmmakers are finding ways to reflect modern life in an entertaining way - and stay within the rules. Chinese movies shown at - of all places - Italy's UdineIncontri Cinema: Far East Film Festival indicate that a new breed of urban, commercially orientated dramas is emerging. These productions deal with the real priorities of modern cinema-goers - moving to the big city, the stockmarket, marital stress - by framing them as mainstream entertainment. They're fun to watch, frequently piquant and apolitical enough not to upset the censors.
Two of these, the inventive Spicy Love Soup and the wry A Beautiful New World, come from indie-producer Peter Loehr's Imar Film Co. Last year, Imar became the first independent company to gain official approval to operate in China. "We're trying to make a different style of movie," explains Loehr, a New Yorker who runs the 12-strong production and distribution outfit in Beijing. "Young people don't want to watch movies that are set in the rural areas, or back in the past. We make urban stories for people living in the city. We try to emphasize real lives - stuff that the audience can relate to."
Loehr's biggest challenge is to get the Chinese interested in going to the cinema again. "They are tired of Chinese movies; there are so many bad ones," he says. "We have to do a lot of marketing, a lot of promotion, and make sure we choose a subject that will appeal." So far, it seems Loehr has accurately gauged the mood of the times. Spicy Love Soup cost only $350,000 to make, and grossed nearly $3 million in China - a profit that has been poured back into more productions.
Directed by first-timer Zhang Yang, who cut his teeth working in music videos and the theater, Spicy Love Soup takes a sophisticated look at love in the city. It features five stories about relationships, as seen from the perspectives of different generations. The best segments concern a young boy trying to keep his parents from divorcing by cooking a special herbal meal, a newly wed couple who avoid the descent into a humdrum relationship by buying toys, and an elderly widow beset by three suitors after a TV appearance. Zhang had to walk a fine line when choosing his subject material. "You know that sometimes you can't go too far in a certain direction," he says. "You may have an idea for an interesting character, but you also know that if you use this character, they will censor your film. You just have to stay away from things that you know aren't going to work. You have to be pragmatic."
The hero of A Beautiful New World, directed by Shi Runjiu, is equally pragmatic. The story tells of a country boy, Zhang Baogen, who travels to Shanghai to claim a lottery prize - an apartment in a swish new complex. But here's the catch: Zhang finds that the apartment has not yet been built, and he will have to hang around in the city for a year. So he moves in with his young aunt, who is obsessed with money. This allows Zhang to "humanize" his relative, who spends her time chasing fast profits and rich businessmen.
Shi carefully avoids making a hick-from-the-sticks drama by ensuring that there are no cheap jokes at the country boy's expense. The movie does ultimately express a conventional morality, with Zhang showing his aunt that solid hard work is ultimately more rewarding than financial scheming. But both script and technical execution are way above par for a Chinese production. A Beautiful New World sums up the aspirations of city life in a satisfying, rounded way.
Young Shanghai director Li Hong's Tutor is slightly more traditional in look and theme. Li was originally commissioned to make a children's film. But she adapted the script into a Truffaut-ish drama in which a student teacher who cannot pass his exams becomes a private tutor and befriends the problem child in his charge. The tutor gives the child self-confidence, and, in doing so, learns the art of teaching. Both graduate in an emotional finale that veers towards melodrama, but has so much heart and warmth that it doesn't detract from the work as a whole. Tutor has resonances of both Chen Kaige's King of the Children and Ken Loach's Kes, without the masterful intellectualizing of the former and the grim bitterness of the latter.
Also hailing from Shanghai is Hai Da's Ghost in the Computer, a complex and unusual tale of industrial espionage set in a modern office. Most impressive here is the camerawork. Unimaginative, static framing has usually been the hallmark of Chinese films - in fact, too much camera movement was once considered counter-revolutionary and could lead to a film being banned. An opening shot in Ghost is almost expressionistic, with a subjective, mobile camera peeking in on the characters. A later action scene wouldn't look out of place in a Hong Kong production. Sound too, is above average, with a well-produced synthesizer score and swooping audio effects.
Loehr believes serious problems lie ahead if the local movie industry fails to raise its standards. Limitations on the number of Western films being imported gives the Chinese a little extra time, but if they continue to turn out irrelevant material, they will soon be portraying a different kind of history - their own.
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IMAGE OF A NATION
ON THE MOVE
The migrant
phenomenon reaches Cannes
By Richard James Havis
THE 52ND CANNES FILM Festival featured one of the great social themes of modern China - the armies of migrant workers drawn to the cities in the hope of finding work. So Close to Paradise by mainlander Wang Xiaoshuai and Hong Kong director Nelson Yu Lik-wai's Love Will Tear Us Apart both take a look at this phenomenon, though from different perspectives.
So Close to Paradise had trouble getting to Cannes, where it was screened out of competition in the "Un Certain Regard" section. In its first incarnation, it was called Vietnam Girl and was set in the present. Three years later, after re-editing to satisfy the censors, it finished up in the late 1980s and with a new title. The movie takes place in the city of Wuhan, central China, where two young villagers become caught up with a vicious gangster after a scam goes wrong. Once again, Wang's sympathy for the underdog shines through. "I always notice the young people from the villages working and living in the city," he says. "I am interested in the people who live on the lower levels of our society. They have little means to protect themselves. I just hope they can temporarily set aside the pressure to survive to find time to follow their dreams - even a dream as everyday as first love."
Love Will Tear Us Apart - shown, without success, in the competition - is a character-driven story based on the lives of workers who move to Hong Kong from mainland China to make their fortune, only to discover that the supposed Utopia is nothing like what they had expected. Most real-life immigrants find they are marginalized, and end up scraping by in menial jobs. "By nature, migrants feel nostalgic for somewhere else," says Yu. "I want my film to be a sort of pathology of 'being Chinese' in Hong Kong. On the one hand, there is a wish to conform. On the other, there's a desire to break out and rebel."
Meanwhile, Made in Hong Kong director Fruit Chan's next film will focus on younger would-be migrants - mainland children who claim the right to live in Hong Kong because their parents are there. Says producer Daniel Yu: "It's about a little boy who has a good friend who turns out to be an illegal immigrant - she has no Hong Kong identity papers. After the handover [from Britain], her family thinks she has the right to stay. But the Hong Kong authorities want to send her back." Chan hopes to finish the film by the end of the year.
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PHILIP BOWRING
Friday, June 11, 1999
How serious will the regional fallout from US-China antagonism be? The question cannot be answered but has to be asked.
Sino-US relations have begun to stabilise after the Belgrade embassy bombing, the Cox report on alleged Chinese spying, and the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen suppression. Peace in Kosovo would help too, if only by ending President Jiang Zemin's curious attempt to play international statesman via implicit support for President Slobodan Milosevic.
Nonetheless, there is no denying that there has been a fundamental change in public attitudes on both sides. Indeed, Cox and Yugoslavia seem to be more symptoms than cause of the deterioration of relations since the nominal high point of President Bill Clinton's China visit a year ago.
The change has more to do with emotions and perceptions than any substantive shift in the interests of either country. China's priority remains the modernisation of its economy and institutions. After that comes building up its military capability so as to be treated seriously as a global, nuclear strategic player, and able to project its conventional forces in the region.
The US interest, at least as understood in the White House, lies in promoting the emergence of a free market, trading economy in China, evolving into a liberal democracy. It also involves co-operating with China in maintaining east Asian stability - especially on the Korean peninsula - within the context of the regional supremacy of the US and its ally, Japan.
But both sides tend to over-react. The US has long exaggerated the potential (for itself) of the mainland market and of the prospects for Jeffersonian democracy. As a result it poured money into the mainland and gave it astonishing - and largely unreciprocated - access, not just for goods but for arms and technology too. Now the worm has turned. The mainland is seen as a threat to US assumptions of hegemony, and as a cynical exploiter of trade and scientific access.
Meanwhile, in Beijing a perverse and singularly anti-American picture of events in Yugoslavia, to which the embassy bombing gave some credence, has become a rallying point for nationalist emotion designed as a smokescreen for the lies about June 4. Almost no one in east Asia is happy about this turn in US-China relations. Take Taiwan, which in theory should be enjoying the discomfiture of Beijing.
US sympathy for its cause has risen. Congress wants to enhance the Taiwan Relations Act via mandated arms sales, training and even overt defence links. Some of this will rub off in terms of defence procurement whatever Beijing says. But Taipei is concerned about the fate of WTO membership, which it views as important not just for Taiwan's economy, and its mainland investments, but for the path of reform itself. Nationalist sentiment towards the US quickly translates into heightened emotion over Taiwan, whose separatist aspirations can be laid at the door of US imperialism.
If WTO cannot get through this year, it faces enhanced hazards for the next two years - the US elections and the likelihood that the US economy will finally go into recession, when non-members of WTO would be especially vulnerable to protectionist sentiment. The mainland of course is top of the list because of the size of its trade surplus, which is all the more worrying for reformers in Beijing who know that one-third of all exports now end up in the US.
A US recession will underline for all of Asia the importance of developing regional trade and boosting domestic demand. However, a China outside WTO is unlikely to push ahead with import liberalisation. Meanwhile the jury is out on trade liberalisation elsewhere in the region. IMF strongarm tactics have helped open up some markets, but Asean free trade goals are - despite rhetoric to the contrary - being gradually eroded as industries seek "exceptional" protection from regional over-capacity.
The rest of Asia is unlikely to welcome any attempt by China to move into their markets if the US one gets difficult. There is too much export competition already. Indeed there could be a reversal of goodwill that China has gained in the region from its "no devaluation" policy - a policy unlikely to survive beyond next year even if WTO is achieved.
In the long run, China can be an engine of growth for the region. But only so long as it continues to liberalise, and can be a complementary rather than merely competitive economy. A more inward-looking Beijing, resulting from WTO exclusion, would not only cause regional trade problems but inhibit overseas Chinese investment in the mainland - already much reduced by the poor returns available. In theory, exclusion might lead to Asian nations making bigger efforts to develop regional alternatives to the global body. But that looks a long way off, and would require much greater political cohesion than the region seems capable of achieving.
Any weakening in US-east Asia ties, whether the result of trade or political issues, will pose policy dilemmas for the region. While US-China relations blossomed, it was easy for the rest of the region to simultaneously develop their China ties while increasing their defence ties with the US. Singapore has been the leader in building on both ends of the China-US axis.
The littoral states of the South China Sea will find policy-making even more difficult in the face of a China which could become even more pushy than it is already. Do they try to forge stronger alliances with the US and Japan? Or do they accept that discretion is the better part of valour and quietly acquiesce in China's de facto hegemony? Will new pro- and anti-China states evolve as a new cold war, built around local as well as US-China issues, erupts?
That may seem a bit far fetched. But there is no doubt that old props of the China-US "strategic alliance" no longer exist or are of declining significance. In particular, the Soviet threat is no more. Though a decline in US-China ties will make resolution of the Korean issue more difficult, the threat from the North (despite Pyongyang's missile and nuclear potential) has dwindled to the point that the need for a US ground presence is debatable.
In sum, the US-China relationship has been a positive regional catalyst for 20 years. Any sharp change in it would have knock-on effects which would be varied and unpredictable. It would not be disastrous. The US military paramountcy will remain for a long time. Economic revival in Japan may provide a new boost to the region. And the continuing global market success of the Taiwan and Korean technology-driven economies will continue to have a positive impact on southeast Asia. But new circumstances will demand new solutions.
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AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Friday, June 11, 1999
Taiwan's opposition began to campaign in earnest yesterday against the US$300 million (HK$2.3 billion) in aid pledged to Kosovar refugees, demanding that President Lee Teng-hui resign.
New Party demonstrators marched from the Legislative Yuan to the Presidential Office in Taipei.
Protesting in a cordoned-off area outside Mr Lee's office, the demonstrators said they did not object to helping ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Kosovo, but wanted the amount to be lowered. They called on Mr Lee to step down over what they said was a "pompous" step.
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AGENCIES
Friday, June 11, 1999
Two dissidents have been arrested in Hebei province for allegedly trying to overthrow the Government, a human rights group said.
Yu Feng and Yuan Zhenfa were arrested in Zhangjiakou on Tuesday, Yu's wife Xi Meijuan told the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.
Yu, an equipment factory worker, is the founder of the Hebei branch of the banned China Democracy Party.
Authorities told Ms Xi he was being held on a charge of trying to subvert state power.
In Beijing, dissident Zha Jianguo had been quizzed by police about his links to two activists held since last month, the centre said.
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Legislators barred from Beijing flights
ANGELA LI
Friday, June 11, 1999
Two legislators with valid tickets and travel documents were barred from flights to Beijing yesterday.
James To Kun-sun of the Democratic Party and Cyd Ho Sau-lan of The Frontier had intended to visit the capital to discuss the right-of-abode controversy.
But airline officials said they had been told the pair would not be allowed on to mainland soil and could not therefore board the flights.
Mr To and Ms Ho, representing 19 pro-democracy legislators, had planned to ask officials not to accept a request from Tung Chee-hwa for a reinterpretation of Basic Law provisions on the right of abode.
Mr Tung wants the National People's Congress Standing Committee to act to overturn a court ruling giving right of abode to an estimated 1.67 million mainlanders. As Mr To and Ms Ho were being turned away at the airport, the Government announced Mr Tung's reinterpretation request had been accepted.
The legislators ran into trouble at the China Southern Airlines check-in desk at about 8.20am. They were told they could not board by an airline employee who said he was following instructions from Guangzhou headquarters.
They had their tickets endorsed for an afternoon Dragonair flight, but were told minutes later the plane was full. Dragonair said it had acted on advice from "the relevant authorities on the mainland".
Mr To said the Tung administration had given little help in arranging their visit. "I find the SAR Government to be very cowardly and impotent. They are scared to death of even trying to help arrange for us to meet officials in Beijing."
He said the situation had worsened since the handover. In 1996, democracy activists had been allowed on a plane to Beijing, although they were not allowed off when it landed.
Government information co-ordinator Stephen Lam Sui-lung said: "We understand the decisions were taken by the airlines and it's for them to account to the public."
Democratic Party chief Martin Lee Chu-ming said denying Mr To and Ms Ho entry was shameful.
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Dalai Lama aide dies of cancer
ASSOCIATED PRESS in Dharmsala
Friday, June 11, 1999
A Tibetan who helped the Dalai Lama flee to India in 1959 and played a major role in Tibetan affairs for four decades has died of cancer.
Tibetans in the northern Indian town of Dharmsala - where the spiritual leader runs a government-in-exile - gathered at a cremation ground yesterday to say farewell to Phuntsok Tashi Taklha, who died on Tuesday. He is survived by a son.
Taklha, 77, a brother-in-law of the Dalai Lama, served as commander of his bodyguard and later as minister for security in the exile administration.
He was interpreter to the Tibetan delegation that signed the 17-point agreement in 1951 in Beijing, effectively ceding Tibet to Beijing.
One historian blamed the Tibetan delegation's misunderstanding of some of the provisions on Taklha's less than perfect Chinese. The Tibetan government-in-exile says the agreement was signed under duress and without reference to the Dalai Lama or the Tibetan government.
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Washington 'must punish bombers for ties to improve'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, June 11, 1999
China urged the United States yesterday to punish those responsible for Nato's attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade if Washington wants to repair damaged ties.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhang Qiyue said delivery of a "full, comprehensive, fair and thorough investigation" by the US into the May 7 bombing would not be enough to put relations back on track.
US and Chinese diplomats had worked on scheduling a visit to Beijing by an envoy to discuss the investigation's findings, Ms Zhang and US Embassy spokesman Bill Palmer said.
Western diplomats said although the report had been ready for nearly two weeks, Beijing had until the past few days refused to consider a US mission to discuss the results.
"If there is sincerity on the US part to improve bilateral relations then they should carry out a full, comprehensive, fair and thorough investigation and take concrete action to punish those responsible," said Ms Zhang. "Only by so doing can they make a satisfactory answer to the Chinese Government and people."
Concerns about whether the US response will be enough seem justified. The public explanation said Nato mistakenly targeted the embassy.
The report did not identify guilty parties because US President Bill Clinton had clearly stated the US Government as a whole accepted responsibility for the bombing, said one diplomat.
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42 Million Chinese People Still Below Poverty Line
BEIJING, Jun 10, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Forty two million people in rural China are still living below the poverty line, President Jiang Zemin has told a poverty relief conference according to official media Thursday.
"China still has 42 million rural people living below the poverty line, most of whom live in remote areas with poor resources and a bad environment that pose a serious challenge to any poverty-relief efforts," Xinhua news agency quoted Jiang as saying.
Xinhua said Jiang told the conference that China needed to "go all-out for a final victory in the fight against rural poverty".
"The elimination of rural poverty by next year is a serious pledge by the party and the government that must and can be realized," Jiang said.
But he added that the "overwhelming majority" of China's rural people no longer need worry about their food and clothing.
The World Bank last month approved an aid package worth $250 million aimed at boosting the incomes of China's poorest farmers.
The areas to benefit were among the poorest in China.
By Agence France Presse
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China Submits Amendments To Kosovo Text
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10, 1999 -- (Reuters) China submitted on Wednesday major amendments to a U.N. Security Council resolution to implement a peace plan for Kosovo but Western diplomats said they would reject the changes.
The 15-seat Security Council is awaiting a military agreement between NATO and Yugoslavia under negotiation in Macedonia that would lead to withdrawal of Serbian troops from Kosovo and a bombing halt by NATO.
Both Russia and China have insisted the bombing, which began on March 24 to punish Yugoslavia for expelling ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, be stopped before any council vote.
"A military agreement will produce 14 strong opinions in favor of the resolution," British ambassador Jeremy Greenstock told reporters.
China's vote is in doubt although most envoys believe Beijing will abstain rather than use its veto power as one of five permanent council members to kill the resolution. But discussion of the amendments could delay a vote.
Among the changes submitted by Beijing was cutting the ability of international troops that will go into Kosovo to use force freely. The resolution permits the foreign contingent to use "all necessary means to fulfil its responsibilities."
China also wants the entire operation to end after 12 months whereas the resolution says it would continue after a year "unless the Security Council decides otherwise."
In addition China wants to delete one annex to the report listing principles from the eight nations that drew up the text: the United States, Russia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The move was seen as an apparent effort to deny status to this group, that negotiated without China's participation and give Beijing grounds to abstain.
Diplomats from NATO countries said all three suggestions would be rejected but they might consider other amendments China put forth that did not change the thrust of the text.
The 15-member council is expected to review the eight-page resolution later on Wednesday.
The resolution would allow NATO and other troops to enter Kosovo, where Yugoslav security forces have expelled some 850,000 ethnic Albanians, and thereby give international legitimacy to the peace package.
In practice, the United Nations would not play a role in military arrangements but have control over large parts of the crucial civilian operation, including appointing a special representative to oversee it.
The resolution demands Yugoslavia complete a phased withdrawal from Kosovo of all military police and paramilitary forces "according to a rapid timetable." It says an agreed number of Yugoslav military and police will be allowed to return but does not give a number.
In a direct reference to the use of force, the resolution allows an international force to use "all necessary means to fulfil its responsibilities." The operation has no time limit and continues "unless the Security Council decides otherwise."
But the draft resolution avoids laying down details of the exact roles to be played by NATO and Russian troops in the peace force. Western military officials will be in Moscow on Wednesday for talks on how up to 10,000 Russian troops go to Kosovo without appearing to take orders from NATO.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which has been fighting for independence, won protection from the Yugoslav forces. But it failed to secure a guarantee that ethnic Albanians can change the status of the Yugoslav province.
Adoption of a resolution needs nine positive votes in the 15-seat Security Council and no veto from its five permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. The council's 10 nonpermanent members, who rotate for two-year terms are: Argentina, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Gabon, Gambia, Malaysia, Namibia, the Netherlands and Slovenia.
By Reuters
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Indian Foreign Minister To Visit Beijing
BEIJING, Jun 10, 1999 -- (Reuters) Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh will visit China next week, shortly after his Pakistani counterpart travels to Beijing amid conflict in Kashmir, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday.
Singh would be in Beijing from June 14 to 16 for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told a news conference.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz will be in China on Friday, a day before going to New Delhi for talks on Kashmir in which Singh is sure to be involved.
The agenda for Singh's visit was under discussion, Zhang told reporters. Aziz and Tang would discuss "bilateral and international issues of mutual concern", she said.
"China has long attached importance to building ties and friendship with India," Zhang said.
"Through the joint efforts of both sides we are confident relations will develop and it is with this background that we are expecting the visit by the Indian foreign minister."
Asked by reporters about the conflict across the Indo-Pakistani cease-fire line in the disputed region of Kashmir, Zhang reiterated remarks she made earlier this week.
"We hope that both sides will use peaceful means and solve any crisis through negotiations to prevent the escalation of the situation," she said.
India's military is trying to flush out what it says are Pakistan-backed infiltrators and Pakistan army regulars who have taken up positions in the Kashmir heights on its side of a cease-fire line.
Pakistan says the incursions are by Islamic freedom fighters to whom it gives moral and diplomatic, but not material, support.
China shares borders with both India and Pakistan and has a small portion of northern Kashmir that Pakistan ceded to it in 1963. New Delhi says China is occupying the area illegally. India also claims the border region of Aksai Chin.
India and China fought a brief border war 1962 and the land disputes kept relations between the two Asian giants frosty for many years.
By Reuters
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China Repeats Demand For US Explanation Of Embassy Bombing
BEIJING, Jun 10, 1999 -- China on Thursday repeated demands for a full, thorough investigation into the bombing of its embassy in Yugoslavia, including punishment for those responsible.
"To date, the US hasn't yet provided the report on the investigation of its bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue at a regular news briefing.
"We are expecting a full, thorough, just and responsible investigation into the incident and that the US side will take concrete action to punish those responsible."
Bilateral talks through diplomatic channels are ongoing between both sides on the sending of a US envoy to China to report on the findings of the investigation, she said.
"I am not saying we would like to see a different report because to date we have not seen any report," she said, when asked about the possibility of the report concluding the incident was "a tragic mistake" caused by outdated maps -- an explanation which China refused to accept earlier.
The US-led NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy on May 7 killed three Chinese journalists and injured about 20 other Chinese nationals, and sparked a wave of anti-US, anti-NATO protests throughout China.
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Cox report's repercussions played down
Tuesday, June 8, 1999
Disruptions to academic exchanges in the wake of the nuclear espionage claims in America's Cox report were temporary, an official said yesterday.
But how much Hong Kong would suffer would depend on what action the US Government took, acting Secretary for Trade and Industry Yvonne Choi Ying-pik said.
In a meeting with legislators on the report, Ms Choi said she was aware academic exchanges had been refused by US institutions in the wake of the report.
"But these are isolated cases. It doesn't mean the long-term situation will remain so," she said.
Ms Choi denied allegations Hong Kong could be exploited over the trade in strategic commodities.
"We think the doubts raised in the report were unfounded," she said.
Citing previous reports made by the US State Department and Congress, Ms Choi said there was no evidence the PLA Garrison had been engaged in illegal activities.
Deputy director-general of trade Edward Yau Tang-wah said legal restrictions on strategic goods applied to all firms regardless of affiliation.
He said officials had been vigorously clarifying Hong Kong's Custom controls with its US counterparts since the report was published.
Ms Choi would not rule out making a formal response to Washington on the issue.
The Government has yet to assess the impact of the report, but warned trade would suffer if the US tightened import-export restrictions.
"Perhaps the US economy will be affected more seriously as its technology exports to Hong Kong are considerable," Ms Choi said.
The Legislative Council will decide whether to back the Government's position with a submission after further examining clarifications by the Government.
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Taipei reveals $2.3b aid plan for Kosovo
Tuesday, June 8, 1999
Taiwan is set to enrage the mainland by giving US$300 million (HK$2.32 billion) in aid for Kosovo refugees.
The package, announced by President Lee Teng-hui yesterday, will include emergency supplies for refugees and contributions to rebuilding efforts in Kosovo once the refugees are allowed to return home.
It was unclear how Taipei would disburse the money since it would be difficult for the United Nations to accept it without facing objections from Beijing.
China-watchers said President Lee was playing for political points.
"The offer is certain to be denounced by mainland China as a gesture to win ties with other Balkan states," said Taiwan-based political analyst Lu Ya-li.
"It will not win the Chinese communists' support, nor will it prompt the communists to offer aid."
Mr Lee rejected suggestions that Taiwan's gesture would provoke the mainland.
"Our considerations are made strictly in a humanitarian spirit," he said.
But Foreign Minister Jason Hu Chih-chiang admitted Taiwan hoped to win international attention with its contribution.
He said the aid pledge was a reflection of Taiwan's capability and intention. A timetable had not been worked out for handing over the funds.
Taiwan has tried to win greater international recognition, but its efforts to rejoin the UN and other global bodies have failed in the face of Chinese opposition.
Taiwan will also provide loans this week to new ally Macedonia. Its struggling economy has been disastrously affected by the war in Yugoslavia and it is now host to an estimated 240,000 refugees from Kosovo.
The Macedonia deal included a US$12 million low-interest loan for infrastructure and a US$3 million trade grant from Taiwan's import-export bank, said Lin Hsiao-chuen, an Eastern Europe specialist at the Foreign Ministry.
Taiwan has also secured loans to eight local businesses which planned to invest US$3 million in Macedonia, Mr Lin said.
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KMT activist vows to fight spy conviction
JASON BLATT in Taipei
Tuesday, June 8, 1999
A former Kuomintang activist in Macau is reportedly planning to appeal to Taiwan's Supreme Court after he was convicted of passing military secrets to the mainland.
Wu Tao-ming, a former employee of the ruling party's Overseas Affairs Department, was given a 14-month prison sentence by the High Court in connection with espionage allegations dating back to 1997.
Wu and a colleague, Chang Lu-chung, had been acquitted at an earlier trial, but the prosecution appealed.
Wu was not present at yesterday's hearing, but his wife branded the decision "unfair" and said her husband would "definitely appeal" against the decision to the Supreme Court.
"My husband has never leaked any secrets," she said outside the court.
"All of the facts presented by the prosecution are not clear or comprehensive enough."
Wu's lawyer, Xin Wu, said outside court that a list of names said to have been given to the mainland by his client had been public information reported in the media.
Mr Xin said a confession signed by Wu had not been written of his free will.
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Singapore's Lee Urges China WTO Entry
HONG KONG, Jun 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew on Sunday made a strong pitch for China's entry into the World Trade Organization and warned that its exclusion would spell uncertainty for world peace and prosperity.
"Excluding China from the WTO means greater uncertainty for the future of world peace and prosperity," Lee, who was Singapore's prime minister for 31 years until 1990, said during a business function in Hong Kong.
"To exclude China is to risk encouraging a nationalist and xenophobic China. The U.S. and EU should not allow such a historic opportunity to slip away," he told a large business audience.
Taking questions later, Lee said he thought chances of China's entry into the world body this year were good despite current difficult relations between Washington and Beijing.
Relations between the two countries have soured after NATO's missile attack on China's Belgrade embassy in May and allegations in recent weeks that China stole U.S. military secrets.
"Do you want a China that's outside the system and inevitably made into an adversary, if not an enemy like the Soviet Union?" he asked. "I think, in the end, cold logic will prevail."
On Hong Kong, Lee said the southern Chinese city, which has its currency pegged to the U.S. dollar, has a tougher challenge than Singapore in making adjustments during the economic crisis.
While Hong Kong, like the rest of Asia, badly needs low interest rates to recover, its hands were now tied as the U.S. Federal Reserve has shown signs that it could make upward interest rate adjustments, Lee said.
"That is a shroud over not just Hong Kong but the rest of East Asia. But more Hong Kong because Hong Kong is pegged," he said.
Because of its pegged currency, Hong Kong moves its interest rates in accordance with rates in the United States.
Lee also dismissed what the media often touts as rivalry between Singapore and Hong Kong, saying Hong Kong would be better off worrying about competition from major Chinese cities such as Shanghai.
The veteran statesman also spoke about Indonesia, which will hold its first democratic parliamentary elections since 1955 on Monday, and what he thought would be the best outcome.
"A compromise...of both the populist, reformist forces and that part of (incumbent ruling) Golkar which also wants to reform but has the experience of government may be the best outcome."
Lee said it was crucial for the future Indonesian government to include "talents" even if they were linked with past regimes.
"They will provide a certain continuity because 32 years of President Suharto has brought into government almost anybody of any significance who can make a contribution in a competent way."
"If you were to eliminate all experts who have been associated with previous regimes, you may be bereft of talents."
Experts have predicted that Indonesia's 130 million voters will choose sweeping change and cast out the last vestiges of the long but now discredited reign of former president Suharto.
By Reuters
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German Envoy Discusses Kosovo Plan With China
BEIJING, Jun 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) A senior German diplomat arrived in Beijing on Monday to seek Chinese support for the text of a U.N. Security Council resolution to settle the Kosovo conflict, diplomatic sources said.
Guenther Pleuger, the German Foreign Ministry's political director, was scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya and other officials, the sources said.
The talks were going on despite the decision by the European Union's Kosovo envoy, Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, to postpone a trip to Beijing to brief China's leaders on the Kosovo peace process.
Ahtisaari put off the trip because of the continuing NATO-Yugoslav military talks on the implementation of the Kosovo peace plan. The talks over a pullout of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo broke down after Helsinki had announced the postponement.
It was unclear whether Ahtisaari's trip to China would be rescheduled. He took the West's peace plan to Belgrade last week and was instrumental in persuading Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept the terms.
China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and a vehement opponent of NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, has not revealed its position in the wake of Belgrade's acceptance last week of the Western and Russian peace plan.
Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, in a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Friday, repeated Beijing's long-standing call for an immediate halt to NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia.
Xinhua news agency quoted Zhu as saying NATO should halt the bombing immediately, even before the U.N. Security Council discusses the Kosovo issue.
NATO insists the bombing will stop only when Yugoslav forces begin to leave Kosovo. The United States said the bombing would continue following the breakdown of talks over a pullout of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.
Under the peace plan, Yugoslav forces would withdraw from Kosovo and an international security presence would move in to oversee the return of some 800,000 ethnic Albanian refugees.
China has opposed from the outset in March the air war NATO says is designed to reverse the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians in the southern Serb province of Kosovo.
By Reuters
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China Calls For End To NATO Attacks On Serbia
BEIJING, Jun 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) As NATO returned to widespread bombing raids over Yugoslavia, China repeated its demands that the western alliance immediately halt its air strikes.
"The priority at present is that NATO immediately halt its bombing of Yugoslavia to create the conditions and atmosphere for the resolution of the Kosovo issue," a Foreign Ministry statement said.
The statement, a reiteration of previous Chinese comments on Kosovo, was issued as a senior German diplomat held talks in Beijing to seek Chinese support for the text of a U.N. Security Council resolution to settle the Balkan conflict.
Guenther Pleuger, the German Foreign Ministry's political director, was scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya and other officials, diplomatic sources said.
It was not immediately clear whether Pleuger would make a statement during his visit, which went on even though talks between NATO and Yugoslavia on a withdrawal of Belgrade's forces from Kosovo broke down overnight.
China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and a vehement opponent of NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia since it began in March, is being watched closely for clues to its views on the Western and Russian peace plan.
Diplomats in Beijing said they were largely in the dark about Beijing's position on the plan, under which Yugoslav forces would withdraw from Kosovo and an international security presence would move in to oversee the return of some 800,000 ethnic Albanian refugees.
"We are reasonably optimistic that China will not obstruct the peace process now that Russia is on board," said a Western diplomat.
China was also awaiting the rescheduled visit by the European Union's Kosovo envoy, Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, to brief China's leaders on the Kosovo peace process.
Ahtisaari put off the trip on Monday because of the continuing NATO-Yugoslav military talks on the implementation of the Kosovo peace plan. The talks over a pullout of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo broke down after Helsinki had announced the postponement.
Diplomatic sources said Ahtisaari could arrive in Beijing as early as Tuesday.
Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, in a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Friday, said NATO should halt the bombing immediately, even before the U.N. Security Council discusses the Kosovo issue.
NATO insists the bombing will stop only when Yugoslav forces begin to leave Kosovo.
By Reuters
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Trial Of Official-Turned-Dissident Fang Jue To Resume Thursday
BEIJING, Jun 7, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) The trial of former senior Chinese official Fang Jue, who called for democratic reforms, is to resume in Beijing Thursday, his family said Monday.
"Fang Jue's trial will be resumed at the Beijing No.2 Intermediate People's Court on Thursday, but we don't know the time of the hearing yet," Fang's sister, Liu Jing, told AFP.
The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said in a statement that Fang was likely to be sentenced at the hearing.
He is charged with fraud and illegal business practice and accused of taking 145,000 yuan ($17,512) profits from manipulating diesel import quotas, the Hong Kong Information Center said.
It said no witnesses were called at the initial hearing and the prosecution had asked for an adjournment, a sign the charges were politically motivated.
Fang's trial began on April 26 but was adjourned with no verdict.
Fang, 44, a former senior official from the southeast province of Fuzhou, was arrested last July after calling for democratic reforms in an essay earlier in the year.
His trial comes after the authorities handed out a series of stiff prison terms to dissidents in December, including three prominent activists with the banned China Democracy Party (CDP), who were jailed for 11 to 13 years for subversion.
By Agence France Presse
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Lee Touches Taiwan-China Nerve With Kosovo Aid
TAIPEI, Jun 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) Taipei on Monday offered $300 million in aid for refugees displaced from Yugoslavia's Kosovo region -- and touched a raw Taiwan-China nerve by urging rival Beijing to show similar largesse.
"Being a country that promotes human rights and to exercise our humanitarian spirit, we are willing to offer our aid to those suffering in Kosovo," President Lee Teng-hui said at a hastily organized news conference.
Lee said Taiwan would establish a $300 million fund that could be used to help the estimated million or more refugees who have fled Kosovo even as the U.S.-led European alliance NATO has bombed Yugoslavia to halt their expulsion.
Lee offered to bring some of the refugees to Taiwan for what aides called "temporary" job training. Taiwan has not offered to resettle any Kosovars.
Lee seemed to be angling for the moral high ground in Taiwan's half-century-old political rivalry with China, openly appealing for Beijing to open its aid purse-strings.
"As a member of international society, the Chinese communists should acknowledge what we are doing and join us in contributing to international peace and stability," Lee said.
Foreign Minister Jason Hu said the offer reflected hopes for peace in the Balkans but hinted at a political motive, saying wealthy Taiwan hoped to win friends through its contributions.
Lee's move could catch Beijing flat-footed.
China has not openly offered to help the Kosovars and its state-controlled media have been criticized by NATO members for their scant coverage of the refugee expulsions, which NATO cites as a root reason for its air campaign against Belgrade.
Lee rejected suggestions that Taiwan's gesture would provoke China, which enforces a diplomatic embargo around the island and has been irritated by Taipei's fruitful diplomatic initiatives in the Balkans during the Yugoslavia crisis.
"Our considerations are made strictly in a humanitarian spirit," Lee said without taking further questions.
Beijing -- which has seen Nationalist-ruled Taiwan as an insubordinate province since it became estranged from China by civil war in 1949 -- has denounced Taipei's February exchange of embassies with Macedonia, which abuts Kosovo and has reeled under heavy refugee inflows.
Skopje's move gave Taiwan its first real diplomatic ally in Europe, where its only other friend was the Vatican. Beijing responded by blocking extension of a U.N. peacekeeping force in Macedonia.
Though it lies far from the Balkans, Taiwan plays a central role in China's opposition to NATO's bombing. Beijing has said that if it were to support military responses to human rights abuses, NATO might then feel free to bomb China to counter human rights policies toward Taiwan or Tibet that it dislikes.
China-watchers said Taiwan's president was playing for political points in the long Taiwan-China rivalry.
"The offer is certain to be denounced by mainland China as a gesture to win ties with other Balkan states," political analyst Lu Ya-li said. "It will not win the Chinese communists' support, nor will it prompt the communists to offer aid."
The timing of Lee's move was sensitive, coming as the latest Kosovo peace plan was crumbling -- and one day into Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's first visit to Taiwan.
By Reuters
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U.S. May Send Group To China To Explain Bombing
WASHINGTON, Jun 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) Senior U.S. officials are discussing sending a delegation to Beijing soon to give a complete report on NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, U.S. officials said on Friday.
Officials said they are hoping the report will help satisfy Chinese concerns about the May 7 bombing and lead to a resumption of stalled trade talks over China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
"They Chinese have indicated that they would like a fuller explanation of what happened and why it happened. That work is under way, and when we have a more complete review we will find a way to communicate that to the government of China and to members of Congress," said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Officials want to send a senior official to deliver the report, but have not decided who it will be.
The bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists, triggered large anti-U.S. protests in Beijing. President Bill Clinton May 14 apologized directly by telephone to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who refused to take Clinton's call for a week in anger.
NATO blamed the tragedy on using outdated maps in Belgrade bombing runs. But China's state media and most ordinary Chinese remain convinced it was deliberate.
Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who failed during a U.S. visit in April to seal a WTO deal, said on Friday in Hong Kong that the time was not right to resume trade talks because "the atmosphere is not good."
"We're ready to resume negotiations now on a complete WTO agreement and we're hopeful that the Chinese will return to the table as soon as possible," a U.S. official said.
U.S. officials have noted with interest an apparent change of tone in China. China's top newspaper, the People's Daily, on Thursday urged "friendly cooperation" with Washington.
Clinton announced on Thursday he would renew China's trade privileges for another year. The notice, sent to Congress, was expected to spark a stormy debate over the future of U.S. relations with China in light of recent allegations of Chinese spying and illegal campaign contributions and concerns about human rights abuses and technology transfers.
By Reuters
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Macedonian PM On First Taiwan Visit Since Diplomatic Switching
TAIPEI, Jun 7, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski arrived here on Sunday to put his country's fledgling diplomatic ties with Taiwan on a firmer footing, officials said.
Georgievski and his 59-member delegation were greeted by Taiwan Foreign Minister Jason Hu on their arrival at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport from a visit to the United States.
Georgievski, on his first visit to Taiwan since Macedonia switched diplomatic recognition of China from Beijing in January, will meet President Lee Teng-hui and Premier Vincent Siew before he leaves Friday.
"One can tell from the size of the delegation that Macedonia is anxious to establish closer economic links with us," a foreign ministry official said.
The Macedonian Prime Minister is to sign five pacts with Taipei on economic and customs cooperation, free trade, investment guarantees and double taxation, according to the foreign ministry here.
Skopje switched diplomatic recognition of China from Beijing to Taipei on January 27 after an agreement signed here between Macedonian Foreign Minister Aleksandar Dimitrov and Hu.
The move caused a split between Macedonia's leftist president, Kiro Gligorov, and Georgievski, head of the ruling center-right government.
Reports in Skopje said Macedonia hoped for substantial Taiwanese investment after setting up diplomatic ties with Taipei, with Dimitrov saying Taiwan would invest more than one billion US dollars.
Taiwan's Vice Foreign Minister David Lee arrived in Skopje on April 14 to $5 million in aid to help the 330,000 Kosovo refugees who have taken shelter in Macedonia.
In Washington on Friday Georgievski said he was optimistic after Yugoslavia's acceptance of a peace plan for Kosovo.
Macedonia has agreed to allow 30,000 NATO troops on its soil, but Georgievski added "the large presence of NATO is not considered a threat to our sovereignty. We intend to be part of NATO."
Macedonia and the Vatican are the only two European states that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province.
By Agence France Presse
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CHRIS YEUNG and KONG LAI-FAN
Saturday June 5 1999
Tens of thousands of people last night mourned the dead of Tiananmen Square 10 years ago with a pledge to fight for democracy down the generations.
In a show of dissent at remarks by Premier Zhu Rongji that he had forgotten the 10th anniversary, more than 70,000 people turned up at the Victoria Park to show they had not.
Filling all six football pitches of Victoria Park with lighted candles, the participants sang pro-democracy and memorial songs and chanted slogans in a markedly calm mood.
At the centre of the crowd stood the Pillar of Shame, splashed with red paint by a self-proclaimed artist, and a column emblazoned with: "The spirit of democracy martyrs will live forever."
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China, formed to spearhead the local campaign, put the turnout at 70,000, the highest since 1993.
Police said they did not have an estimate. About 40,000 people took part in last year's rally in a rainstorm.
Alliance chairman Szeto Wah said the turnout showed "people's hearts were not dead".
In Beijing, Premier Zhu said he had forgotten the anniversary. Asked how the central Government would pacify families of June 4 victims, he said: "Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten."
A participant, John Tong, 46, said: "No Chinese will forget. I'm greatly disappointed by Zhu. He shouldn't have said this."
Crowds began to converge at the football pitches after dusk for the annual vigil, which began with a 15-minute drama recalling the traumatic events leading to the bloodbath.
Mr Szeto mourned the dead: "Do you hear our cries? May your heroic souls descend here - the only piece of Chinese soil where we can gather to remember you in public.
"The next 10 years of perseverance and struggle has begun. We have no fantasy. We believe a democratic China will not simply fall from heaven. It must be created with blood and sweat, fearlessness and perseverance.
"We have to educate our next generation to prepare for the fight one after another."
A manifesto read at the end of the 100-minute rally says: "Raise our candlelights. Farewell to the old century. Welcome the new one and the day when June 4 verdict will be reversed. Welcome democracy, freedom, human rights and rule of law."
Wang Lingyun, mother of Wang Dan, spoke to the crowd from a mobile phone after her line at home was cut off at 5pm.
She said: "I hope the younger generations have a sense of historical commitment and social responsibility. They should all pursue democracy, freedom and learn well."
From San Francisco, Wang Dan said: "One thing we shouldn't forget is that the dead have paved the way for democracy." A dissident group, China Spring, said Wang Dan would not attend a seminar in Macau today because his flight booking via Taipei had been cancelled.
Despite blanket security in Beijing, at least two protesters staged demonstrations in Tiananmen Square before being hauled away by police.
One youth scattered pamphlets urging faster democracy and an end to corruption. A middle-aged man unfurled an umbrella bearing the slogan "Remember the student movement". At least seven dissidents in other provinces were arrested.
From South China Morning Post
China Arrests Three Dissidents In Xian - HK Group
HONG KONG, Jun 5, 1999 -- (Reuters) Chinese police have arrested three dissidents in the central Chinese city of Xian, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said on Saturday.
The Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said the detentions occurred on Friday as Yang Hai, Tang Zhiping and Zhang Jiankang were preparing to mark the 10th anniversary of the military crackdown on peaceful demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
It said police burst into the home of Yang, where the three were meeting, and took them away. No other details were immediately available.
Police had questioned and detained about 130 dissidents ahead of the anniversary, and 42 were still in custody, the group said on Friday.
By Reuters
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10 Years After Tiananmen
Taiwan mourns victims
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Saturday June 5 1999
Taiwanese mourned victims of the crackdown and urged Beijing to allow greater democracy.
The island's Legislative Yuan observed a minute's silence before it opened yesterday's session.
Sheu Ke-sheng, deputy chairman of the cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council, said: "We express our heartfelt condolences and sympathy to the victims of the Tiananmen event. We also urge the mainland to adopt democracy so as not to become a negative factor affecting cross-strait ties and security in the Asia-Pacific region."
The Taiwan Government has traditionally kept a low-profile for Tiananmen anniversaries while public interest has also waned.
There have been few official events in recent years and few officials have attended activities organised by private groups, mainly the Bloodline Chinese Democratic Movement Support Association.
To mark yesterday's anniversary, the association held a special concert at Taipei City Hall, the first time an activity related to the crackdown had been held at a government venue.
Ruling Kuomintang Deputy Secretary-General Shaw Yu-ming, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou and Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Minister Kao Kung-lien were expected to attend the performance with other pro-democracy supporters and dissidents, organisers said.
The concert was being followed by a walk from the hall to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
Taiwan's state-run Central Broadcasting System, which is seen on the mainland, planned a teleconference last night involving academics, visiting mainland dissidents and exiled former student leaders.
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Chinese Rights Group Denied Association With U.N.
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 5, 1999 -- (Reuters) On the 10th anniversary of China's crushing of democracy demonstrations, a U.N. committee bowed to Beijing and rejected U.N. consultative status for a human rights group on Chinese affairs.
The New York-based Human Rights in China group sought to join hundreds of voluntary organizations with expertise in various fields that are allowed to take part in the work of the main U.N. body concerned with social and economic matters.
But at the strong urging of China, the U.N. committee on nongovernmental organizations rejected on Friday an application by Human Rights in China for consultative status with the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC.)
The vote in the 19-member committee was 13 to 3 to reject the application. The United States, France and Ireland voted for approval. Chile and Romania abstained. Senegal was absent.
Voting for rejection were: Algeria, Bolivia, China, Colombia, Cuba, Ethiopia, India, Lebanon, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Tunisia and Turkey.
The committee took its decision on the 10th anniversary of China's bloody crushing of student-led democracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
The United States strongly supported the application by Human Rights in China, which was founded in March 1989, with headquarters in New York and a branch office in Hong Kong.
Its board of more than 40 members includes non-Chinese as well as Chinese, including several dissidents who have served jail terms in China.
The application was discussed for hours, with China's deputy U.N. representative, Shen Guofang, claiming that all the organization's members lived outside China, carried out "groundless attacks" on the Beijing government and included board members who were "convicted criminals", some of them still wanted by the Chinese government.
He also said Human Rights in China had done nothing to further the Chinese people's civil, political, economic or social rights. It had failed to "spare a penny" to help the victims of last year's disastrous floods in China and had said nothing about the "atrocities" suffered by the victims of last month's NATO bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade.
The organization was also closely associated with Tibetan "splittist," or separatists, Shen said, claiming that it aimed to "overthrow the legitimate government" of a U.N. member.
Representatives of Human Rights in China, including its executive director, Xiao Qiang, and its chairman, Liu Qing, said the group did not advocate either violence or subversion. Its members had all visited or lived in China.
Liu said he "could be one of the criminals" cited by China since he had been jailed twice, spending nearly 11 years in prison for organizing a journal containing statements critical of the government.
The debate was thrown into disarray and suspended for a while after the chairman, Wahid Ben Amor of Tunisia, said a cameraman had been filming the proceedings without permission. He later said he was ordering an inquiry into the incident.
The cameraman was identified as an employee of the Chinese Television Network, with headquarters in Hong Kong and offices in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.
After the vote, U.S. representative Seth Winnick said it was "a sad date, the 10th anniversary of the events in Tiananmen Square." The committee, he said, chose to overlook the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by denying accreditation to a nongovernmental institution.
By Reuters
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STELLA LEE
Saturday June 5 1999
Police arrested 17 more people yesterday for suspected involvement in triad intimidation during a rural election in March.
The swoop brought the number arrested in connection with triad infiltration in the rural committee elections to 62 since last month.
Chief Inspector Wai Hang-mo, of the New Territories North anti-triad unit, said most of those arrested were believed to be members of the 14K, Wo Shing Wo and Sun Yee On triad groups.
They were suspected of being involved in an illegal gathering in Yuen Long on March 26 when a rural committee election was held.
Up to 500 people were reported to have gathered outside the polling station at Yuen Long District Office before voting started.
"It is believed that they gathered there to demonstrate the power of the triad groups and support for some of the candidates," Chief Inspector Wai said.
The 17 men arrested yesterday were aged between 16 and 41.
They included two core members of the 14K and Wo Shing Wo groups whom police believe organised the gathering.
They were also believed to include two village leaders.
More than 60 officers made the arrests after raiding 36 premises in Yuen Long and Tuen Mun starting at 5am.
Another 45 people were arrested on May 31 in a joint operation between New Territories North Region and the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau on the eve of the election of the chairman and vice-chairmen of the Heung Yee Kuk.
Chief Inspector Wai said they were still investigating if those arrested were connected with other election violence or triad activities.
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Saturday June 5 1999
Opinion polls may show that interest has faded. After so much time has passed, it is inevitable that some people prefer to focus on more recent issues.
But the candlelight vigil in Victoria Park last night showed once again that there are many in this community who will never forget the massacre in Tiananmen Square 10 years ago. Over the past decade, this annual memorial event has become an integral part of local life.
In many respects, it shows Hong Kong at its best. Freedom of expression conducted in a dignified manner, causing none of the tensions nor threats of violence which so commonly mar such events in other parts of the world.
Even those who do not personally attend such vigils would wish to see them continue. Perhaps even many of the minority who agree with Beijing's account of the events of June 1989 would agree that these are an important symbol of Hong Kong's freedoms.
It is a mark of the success of the one country, two systems concept that the event is no longer surrounded by such uncertainty. Two years ago many feared the 1997 memorial would be the last. Now no one doubts that such vigils will continue, at least until the official verdict on the massacre is reversed.
Whatever his personal feelings, Tung Chee-hwa has stopped talking about the "baggage" of Tiananmen. However traces of this attitude are still evident in the regrettable decision to deny visas to 11 mainland dissidents.
That cast a shadow over last night's event. But it was not enough to mar seriously the significance of this event being held for a second successive year on Chinese soil.
Even if some people who should have been allowed to attend were unable to do so, the importance of this vigil lies in the fact it could be held at all. In doing so, Hong Kong people were able to exercise a right that is denied everywhere else in China.
Beijing now shows every sign of continuing to tolerate such activities. That makes this event an encouraging sign that Hong Kong's freedoms stand a good chance of surviving so long as they are properly valued and supported here, as they were last night.
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China Arrests Three Dissidents In Xian - HK Group
HONG KONG, Jun 5, 1999 -- (Reuters) Chinese police have arrested three dissidents in the central Chinese city of Xian, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said on Saturday.
The Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said the detentions occurred on Friday as Yang Hai, Tang Zhiping and Zhang Jiankang were preparing to mark the 10th anniversary of the military crackdown on peaceful demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
It said police burst into the home of Yang, where the three were meeting, and took them away. No other details were immediately available.
Police had questioned and detained about 130 dissidents ahead of the anniversary, and 42 were still in custody, the group said on Friday.
By Reuters
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A NEW UPHEAVAL?
Despite growing tensions, changes since
1989 have diminished the chances of another mass uprising
By Todd Crowell and David Hsieh/Beijing
ON JUNE 4, China will pass one of the most sensitive milestones in its modern history: the 10th anniversary of the traumatic Tiananmen crackdown. A decade ago, rampant official corruption and rising economic pain - from soaring inflation - made much of Beijing's population ready to respond to a student revolt for democracy, igniting an epic confrontation with Communist Party authorities. Today, bureaucratic graft is worse than ever, while reform and a slowing economy have put huge - and still growing - numbers out of work. So a specter hovers over the nation in the run-up to June 4, 1999: Will the simmering grievances of the Chinese people explode once again in a mass uprising?
China's leaders are clearly prepared for the prospect. If there was one thing they learned in 1989, it was the importance of anticipating unrest in order to head it off and preserve the nation's all-important stability. Since late last year, President Jiang Zemin has repeatedly stressed the need to "nip unstable factors in the bud," even as his right-hand-man, Premier Zhu Rongji, tries to keep the economy on an even keel while pushing ahead with market reforms. The strategy sometimes means strong-arm tactics, including a crackdown against political dissidents. But often, it is also tempered by persuasion, payoffs and artful statecraft.
The party hierarchy can take some encouragement from how it successfully defused two large-scale demonstrations in Beijing in recent weeks. The first was the sudden appearance of thousands of adherents to a popular quasi-religion called Falungong outside the Zhongnanhai compound, where China's rulers live and work. Taken completely by surprise, the leadership was deeply shaken. But the protesters dispersed quickly and peacefully after authorities promised to look into their grievances.
The second big test was how Beijing channeled the anger of university students and other citizens after NATO bombed China's embassy in Belgrade. After helping encourage the anti-Western protests, the government managed to defuse them after three days. Had it mishandled the anti-American sentiment, the situation could have turned explosive.
People with various grievances suddenly directed them at the U.S. "This has softened pressure on the government and dampened the impact of June 4," says a history student at Peking University. Nationwide, only on one or two campuses did the student fury actually turn against the Communist Party. A large poster at Wenzhou University in Zhejiang province lambasted corruption; it was quickly taken down by school authorities. "It is now harder for people to make political capital out of the anniversary, since they could be branded as America's fifth column," says an outspoken party liberal.
The events of 1989 left a profound legacy in China. They also affected the careers of both Jiang and Zhu. Jiang, then Shanghai party chief, was catapulted to the top when Deng Xiaoping made him national party leader, replacing the disgraced Zhao Ziyang. Zhu, Shanghai's mayor at the time, won plaudits for keeping the metropolis relatively quiet throughout the crisis. In a recent interview with the American Cable News Network, he expressed confidence that Tiananmen would not be repeated. "The episode in 1989 happened because [the protesters] wanted democracy, but they didn't want the rule of law," Zhu told CNN.
Even so, Chinese authorities remain extremely sensitive to popular perceptions of their commitment to - and effectiveness in - battling corruption. In the late 1980s, much public wrath was directed at official graft centered on enterprises with top-level guanxi (connections), including Kanghua Industrial of Deng Pufang, Deng Xiaoping's son. Now, such maneuverings are no longer the preserve of the privileged. Corruption permeates everything from school entry and job recruitment to medical treatment and phone installations.
Despite incessant campaigns to curb it, graft has reached unprecedented levels - even by official account. Languishing in China's jails are 74 ex-mayors, a fraction of those suspected of wrong-doing. In an ultimate irony, the head of the Justice Ministry's Anti-Corruption Bureau, Luo Ji, was recently sacked for misappropriating confiscated funds. Jiang himself has called graft "a matter life and death for the party." But the dilemma facing the authorities is neatly summarized in a remark attributed to the late party elder, Chen Yun: "Not to fight corruption is to doom the country; to fight it is to doom the party."
In recent months, Premier Zhu has redoubled his government's anti-graft efforts. He has vigorously prosecuted senior officials responsible for major public-works disasters, such as a bridge collapse in Sichuan province which killed 40. Since last summer's Yangzi River floods exposed much shoddy infrastructure, authorities have closely monitored public works and any associated corruption.
The government has tried to curb official abuse in other ways. Over the past decade, it gradually codified the law and nurtured lower-level elections. In some one million village polls since 1989, voters have thrown out Communist incumbents in 20% of the contests. On March 6, villagers in Jile, near Harbin, voted to remove their local chief, Dong Shouyong. It was the first time since the founding of the People's Republic that an elected official had been popularly dismissed.
Giving peasants the right to remove corrupt or abusive officials is a part of Beijing's strategy to maintain stability in rural areas, where protests break out sporadically. Political reformers expect to expand elections to the next level - the towns - within five years. In fact, China's first township mayor was elected by an experimental popular vote in late April. The incumbent, Li Weiwen, won a clear majority in a second round of balloting to continue his tenure in a Shenzhen town.
Also haunting China and its leaders are the growing ranks of the jobless. The issue conditions and often limits some of Zhu Rongji's initiatives to reform the economy and streamline the government. He cannot move as rapidly as he would like to rationalize money-losing state-owned enterprises, knowing that every employee thrown out of work with only the most minimal social safety net is a potential enemy of the regime.
In the larger cities, laid-off workers generally have not taken to the streets in protest because job opportunities are still available. But regions like inland Sichuan and the "rust-belt" northeast are hurting badly. The authorities are adopting various measures to help dismissed workers, including a minimum-wage system, job training and employment services, payment of social-security fees, and provision of basic medical care. Sometimes the government extends "bonuses" - essentially good-behavior payouts - to mark special events.
Officially, unemployment stands at 3%. Few people believe the figure. Feng Lanrui, an employment specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, puts the rate at nearly 28%. That factors in the 100-million-plus floating labor force of surplus farmers, many of whom roam from city to city in search of work. They receive almost none of the relatively meager social benefits available to urban dwellers.
With the influx of rural migrants and a growing scarcity of jobs as China enters a deflationary phase, crime in the cities is rising to alarming levels. Overall rates in the mid-1990s were already eightfold those of a decade before, with migrant crime accounting for 40% of the total. Migrant gangs are proliferating, and organized and violent crime are becoming big headaches for urban police forces.
Authorities have experimented with job-creation programs, with uneven results. Efforts have also been made to expand the pool of unemployment funds. State workers must now contribute 1% of their income and their employing enterprises 2% of their wage bill. Most of the benefits are dispersed only to the registered unemployed and those in special need. However, a pilot program in Guangzhou extends them to migrant workers.
Scratch just beneath the placid surface of almost any Chinese worker middle-aged or older and there is plenty of social tinder. Listen to Zhang Lanying, 47, a redundant food-industry worker who followed the usual pattern of his generation: "We encountered all of the bad times. I have hardly any education. It was really tough getting resettled after ten years on the farm during the Cultural Revolution. And now I'm unemployed."
LEGIONS OF DISGRUNTLED PEOPLE like Zhang have turned for comfort and comradeship, not to the Communist Party, but to a range of established religions as well as unusual new sects. That is one reason authorities take so seriously the potential challenge from the numerous and disciplined devotees of Falungong. "We all have a feeling of loss," says one sect activist. "Less and less do we believe in the government's promises. They say they are fighting corruption, but it is all hot air."
Beijing is especially vigilant about any alliance between laid-off or vaguely discontented workers and the small cadres of genuine political dissidents. A decade ago, it was only after the students occupying Tiananmen Square seemed to be forging links with disenchanted factory workers that the authorities moved forcibly against them both. Reports about strikes and periodic outbreaks of worker violence are usually suppressed.
Fueling the tensions is the social disruption caused by the central government's many mega-projects, especially the vast Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi River. The endeavor will displace up to 1.9 million people from their ancestral homes over the next 18 years, according to one study. Wei Yi, a specialist on the subject, warns that "those emigrants form a worrisome force of destruction because they have no one to turn to and nowhere to go." Wei fears that "they may be forced to unreservedly take from society what they need in order to survive."
Another potential trigger of instability is restiveness among ethnic minorities. Besides the activities of Tibetan and Taiwan independence advocates, Uighur separatists in Xinjiang are manifestly on the rise. Last August, an army base was attacked by the "East Turkmenistan People's Liberation Front," resulting in 30 casualties and five military planes destroyed. The assault was one of 71 incidents of terrorist bombings detailed in an internal report of the Central Military Commission.
President Jiang has warned regional leaders to get their houses in order. "Nationalities and religious issues should not be underestimated," he stressed. In a recent visit to multi-ethnic Yunnan province, Jiang called for unity and sustained vigilance against "splittist" forces. An official with the State Ethnic Affairs Commission points his finger at the system: "Under a strong central authority, the power of local governments is small and they lack political and financial resources. Beijing takes over but it often does an inadequate job." Even so, the cadre says "problems between minorities and Hans do not pose a serious threat to overall stability."
A pivotal factor in China's stability has been steady economic growth, especially in the private sector. Its stellar rise has for several years helped offset the dead weight of the state sector, especially in the coastal provinces. In Wenzhou, private companies account for 90% of the entire local output. So, while other mayors whine about their worker-re-employment woes, Wenzhou's chief boasts he hasn't even needed to offer such services.
Such successes show that private firms can take up the slack left by the shrinking state enterprises in creating jobs. By last October, "individual entrepreneurs" numbered nearly 30 million. Total employment in the private sector is about 57 million. More important, China has over 1.3 million registered private companies employing some 17 million people, among them 3 million laid-off state workers. The private sector, says State Council economist Wu Jinglian, is "the single most important factor" in maintaining growth.
Helping power private enterprise has been access to the huge American market, which accounts for 20% of China's exports. That makes the deteriorating state of Sino-U.S. relations another potentially destabilizing factor. This is especially true as China's current leadership has staked a big part of its reputation on being able to manage the country's opening to the world without compromising sovereignty. There are fears that bilateral ties will be further damaged by the release last week in Washington of the Cox Report, which alleges sustained Chinese efforts to steal U.S. nuclear technology. And President Bill Clinton's imminent decision on the renewal of Beijing's normal-trade-relations status is set to spark an acrimonious debate in the U.S. Congress.
Zhu Rongji's continuing efforts to streamline China's bloated government bureaucracy will create more unease. Last year, he trimmed 40 ministries into 29, eliminating 17,000 senior civil-service jobs. Zhu plans to hit provincial jurisdictions this year and will eventually cut another 4 million posts. Some brutal bureaucratic trench warfare can be expected over an extended period of time.
The premier's methodical yet sweeping reforms of China's creaking banking system bring additional risk. In December, the National People's Congress (NPC) passed a landmark Securities Law to facilitate continuing change. Zhu is restructuring the central bank along the lines of the U.S. Federal Reserve and overhauling the four big state-owned commercial banks. He is also setting up asset-management companies on a trial basis. Zhu has taken the hatchet to rogue securities firms, the Hainan Development Bank and Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corp. The premier's moves are bold and necessary for reform. But any closure of a large bank would jolt depositor confidence, while the GITIC bankruptcy debacle has already upset foreign creditors.
A pointer to stability may be the aplomb with which China's political leadership has handled the military. Though the regime needs the support of the People's Liberation Army to stay in power, it has not been overtly pampering its soldiers. In fact, party leaders have cut PLA ranks severely, even as they boosted the size and role of the paramilitary police. Beijing has also pushed the military out of its lucrative commercial ventures. At the same time, PLA chiefs have been mollified by a modest program of force modernization, which may accelerate in the wake of the Belgrade bombing. And the military's image has taken on new luster after its flood-fighting efforts last summer were trumpeted nationwide.
Another important factor for stability is the relative unity among top leaders. Ten years ago, deep policy differences between powerful factions led by liberal party chief Zhao and conservative premier Li Peng made a showdown almost inevitable. Today, the gaps are much smaller; even conservatives agree on the need for reform, though they would like a slower pace. In the absence of a charismatic supremo like Deng, today's party chiefs have honed a smoothly functioning collective leadership. They are determined not to show any signs of disunity, particularly in the lead-up to June 4.
All things considered, another upheaval on the scale of Tiananmen is unlikely. "In the next two to three years, there won't be any movement one way or the other," says a Peking University official. "The authorities will want to maintain maximum stability for the transition to the next generation of leaders." And what about the people? "They will find ways to air their frustrations," says the academic. "They will talk to the media, use the courts and sound off to NPC deputies. But they will also know when to shut up. The people have become more rational because now they have more to lose." The stability-minded denizens of Zhongnanhai certainly hope so.
BALANCING ACT
FACTORS FOR INSTABILITY
- Rampant Corruption: The 74 ex-mayors in jail are tip of the iceberg.
- Growing Unemployment: Overhauling state enterprises throws legions out of work with minimal social protection.
- Rising Crime: The lack of jobs leads to more crime in the cities.
- Ethnic Unrest: Terror bombings are on rise in minority regions.
FACTORS FOR STABILITY
- Expanding Economy: Private sector absorbs laid-off workers from state sector.- Cohesive Leadership: Unlike a decade ago, top leaders show no signs of wishing to engage in power struggles.
- Loyal Armed Forces: Army content with modernization moves and good publicity.
- Unifying Nationalism: Belgrade embassy attack focused national ire on the U.S.
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THE JUNE 4 EFFECT
It has changed Beijing's approach to
economic, political and social policy
By Sangwon Suh and David Hsieh/Beijing
TEN YEARS ON, the after-effects of the Tiananmen protests and crackdown are still being felt. One, of course, is the ban on discussions of the subject itself. In the lead-up to the 10th anniversary of what Chinese simply call liu si - "six-four," or June 4 - the lid has been screwed on tightly in Beijing, especially at the former hotbed of Peking University. More security guards patrol the campus, while plainclothes men keep an eye on the famous Triangle Area, traditionally a center of political agitations (see WHERE ARE THE RADICALS). School authorities monitor popular Internet chat sites for any hint of anti-government sentiments.
Whether due to this increased vigilance or not, there is little sign of any plans to mark the occasion. Outwardly, it even appears that government propaganda efforts have been successful. A Communist Youth League leader declares that some things are more important than the ideals spouted by youthful protesters a decade ago. "Without stability and social order, everything else is just talk," he asserts.
Yet behind the wall of government-imposed silence, people are privately discussing the legacy of the crackdown. Li Zhanghan, an old rightist, insists that the students were right in protesting against corruption and advocating free criticism. "They held great hopes for cleaning up the government," he says. "They held to the ideals of democracy and the rule of law. But the movement spread nationwide, causing fear among the authorities. So it was suppressed harshly."
A graduate student at Peking University's prestigious Guanghua School of Management says that the killings still cast a dark shadow over the Chinese people. "Ten years on, even though the economy has developed significantly, many problems remain unresolved," he says. "Graft and corruption are more entrenched than ever. But people are afraid to stand up; they're afraid to express their anger. They fear government reprisals and the sacrifices they have to make."
Contrary to popular perceptions abroad, even military men lament the violence and bloodshed that accompanied the events of 1989. A ranking colonel in the Beijing Military Region testifies that many of the officers who took part in the crackdown feel varying degrees of remorse at the use of live ammunition against unarmed students as well as innocent bystanders. While many of them accept the official line on "black-hand" instigators, they still regret the bloodletting. "They feel that under no circumstances should the People's Liberation Army have been deployed," says the colonel. "The army is the defender of the country in times of aggression by foreign enemies. Logically and morally, [the use of PLA troops to suppress the protests] cannot be justified."
Others feel that the students then were too na've and idealistic. An external liaison officer of the Beijing municipal government says that June 4 has taught him a couple of lessons: "First, never take social occurrences too optimistically. You must not be muddle-headed. It's always better to think of the worst-case scenario. Second, some happenings shouldn't be allowed to escalate. In 1989, the students should never have been allowed to protest for so long." The subsequent bloodletting prompts Li to say "we recognized we cannot win simply with slogans and hopes. After June 4, most people became more realistic. They became more apolitical, concerned mostly about their next meal. Now people just want to live a quiet life."
That ordinary Chinese have become more pragmatic is confirmed by a senior at Peking University's School of International Studies. "Students are now more rational, weighing benefits against sacrifice," he says. "Individuals cannot predict the future; they can only pursue their own interests." Yet he suggests that at some point, the heavy baggage of June 4 will have to be unloaded by the authorities. The legacy of Tiananmen, he feels, needs to be discussed openly at an appropriate time in the future and the unjust verdict - that the protest was a "counter-revolutionary riot" - overturned.
Plainly, June 4 still looms large in people's minds. For Chinese citizens young and old, the ideals that the students advocated ten years ago still resonate. At the same time, they will think twice about behaving impulsively because, having experienced a decade of economic progress, they have much more to lose now than in 1989.
Ordinary Chinese are not the only ones standing in the shadow of Tiananmen; the same is true of the government. The affair has had a profound impact on the Chinese leadership's thinking, as shown by the nature and pace of the country's subsequent reform process. Having become sensitive, even paranoid, where matters of social stability are concerned, the authorities have dealt with dissent with a heavy hand. Yet, they have also come to realize that changes are necessary to avoid a repeat of June 4.
One change has been in the military. After Tiananmen, the Central Military Commission shrewdly cut away a big chunk of the PLA to form the People's Armed Police. The PAP is charged with restoring order in times of domestic crises, so that the army would not need to intervene and risk inflaming public anger. Other efforts to rehabilitate the military in the eyes of the people have included the recent propaganda campaign over the PLA's strenuous efforts to fight last summer's devastating Yangzi River floods.
More substantive changes have been in the economic and political spheres. Immediately after the crackdown, China was at a crossroads. It was subjected to severe Western economic sanctions and political isolation. At the same time, many Chinese harbored deep contempt for the authorities, particularly Li Peng, the fall guy for the old guard. The sense of crisis was magnified by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Amid that backdrop, Beijing faced the question of how to maintain political control and whether to persist with economic reform.
Then, in early 1992, Deng Xiaoping made his landmark tour of southern China. During the trip, the paramount leader gave his blessing to continued economic reform. If not for the sake of the revolution, he said, it was essential for the sheer survival of the party. Cadres and citizens alike got the message, unleashing explosive growth in 1993-94 and with it double-digit inflation.
ZHU RONGJI WAS BROUGHT in to soft-land the overheated economy. By the latter half of 1997, the no-nonsense economic czar had done that and embarked on an ambitious and comprehensive reform program. That autumn, the party convened its pivotal 15th Congress, which took away the privileged position of the public sector and paved the way for the expansion of private business. That economic liberalization was here to stay was underscored in March this year, when the National People's Congress (NPC) did something that would have made Mao Zedong turn in his grave: It ratified amendments enshrining the private economy in the Chinese Constitution.
For prominent Peking University political scientist Xie Qingkui, the revisions are not enough. "The basic framework is there, but the concept of private property isn't sufficiently clear," he says. "Private property includes individual property. The properties of private enterprises should be further clarified; they should be said to belong to individuals."
Wei Dingren, director of the Constitution research and teaching office at Peking University's law department, likewise considers the amendments modest in scope, but nonetheless feels they are a step in the right direction. "[The revisions] suggest that our economic reforms have taken a big step forward," he says. "We need to further establish in the Constitution our fundamental system and tasks as we push ahead with development."
Reforms in the political system have been forthcoming too, if at a slower pace. President Jiang Zemin has acknowledged the importance of political change, but has put an emphasis on incremental reform, eschewing the fast-paced prescriptions of his liberal predecessor Zhao Ziyang. The unrealistic expectations engendered by the latter's initiatives in the 1980s are seen as having contributed to the unrest of 1989. Thus, the Jiang era has been characterized by caution, high political compression and the rhetoric of stability.
Jiang-style political reform includes refining the existing representative system under the NPC and the advisory Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Other aims include creating a professional civil bureaucracy, promoting the rule of law, separating law from politics, and experimenting with grassroots democracy. Over the past decade, more than 600 million peasants have been given the chance to experience village elections first hand. Shi Weimin, a fellow at the public policy research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says there is plenty of room for improvements. The grassroots elections are far from universal, he notes, and only 10% of village committees are practicing transparency in their affairs. Still, the expansion of village-level democracy is likely to continue well into the next century.
Another trend is the promotion of the civil rights of individuals. The NPC has just drafted the Administrative Redress Law, which gives citizens and organizations the right to seek a review of government rulings. Other legislation designed to protect ordinary Chinese from official abuse are the Administrative Penalties Law, the Administrative Procedure Law and the State Compensation Law.
Ma Licheng, co-author of last year's political bestseller Crossing Swords, says that individual civil rights have improved markedly over the past decade. "People are struggling for their rights and using the law as their weapon," he says. "For instance, city residents are taking local authorities to court to get just compensation for eviction from their homes due to urban renewal. And workers are beginning to use labor laws to their own advantage."
Progress made in civil rights, institutional reform, the rule of law and grassroots democracy, however, stand in sharp contrast to the snail's pace in electoral reform at higher levels. Even as it progressively opens up more economic sectors to the market and cautiously explores political change, the Communist Party has kept a tight grip on political power. The party's grand vision foresees a modern economy within 50 years but speaks little about China's evolving political structure.
This situation is not likely to last, though. Chinese leaders may have bought themselves time by offering the masses economic emancipation, enhanced legal powers and even a taste of democratic freedom. But the expectations brought about by such moves can only lead to a clamoring for more. Constitutional-law expert Wei predicts that the ongoing economic reforms will lead to pressure for political changes. "We should consider changing the factors that directly impinge on political-system reform," he says.
Additional pressure will stem from social developments. With such problems as corruption and the rich-poor gap piling up, the party's moral and political authority has been steadily eroding despite innumerable campaigns to shore it up. After the so-called Fourth Generation of leaders come to power, they may well be forced to confront the final taboo - thoroughgoing political liberalization - if they are to win the sustained support of the people. When that happens, there is likely to be a re-evaluation of June 4. That might finally lay to rest the ghosts of Tiananmen.
TIANANMEN'S LEGACY
- Emphasis on stability: the fast pace of change under his predecessor Zhao Ziyang at least partly responsible for June 4, Jiang has chosen a gradual approach to reform in China
- Continued economic liberalization: Under Zhu, China has turned to widening economic freedom to provide an outlet for people's aspirations
- Expansion of village-level elections: Over 600 million peasants have experienced grassroots democracy in some form during the past decade
- Greater avenues for legal redress: The National People's Congress has passed a number of laws giving citizens better protection from official abuse
- Formation of the People's Armed Police: With the creation of the PAP, the armed forces need not intervene in domestic crises and risk inflaming public anger
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WHERE ARE THE
RADICALS?
Not at Peking
University, that's for certain
By Anne Meijdam/Beijing
AS A PEKING UNIVERSITY STUDENT IN 1989, Xue Yongtao often went to see the posters tacked up around the Triangle, the campus's famous three-sided intersection. Most of the slogans demanded democracy, free speech or an end to corruption. "Our system is like an old coat," one declared. "It has holes and it can't protect us anymore against the bitter winds. We should get rid of it." Xue (not her real name) would feel a thrill, standing before those posters. "We were all very excited that maybe something important would happen," she recalls. "We were just naive kids."
Ten years later, posters are again tacked to trees and walls at Peking University. But the messages are quite different. "NATO out of Yugoslavia," says one. "Clinton equals Adolf Hitler," declares another. Today Xue is 32 and manages a computer shop. She smiles bitterly. "Students are much more practical than we were in 1989," she says. "They will not mess in [domestic] politics. But having said that: I am glad I was there in 1989. It formed me as a person and I'll never forgive the government. They sent tanks against us."
Student movements have regularly been at the crest of political change in China this century. Traditionally, century-old Peking U has held its revolutionary banner high - and it was an incubator of the 1989 movement. Since Tiananmen, authorities have viewed with suspicion the slightest whiff of campus activism. When Deng Xiaoping died two years ago, the university's security and propaganda machinery went into high gear. The same goes every June 4. "If I try to talk about issues of national interest," says a student, "my roommates tell me to shut up, mind my own business and study. It's not that everyone is happy but even small actions would be blocked. There's just no point trying." Much, of course, depends on the kind of activity. Peking U students were the first to march on the U.S. embassy following the May 7 bombing of Beijing's Belgrade mission. Some even urged fellow students to enlist in a "defense army for Yugoslavia." In other words, Peking U students are eager protesters - so long as they are being politically correct.
The change of attitude is not merely genuflection to a heavy-handed regime. It is as much a result of China's breathtaking economic expansion over the last decade. Most Chinese college kids would rather talk consumer choice than political choice. Besides, many of their parents missed out on an education during the Cultural Revolution and, as a result, put a heavy premium on schooling. Moreover, parents must now pay for a college education themselves. Many kids are kept so busy with extra-curricular study that they barely have time to hang out with their friends, let alone conspire to topple the Communist Party.
"Peking U students are now about as dangerous to the government as toddlers in kindergarten," says Li Jun, a doctor. Adds 1989 student Xue Yongtao: "The government has put a lot of work into so-called patriotic education. And they have been successful. As you can see, there is a big gap between my generation and the students today."
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OF HEROES AND
VILLAINS
Three student
leaders and three officials who played key roles at Tiananmen. Where they are
now
By Yulanda Chung
FOR BETTER OR WORSE, their names will for eternity be associated with the events of June 4, 1989. Few can forget the dissidents, the student leaders who led multitudes against the authoritarian regime in Beijing - Wang Dan, Wu'er Kaixi, Chai Ling. In the years since the trio of student leaders paraded across the planet's television screens, however, they have lost much of their luster. They are accused of being out of touch, self-centered, grasping even. As for the men who wielded power during those tumultuous times, some have fared better than others. Former premier Li Peng, for example, remains a power to be reckoned with. As does the still rising star Wen Jiabao. Not so fortunate is Wen's former boss Zhao Ziyang, the ex-Communist Party chief who openly expressed sympathy for the students; that act wrecked his political career. Their stories: then and now.
Wang Dan, 30 He was instrumental in launching the so-called democracy salons in the early days of the protest. After the crackdown, he topped the government's most-wanted list. He paid the price. The soft-spoken student leader was locked up for seven of the past 10 years. "I tried not to cry in front of the prison guards and show my indignation," Wang recalls, "but failed when I thought of my mother." In April 1998, Beijing released Wang on "medical parole." Today he is doing a masters degree in history at Harvard. Studying in English is daunting, but keeping alive his democratic campaign is quite another matter. "It's my responsibility to do both," he says. Wang concedes that watching China from the other side of the world is "superficial." Yet Wang insists that if he could go back tomorrow and restart his campaign, he would "start packing right now." In the meantime, Wang says, disenfranchised workers will likely lead the next wave of protest.
Li Peng, 70 His name will forever be associated with the crackdown. Li declared martial law and imposed a curfew on Beijing (at Deng Xiaoping's order, no doubt). His unrelenting opposition to the students tipped the balance as Deng veered between calling the uprising a "riot" and a "patriotic movement." Li has been identified ever since as a hardliner. Unfazed by changing times and more moderate leadership, Li has tirelessly championed the official verdict that June 4 was a counter-revolutionary rebellion. During Zhu Rongji's recent U.S. trip, he said the "episode happened because they wanted democracy but they didn't want rule of law." Zhu made no reference to a counter-revolutionary rebellion. And there have been whispers about re-evaluating the verdict. Still, as the No. 2 man in the powerful Politburo, Li can easily amass the votes to halt any deviation from the official line.
Wu'er Kaixi, 31 Much has changed for the outspoken student leader who once berated Li Peng on national television. "I'd be a lot more hesitant if I were given a second chance to lead a demonstration," says Wu'er Kaixi. The former firebrand says he wouldn't even join a rally today. "I've learned that one man's death is one too many," he says. After evading capture, he fled eventually to the U.S., where he was accused of wasting donations on fast living and womanizing. (He denies the charges.) In 1994, he moved to Taiwan, where he now works as a radio talkshow host and runs a non-profit media consultancy that focuses on Taipei-Beijing relations and mainland democracy movements. While acknowledging that he has a comparatively comfortable life, he tells of his "spiritual torture in exile," adding that he longs "to be back in China every single moment of his life." His verdict on the student movement of 10 years ago? "It's wrong to call it patriotic," says Wu'er Kaixi. "It is more a matter of love of freedom than love of country."
Zhao Ziyang, 80 If there is one Chinese official who will go down as a benign leader during the Tiananmen events, it is Zhao. The then Communist Party chief praised the students for their patriotism before delegates at the annual general meeting of the Asian Development Bank, to which Beijing played host in May 1989. And vivid in many minds are televised images of Zhao's visits to ailing hunger strikers in hospital and in Tiananmen Square during squally rains. But Zhao paid the ultimate political price for his actions. Driven from power by Deng Xiaoping because he had severely divided the leadership, Zhao has been under house arrest to this day. Last year, when former president Yang Shangkun died, Zhao lost his last important ally. But he is not entirely a spent force. Just before U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to China last year, Zhao wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party demanding a re-evaluation of the June 4 verdict. The fact that he could circulate such a controversial letter indicates glimmers of moderate support. Real reconciliation, however, can only come if he is released - unlikely any time soon.
Chai Ling, 32 The world watched her rally the students in Tiananmen and shed kilos during a hunger strike. Close-up, people experienced her addiction to the spotlight and her regal manners. Ten years on, Chai seems an entirely different woman. She no longer even looks the same - a plastic surgeon gave her the double-eyelids of a Caucasian (a disguise to flee the authorities, she says) and today she runs a Massachusetts-based company that develops intranets for universities. Her makeover has exposed her to charges that she abandoned the cause for self-centered pursuits. And some have accused her of milking her dissident credentials to get into Ivy League colleges (Princeton for a masters in public affairs and Harvard for an MBA). "She has almost quit the overseas Chinese democratic scene," says a fellow dissident. "But there is nothing wrong with keeping a low profile." In fact, Chai's business venture also aims to create an online student community promoting the free flow of information in the mainland. Chai hopes to return to China - but only after the present generation of leaders has gone. That could be a while.
Wen Jiabao, 57 He was a Zhao protégé. Moreover, he was Beijing's chief negotiator with the students in Tiananmen. For most, this would have been a political kiss of death. Yet against all odds Wen has rehabilitated himself. His pro-market outlook has propelled him to the vice-premiership of the State Council, China's cabinet. He is tipped to climb even higher - to succeed Premier Zhu Rongji when the current leadership retires. Some say Wen's extraordinary rise has less to do with him than with prevailing circumstances - and others' mistakes. Fellow State Council vice-premier Wu Bangguo's failure to tackle China's floundering state-owned enterprises gave Wen the perfect chance to show his mettle. He also scored points when he made the swift decision to blow up dikes during last year's catastrophic floods and divert water away from important cities. Wen is one of the few Zhao disciples who has managed to escape the legacy of June 4.
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'MY LIFE CHANGED
FOREVER'
Lulu Fang was
there and wished she wasn't
IT BEGAN WITH CURIOSITY. I was a first-year student at the Beijing Second Foreign Languages Institute when Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang died - and my life changed forever. Days later, thousands of students marched to Tiananmen to pay their respects. I followed my roommates to the square after a shopping excursion nearby. I'd never seen so many police. The crowd shouted: "Li Peng, come out! Li Peng, come out!" I didn't understand their demands and didn't want to know. I was never interested in politics. Dad had always told me: "Stay away from politics, it's very dangerous."
At the square the word "democracy" was on most banners and in nearly every slogan. "What the hell is democracy?" I wanted to know, but no one could tell me. Demonstrations escalated into hunger strikes, but the government was silent. Everyone around me was shouting slogans, many of my friends hunger-striking. I could wait no longer. No hunger strikes for me, though - I loved eating too much. Every day, more and more people came to the square. Food and drinks were free. It was like a giant party. During the day, it was slogan-shouting and marching; at night dancing by campfire. It was so much fun!
Martial law was declared on May 20. A dozen students from my university were carried back to campus that afternoon - they had been brutally beaten by the cops. We couldn't believe it. Outraged, I went to Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound. After hours of shouting "Li Peng come out!" student leaders lost their voices. I had been the loudest in the crowd so I was asked to lead the chants. I felt like a revolutionary hero. I delivered speeches about democracy and corruption, though I still knew nothing about either. Still, the crowd followed my instructions like robots.
Not every day was so exciting. The hunger strike was going nowhere. The square was littered with evil-smelling rubbish. I heard student leaders were fighting. I was bored. I returned to campus and wrote a big-character poster urging a rewrite of the Constitution. I put it up and realized I had never read the Constitution. Days later, the campus filled with the racket of military trucks and tanks on route to the square. It was June 3, a sunny afternoon; we were playing tennis.
Students ran past the sports ground, yelling: "They're smashing the tanks!" I rushed to the scene. But to my disappointment, the smashing was done. Instead I released air from truck tires. I had always wanted to be in a war or revolution. The sun was setting. "Something big will happen tonight," I told myself. I put on a black jacket and black jeans for camouflage. I wrote my last wishes in a letter and asked a roommate to pass it to my boyfriend if I didn't return. With a Uighur dagger in my pocket, I hopped on my red Flying Deer bicycle. It was time to become a real revolutionary hero.
At the square I couldn't believe my eyes. It was so peaceful! People were strolling around waving paper fans like it was any summer evening in Beijing. But the quiet was deceptive. After midnight, a tank roared into the square, chased by rock-throwing crowds. By then, some student leaders were urging us to leave. Firecrackers exploded in the distance. But they weren't really firecrackers. Bullets whizzed over our heads. We cheered because we thought they were rubber. We realized they were real when we saw the sparks.
Soldiers were holed up near Mao's mausoleum. "Gee, we're going to be ambushed," we joked. Then all the lights in the square went on and tanks were roaring toward us from three directions. A group of soldiers pointed their guns at us. A chill went down my spine when I saw the light bouncing off their bayonets. Reluctantly we started to walk between the tanks toward a corner of the square. A girl started to sob; I told her to shut up. Then the soldiers began bludgeoning students and everyone panicked. I was squeezed from all sides. My feet lifted from the ground. I couldn't breathe. My glasses smashed against my face. "I don't want to die. Please, God, I beg you! Mommy, where are you?" I screamed. Suddenly I regretted coming to the square.
Ten years on I am back in Beijing. Students are protesting again, this time against NATO. Iam curious to see what they think about June 4 today. I want to see if they are like we were. "Maybe people were killed 10 years ago," says one protester. "But that was Chinese killing Chinese, it's within the family."
I know now that the government has won. The memories have been erased, the younger generation has been brainwashed. History is all about selected memories. Mao knew about that. As his portrait gazes benignly from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the incident known as Tiananmen is being reconstructed.
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MEAN MACAU STREETS
Why China's army is not the best
institution to clean them up
The police and the courts seem unable to rein in the triads. For that reason perhaps, residents look to the stationing of Chinese troops in Macau after the handover (a sore point with Lisbon) as a stabilizing force. Now local leaders have gone so far as to request that China's legislature invest the People's Liberation Army (PLA) with police powers. Is this an initial step toward a resolute crackdown on the triads? Or is it being mooted to secure leverage for negotiations between chief executive-designate Edmund Ho and the gangs? Anyone running Macau will probably have to reach some sort of accommodation with the triads. In fact, many governments are even willing to tolerate a certain amount of illegal activity - so long as it does not disrupt everyday life.
That cannot be the case in Macau, where deteriorating law and order threaten to sink the community. The adverse publicity has led to a steady decline in tourism, which accounts for more than 40% of Macau's economy. Visitor arrivals fell from a peak of 8.1 million in 1996 to 6.9 million last year. Much of the rising violence is related to turf wars over casinos, specifically control of the VIP rooms. (Though gambling is a monopoly of STDM company, the triads have managed to elbow in on lucrative sub-contracts for the high-rollers' salons.) The most notorious gang, 14-K, is allegedly led by "Broken Tooth" Wan Kuok-koi, who was recently charged with coercing croupiers, but was acquitted. Meanwhile, the crime wave has slashed gross earnings of STDM, owned by Stanley Ho (no relation to the new CE), by 20% last year. This inevitably hurts government revenues, more than half of which come from gaming.
Some suggest the solution lies in dismantling the gambling monopoly due to expire in 2001. Others want to improve its supervision. But whatever role the Chinese garrison plays, it can only be a stop-gap measure. Even in the mainland, it is not the army but the armed police who are entrusted with crime-fighting duties.
One of Edmund Ho's top priorities must be to build an effective law-enforcement organization. As things stand, the Macau police force is hobbled by corruption and heavily infiltrated with triad members. Reforming the force will likely require an offer of amnesty to cooperating police officers and the setting up of an anti-corruption bureau. As Hong Kong's experience shows, an independent watch-dog agency is invaluable in cleaning up graft - and not just in the security forces. Safe streets - and Macau's growth as a modern metropolis - depend on the strength of its civil institutions rather than martial law.
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Question: What do you get when you cross Tiananmen with the Internet? Answer: One jittery Chinese Communist Party. Each year, as the June 4 anniversary of the pro-democracy uprising draws near, the authorities tighten the spigot on the already less-than-free flow of information. But these days the biggest challenge to the Party's authority is not big character posters in Beijing, it's news and views being traded over the Web or zapped to subscribers' hips via pagers. Which is why Shanghai has slapped a ban on circulating news reports via websites and pagers. Also outlawed: posting "inflammatory information" on Internet bulletin boards and newsgroups. The official explanation, given to some 131 firms who most commonly provide services such as stock quotes and currency exchange rates, was that some of them have been issuing information that is "pornographic, superstitious or harmful to state security." The city's Posts and Telecommunications Bureau said the ban would remain in effect "for the time being." Presumably until the Tiananmen commemorations are also last month's news.
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WHAT AILS THAI
BUDDHISM
The monkhood is
money-centered and manipulated
By Santikaro Bhikkhu
OVER THE PAST DECADE, the Thai press has run many articles about scandals in Thai Buddhism, the latest and largest concerning the controversial abbot, Phra Dhammachayo, who is accused of embezzlement and propagation of heretic doctrines. The scandal over his rich temple, Dhammakaya, poses a serious challenge for the Crisis-afflicted Thai Sangha (official monastic institution). While all the attention points to genuine concern about Buddhism in Thailand, a deeper understanding is missing. Attaining an understanding - according to the Buddha's teaching of the four Noble Truths - requires three additional dimensions: an analysis of the causes of the problems, a clear vision of how the Sangha should be, and a realistic path toward realizing that vision.
The incomplete understanding is symptomatic of Thai society today. None of the big players involved - politicians, academics, businessmen and senior monks - knows how things got this way, and what to do about it all. Nobody wants to admit that the noble institution of Thai Buddhism is dying of an unknown cancer; both the patient and would-be doctors are still in the denial stage. There are many inter-linked causes. They include:
- Government interference and domination: The major cause of Sangha weakness is the aggressive control by Thai governments, especially the corrupt and violent ones since World War II. Monks have learned passivity and fear. No longer living in a symbiotic relationship with villagers, they have fallen under the control of the rich, politicians and high officials.
- Feudalism: The monastic hierarchy clings to a feudal structure dependent on a rapidly disappearing agrarian culture. It does not reflect the realities and aspirations of Thai people today, including the majority of monks.
- Bureaucratization: The imposition of a top-down power structure by field marshals has made monks dependent, unable to think and act originally or responsibly. They only know how to await orders.
- Patriarchal sexism: The hierarchy is a gerontocracy that has yet to take a stand on the scourge of prostitution and refuses to consider ordination of proper nuns. Thoughtful women find little in the Sangha to inspire and guide them.
- Authoritarianism and cowardice: Unwilling or unable to leave the cozy quarters provided by the rich and powerful, senior monks pass down orders - usually provided by the government - rather than work with younger generations and the majority of monks who live in rural areas.
- Lack of organizational skills: Their positions were achieved by memorizing Pali grammar (not the texts and teachings themselves) and working the Sangha patronage system. Administrative ability is seldom developed in the process.
- Out-of-date education: Reforms at the beginning of this century are clung to as untouchable. Further reforms from the early democracy period (post-1932) were wiped out by military dictators. Senior monks cannot understand, and fear, any new system that they cannot control. Thus, monastic education lags very far beyond the already weak secular system.
- Monetarization: Money has come to have a central role at all levels of the Sangha and this has been massively corrupting. The Buddha's original monks engaged only in barter amongst themselves. While there are "strict" monks today who refuse to touch money, some of them control fat bank accounts. This is not seen as hypocrisy. There has been no official attempt to come to terms with this contradiction.
Ven. Dharmapitaka, the leading Thai Buddhist scholar of his generation, has pointed out how money has replaced goodness (punya, or merit) as the media of exchange between the monks and the laity. The laity gives monetary donations to monks more as an investment, such as temple supporters who may be rewarded by good profits on land deals, or the politicians who use the monks to get re-elected and thus gain access to budgets.
Senior monks are thoroughly caught up in all this. To have some of them chant at your father's funeral, you must be prepared to offer money; your secretary will discreetly inquire about the sum. Some positions can be purchased. With money the supreme value in the Sangha, spiritual values such as the Buddha, the Dhamma [natural law], truth, wisdom, and compassion take a back seat. It is not right to place all responsibility on the heads of the senior monks. In some ways, they are as much victims as perpetrators. Also, these weaknesses plague religions around the world and are not unique to Thailand.
Is there hope? Seeds of hope - yet weak and unsupported - exist among "development monks" active in the problems of their villages and ecosystems; where the monks' forest tradition is still relatively untainted; among a few highly competent scholar monks, and a new generation of monks and nuns who do not buy the promises of the consumer society yet understand it. If the geriatric, pampered leadership would step aside (at their advanced age, the senior monks deserve respect and compassion), and if the politicians and bureaucrats stopped manipulating Buddhism for their petty interests, these seeds might sprout and grow into an institution that again is relevant to the lives of Thais.
- Santikaro Bhikkhu is an American monk living in Thailand
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Why did the May 22 twin celebrations of Buddha's and Falungong leader Li Hongzhi's birthdays in Beijing fall flat? The quasi-religious group had been able to amass about 16,000 followers outside the Zhongnanhai leadership compound on April 25. This time, the authorities outflanked the group by forbidding all Communist Party members, state functionaries, PLA and People's Armed Police officers from taking part. According to Falungong sources, about 25%-30% of the group's members are also party members, usually officials at the section level or above. Falungong insiders say nothing much happened on May 22 because leader Li hadn't ordered a celebration, leaving most members to mark the day quietly in their homes. But a rumored crackdown on Falungong activities scheduled to come after the 10th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen incident is underway. The authorities have issued a 12-point order within the PLA and PAP against involvement in the group. Officers in the Beijing Garrison Command, for example, were ordered to give up their Falungong texts and paraphernalia, and a ban against the individual or collective practice of the group's exercises is in effect throughout the military.
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US Documents Say 2,600 Killed, 7,000 Injured At Tiananmen Massacre
TAIPEI, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Up to 2,600 people were killed and 7,000 injured when China used tanks and troops in a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square 10 years ago, a report here said Friday, quoting declassified US information.
Eleven students were crushed to death by tanks, according to one document cited in the China Times daily report.
The death and injury toll was obtained from China's Red Cross and was not an unreasonable estimate, according to a US State Department paper.
Beijing authorities have never released an official casualty toll.
The 35 declassified documents, including reports from the US embassy in Beijing and State Department dispatches to the embassy between June 2 and June 29, 1989, were released by the George Washington University, the China Times said.
A June 22 dispatch to the State Department quoted students as saying they witnessed 11 demonstrators from Beijing and Qinghua Universities crushed to death by tanks and another student lost his legs.
Students who stood in the front lines facing the troops wore heavy coats thinking they could ward off rubber bullets, the witnesses said.
It wasn't until they saw their friends fall that they realized real bullets were being fired.
In a June 4 dispatch to the embassy, the State Department said Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui had summoned the US representative in Taipei David Dean to express his indignation over the crackdown and urged Washington to condemn and impose sanctions on Beijing.
The documents said the student-led pro-democracy movement sprouted in November 1987 and the march commemorating the anniversary of the death of former Chinese leader Hu Yaoban was a prelude to the Tiananmen tragedy.
By Agence France Presse
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HK Group: China Holds More Dissidents For Tiananmen
HONG KONG, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) Chinese police have detained seven more dissidents, a Hong Kong human rights group said on Friday, the 10th anniversary of China's crackdown on a democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
The seven, detained on Thursday and Friday, brought the number of detentions of dissidents planning to commemorate the anniversary to at least 130 in the past month, the Information Center of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said.
It said 42 of the dissidents were still in police custody.
A Christian was taken away in Beijing on Friday morning when he was preparing to go to church to pray for victims killed in the crackdown, the center said in a statement.
A dissident in the northern province of Shanxi, three in the northeastern province of Liaoning and two in Jilin in the same region were taken away on Thursday night, it said.
Twenty-seven student leaders in the Tiananmen protests, including Wang Dan, Wu'er Kaixi and Shen Tong, issued a statement to condemn the atrocities committed by Beijing in the bloodbath, the center said.
They also demanded Chinese authorities to reverse its verdict on the movement and release those arrested.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed when Chinese troops and tanks shot their way into the square on the night of June 3-4, 1989, to crush the movement.
China's communist government labeled the student-led demonstrations a "counter-revolutionary riot" whipped up by hostile foreign forces in the United States and elsewhere.
Wang had collected 106,200 signatures from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States from people calling for a reassessment of the Tiananmen protests.
On Friday, dissident Cheng Fan handed in a petition to Chinese authorities to demand a reversal of the verdict and the release of dissidents. Other activists had started 24-hour hunger strikes in the central Chinese city of Xian and the southwestern province of Sichuan, the information center said.
By Reuters
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Clinton Renews China's Trade Status; Battle Brews
WASHINGTON, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, President Bill Clinton told Congress on Thursday he would renew China's trade privileges for another year.
The notice, sent to Congress with no fanfare, was expected to spark a stormy debate over the future of U.S. relations with China in light of recent allegations of Chinese spying and illegal campaign contributions and growing concerns about human rights abuses and technology transfers.
Lawmakers, also alarmed by a $57 billion U.S. trade deficit with China last year, have 90 days to overturn the president's decision to renew what is now called Normal Trade Relations (NTR), and was formerly called Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status.
The trade status gives China the same low-tariff access to U.S. markets enjoyed by nearly every other country, and most analysts believe the president's decision will be upheld.
In a statement, Clinton said every president since 1980 had renewed trade ties with China, and argued that it would support U.S. jobs, promote market reforms in China and benefit the global economy.
"Trade also remains a force for social change in China, spreading the tools, contacts and ideas that promote freedom," Clinton said. "A decade ago at Tiananmen, when Chinese citizens courageously demonstrated for democracy, they were met by violence from a regime fearful of change.
"We continue to speak and work strongly for human rights in China," Clinton added. "A continued policy of principled, purposeful engagement reinforces these efforts to move China toward greater openness and broader freedom."
A Hong Kong-based human rights group, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, said on Thursday that authorities had been rounding up activists to prevent trouble on the June 4 anniversary of the massacre 10 years ago when government troops stormed Tiananmen Square in Beijing to stop pro-democracy demonstrations.
The group said nearly 100 people had been held in the past month and that at least 34 were still in custody.
Clinton in his statement said that severing commercial ties and pursuing a policy of disengagement and confrontation with China would only strengthen the hands of those in Beijing who oppose greater openness and freedom.
He said he was determined to pursue a market-opening trade agreement with China that would clear the way for U.S. support for China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
"Accordingly, I am prepared to work closely with Congress to secure permanent NTR status for China in the context of a commercially strong WTO agreement," Clinton said.
Negotiators came close to a deal in April during Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to Washington. But talks have stalled since the NATO bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade in early May, and are unlikely to resume until the United States completes its investigation and offers China an explanation on how its embassy became a target.
Analysts say it is too soon to gauge whether a report on the spying allegations, released last week by a special committee headed by Representative Christopher Cox, a California Republican, has undermined support in Congress for continued trade with China.
The administration is expected to rely heavily on lobbying by U.S. business leaders, who hope to tap into China's huge market potential, in order to win support for China trade in the Republican-controlled Congress. Labor unions, an important Democratic support group, oppose China's NTR status because of concerns about worker rights and basic human rights.
Most analysts are confident the president's decision will survive a congressional vote. To deny China the trade status possessed by almost every other country would be a shock to relations already strained by the spying allegations and the embassy bombing, which was followed by angry anti-American demonstrations in Beijing.
The bombing killed three journalists and injured 20 other people. Clinton and NATO have apologized for the attack, which the United States said was a mistake.
"If we treat China like an enemy she surely will become one," Representative David Dreier, a California Republican, told Reuters. "There are a number of my colleagues who realize what a mistake that would be. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be as vigilant as we could be."
By Reuters
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China Insists On Boat Compensation From Philippines
MANILA, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China will insist on compensation from the Philippines for the sinking of a Chinese fishing boat in a collision with a Philippine navy vessel in disputed South China Sea waters, diplomatic sources said Friday.
China alleges the Philippine vessel rammed the fishing vessel off Scarborough Shoal on May 23.
The Philippines has rejected demands for compensation, saying the two vessels bumped accidentally when the navy tried to arrest the Chinese for illegal fishing.
One source said China was insisting the fishing boat would not have sunk from an accidental collision.
China was also saying it was a very expensive boat, in an apparent bid to increase the amount of compensation. It was earlier reported China was seeking 30,000 dollars for the sunken vessel.
Three Chinese were rescued by the Philippine navy after the collision and were turned over to the Chinese embassy here on the understanding that the mission would make them available for possible prosecution.
However, earlier this week, Manila said it was dropping charges against the Chinese.
Scarborough Shoal, where the incident occurred, is located off the western coast of the main island of Luzon.
China claims the shoal as well as the entire South China Sea, but the Philippines says the shoal is part of the country's territory and has long been patrolled by its navy.
The shoal is north of the Spratly island chain in the South China Sea, where Manila and Beijing are embroiled in a diplomatic storm over Chinese construction of buildings on the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef.
Manila defense officials have been pressing their government to file a diplomatic protest against Beijing over the alleged harassment of a stricken Philippine naval logistics vessel by two Chinese warships in the Spratlys on May 15.
By Agence France Presse
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Shanghai Tightens Curbs On Internet Cafes
SHANGHAI, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) Chinese boomtown Shanghai has punished 278 unregistered Internet cafes in a crackdown on uncontrolled forays into cyberspace, the official Liberation Daily reported on Friday.
The move was aimed at "standardizing the city's public Internet cafes" where customers can sip coffee and surf "the Net", the newspaper said.
A city government official said some of the unregistered cafes would be fined while others would be given a warning.
The crackdown, described as "Public Action Number One", was launched jointly by the city's police and commercial, telecommunications and education authorities.
Shanghai now has more than 2,000 Internet cafes but only 1,500 of them have applied to register and only 350 are authorized, the newspaper said.
Local authorities have tightened control of information vendors around the 10th anniversary of the Beijing crackdown on dissent on June 3-4, 1989, when the army shot its way into Tiananmen Square to end seven weeks of pro-democracy protests.
Late last month, Shanghai ordered local paging stations and computer information vendors to stop disseminating political news temporarily, including news downloaded from the Internet.
China has seen explosive growth in the use of the Internet in recent years but the government has also viewed it as a potential threat to its authority.
There are now an estimated two million Internet users in China and some experts predict the number of web surfers could top 10 million by next year.
By Reuters
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Dalai Lama: China Policy Of Torture In Tibet Goes On
COPENHAGEN, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) China is forging ahead with its policy of torture and executions in Tibet with Tibetans becoming a downtrodden minority in their own country, the Dalai Lama said.
"The unending cycle of repression, torture and summary executions continues as before," Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader wrote in the preface of a Tibet supplement in the journal of the International Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims (IRTC).
The Copenhagen-based IRTC’s quarterly journal was published on Friday.
"The population transfer of Chinese into Tibet continues with alarming intensity, so that the whole country is being transformed into a Chinese area where Tibetans are becoming a powerless minority," the Dalai Lama said.
Beijing, which says Tibet is an unalienable part of China, sent troops to occupy the Himalayan mountain region in 1949. Ten years later an armed uprising against the People's Liberation Army failed and the Dalai lama fled to exile, in India.
Since 1959, three United Nations resolutions have been passed condemning Chinese human rights abuses in Tibet.
In his article, the Dalai Lama said China had tightened its control of all aspects of Tibetan life and ordered that all political activities by Tibetans be suppressed. He described the situation in the country as "a state of de facto martial law".
He urged the international community to go on reminding China of its obligations under the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which it has signed.
In another article in the journal, Jane Caple of the London-based Tibet Information Network said Chinese "human rights abuses, including the widespread use of torture, continue unabated in Tibet".
An Amnesty International representative concurred, saying ill-treatment and torture of Tibetans were an integral part of the work of the Chinese police and armed forces in Tibet.
By Reuters
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Husband of Belgrade Bomb Victim Learns The Truth
BEIJING, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) Almost one month after his journalist wife was killed by NATO bombs in China's Belgrade embassy, the husband of the Xinhua News Agency reporter has been told of her death, the China Daily reported on Friday.
Cao Rongfei, the embassy first secretary, was blinded in one eye in the attack.
Hospital staff in Beijing had shielded him from the truth as they fought a long and successful battle to save the vision in his other eye, the newspaper said.
A small group of Xinhua journalists and Communist Party officials broke the news to him on Wednesday, when his 19-year-old son was allowed to see his father for the first time since the May 7 bombing, it said.
Doctors had told Cao that his wife, Shao Yunhuan, suffered a spinal injury and could not be moved from Belgrade.
Medical staff went to great lengths to ensure he remained ignorant, barring his son from visiting and blocking his access to newspapers, radio and television.
"Upon hearing the news, Cao closed his eyes tightly and tears ran down his face," the newspaper said. A picture showed Cao's son at his father's bedside holding his hand.
Shao was given a state funeral along with two journalists from the Guangming Daily also killed in the attack.
All three have been proclaimed martyrs and their possessions, including blood-soaked cotton quilts, pens, notebooks and tape recorders will be displayed in the Revolution Museum on Tiananmen Square.
The bombing sparked national fury and led to a three-day siege of the U.S. and British embassies by rock-throwing mobs.
Chinese media insist the attack was deliberate and the government has demanded an apology, a full explanation and punishment for those responsible.
By Reuters
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Hong Kong Welcomes Clinton Move To Back Renewal Of China's NTR Status
HONG KONG, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Hong Kong government said Friday it welcomed US President Bill Clinton's decision to seek unconditional renewal of China's Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status.
Clinton on Thursday told congress he wanted to renew China's favorable trade status for another year.
"President Clinton's decision to renew the mainland's NTR trading status is good news for Hong Kong. The decision is conducive to boosting our business confidence," a government spokesman said in a statement.
"The United States and the mainland are Hong Kong's two largest trading partners and good relations between them are of vital importance to Hong Kong as a trading, financial and investment center.
"NTR is the normal basis for conducting trade between economies. We hope that this decision will strengthen the bilateral relationship between our two largest trading partners."
Revoking NTR with China would require a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Congressional debate on the issue is traditionally heated but threatens to be especially contentious this year in the wake of allegations that China stole critical US nuclear secrets over the past 20 years.
Clinton has requested the US Congress to renew China's NTR status for another year. Congress now has 90 days to consider his request.
By Agence France Presse
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China Arrests Tiananmen Leaflet Thrower
BEIJING, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) Chinese police detained a man for throwing leaflets in the air near Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Friday, the 10th anniversary of killings at the square.
The leaflets called for democracy and an end to corruption -- the main demands of student protesters who occupied the square for seven weeks in 1989 until the army shot its way in at the cost of hundreds, possibly thousands, of lives.
A copy of the leaflet, signed by an unidentified student of the elite Peking University -- a hotbed of student activism in 1989 -- also smacked of passionate nationalism.
"Down with American imperialism!" it read, just under a month after NATO destroyed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and unleashing vehement anti-American protests across the country.
Policemen chased and detained the young man, whose identity was not known.
Plainclothes men grabbed the scattered leaflets near Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, where a huge portrait of the late Chairman Mao Zedong gazes down on Tiananmen Square.
"Long live Chairman Mao! Long live socialism!" the leaflet read.
The square has been sealed off with a steel curtain for renovations for the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic of China on October 1.
The leaflet warned against the re-appearance of capitalists in China and the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
It called on hundreds of thousands of laid-off state workers and impoverished farmers to "unite and move forward for the sake of building a fair, just new China".
The leaflet said the wages of government employees and military scientists should be increased. It urged authorities to introduce an inheritance tax and a bank interest tax.
Chinese authorities are obsessed with security and have been bracing for trouble on the most politically sensitive anniversary on the Chinese calendar.
Police questioned several pedestrians near the square earlier in the day and led away at least one.
On the ninth anniversary last year, police dragged away a wheelchair-bound petitioner and his brother, who also tossed handfuls of leaflets in the air.
Students at an international school in Beijing were evacuated on Friday after school authorities received a bomb threat that turned out to be a false alarm, a parent of one student said.
School authorities declined to confirm or deny the bomb scare, the third at the school this year.
Police also declined to comment.
By Reuters
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Tiananmen Images Still Haunt U.S.-China Relations
WASHINGTON, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) The image of a Chinese demonstrator defying a tank still haunts U.S. ties with China a decade after the Tiananmen Square massacre as relations between the two powers take a fresh downturn.
The Chinese government crackdown in Beijing's Tiananmen Square left stark memories among Americans of student-led democracy demonstrators crushed by military force. They were also protesting government corruption and seeking better conditions at universities.
Among the images that seemed to encapsulate the struggle was one, widely publicized internationally, of a lone protester bravely seeking to block the path of a tank as it rolled near the square.
Reflecting on the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 massacre, U.S. experts said Chinese progress in areas of human rights and political openness remained slow.
"I'm convinced that event will be a major milestone in Chinese history," said Winston Lord, who left China as U.S. ambassador just weeks before the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
U.S.-China relations, rarely smooth, turned rockier this year with allegations of Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear labs and NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
The relationship between the United States and China has become even more of a balancing act in recent years given the opening of the Chinese economy to outsiders and U.S. interest in participating in these business opportunities.
Human rights advocates have criticized President Bill Clinton for not pressing China harder on rights issues.
"This has been the problem with this administration. It's very good on rhetoric when it comes to human rights, but it's not as effective when it comes to consistently applying that rhetoric with a credible policy," Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director for Human Rights Watch Asia, said.
Clinton on Thursday announced he was renewing so-called Normal Trade Relations for China, giving it the low-tariff access to U.S. markets enjoyed by most countries and triggering what is expected to be an acrimonious debate in Congress.
"We continue to speak and work strongly for human rights in China," Clinton said. A continued policy of engagement reinforced efforts "to move China toward greater openness and broader freedom," he said.
Ten years ago demonstrators from all walks of life protested across China for weeks that ended in tanks and troops breaking up the peaceful protests. Some protesters arrested at that time remain jailed, human rights activists said.
A decade later China's aging communist leaders maintain their stand that the crackdown was essential to preserve stability in the vast country and ensure that economic liberalization continued.
"At some point they're going to reverse the verdict -- it may take the next generation of leaders -- and that will be a significant signal in terms of genuinely moving toward a more open political system when that happens," Lord said.
The events of a decade ago have left an inherent suspicion of Chinese declarations of openness, experts said.
"In some ways the Tiananmen Square crackdown was viewed as the emperor removing his robes and showing his true nature," said Stephen Yates, senior policy analyst for China at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
"People will hear of positive rhetoric come out of Beijing. People will hear about implementation of more open, liberal policies," Yates said.
"But because of the image of the man in front of the tank, or all of the dead bodies and twisted bicycles that were run over by tanks, they still say wait a minute, who these guys are keeps me from really putting a lot of credence into this notion that they're changing, things are getting better," he said.
From a Western perspective, China has improved in certain areas. Chinese citizens have more freedom of movement to pursue jobs and can practice certain religions without incurring the wrath of the government, analysts said.
"We have assumed that the political change would take place at the same speed as the economic change, and that's not been true," Gerrit Gong, director of Asian studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.
"So we need to be more realistic about what we think is happening," he said.
"Anyone who was there would not forget the tremendous sadness at the events that took place," said Gong who was a special assistant in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at that time.
"I think you never forget the sound of gunfire. I think you never forget the sign of armored personnel carriers and tanks and troops moving through the city," he said.
By Reuters
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Hong Kong Marks Tiananmen Square Massacre, With Call To Move Forward
HONG KONG, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Thousands of people are expected at Friday's candlelit vigil in Hong Kong marking the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, determined to ensure the commemoration sends a message to Beijing.
Vigil organizers, the Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China, were optimistic attendance would exceed last year's 40,000, despite Beijing warning that commemorations at home and abroad "will not be well received."
Fears for the future of Hong Kong's limited democracy have made campaigners more determined than ever to show they will not be bowed.
They see signs the government is kowtowing to Beijing two years after the return to Chinese sovereignty, saying this is demonstrated by an appeal to the Chinese parliament to clarify the Basic Law, Hong Kong's post-handover constitution, to tackle a feared influx of mainland immigrants.
"This is undermining democracy in Hong Kong," said Law Yuk-kai, director of Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor.
But newspapers in the territory, devoting pages to recapping how tanks and troops crushed China's pro-democracy movement on June 4, 1989 expected protest numbers to be down on those who last year tested the political waters at the first Tiananmen anniversary since the handover.
A survey by the Oriental Daily News showed only 18 percent of 276 respondents could attend the candlelit vigil, with 17 percent saying the event was no longer important.
Several dailies also said it was time to move forward to avoid a repeat of Tiananmen.
"The painful memories should not hinder us from summing up a lesson from the June 4 event rationally, by creating a democratic and prosperous new society," the independent Chinese-language daily Ming Pao said, calling on China to introduced political reforms to match its economic developments.
The English-language HongKong Standard said: "At this juncture of history, drawing useful lessons form the tragic episode is more useful and practical than overturning the official verdict on it.
"Eventually, the nation must return to the basic question of having a clean and accountable government, which is vital to ensure the fruit of economic advancement is not stolen by greedy bureaucrats."
The pro-China Hong Kong Commercial Daily said China has achieved remarkable results in its economic development since 1989, showing that "without political stability, democratic politics will not move forward in a healthy way."
Hong Kong Economic Times said China must implement political reforms if it wanted to move forward.
Ten years ago, more than a million of people in Hong Kong took to the streets to show their anger and fear after the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, partly due to fear about lost of freedom after the handover.
By Agence France Presse
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Tiananmen Crackdown Ensured Survival Of Communist Giant
BEIJING, Jun. 03, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) On the night of June 3, 1989, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) moved into Tiananmen Square to end six weeks of protests with an operation that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.
The move guaranteed the survival of one of the world's last communist regimes.
The crackdown produced scenes of violence that shocked the world, together with acts of bravery and brutality that have been difficult to record because of an official blackout on events.
Humiliated by student-led demonstrators who defied two weeks of martial law in the capital, the army blasted a path to Tiananmen Square in the heart of the capital.
They used hundreds of tanks and heavy machine guns against civilians armed with nothing but sticks and iron bars.
The army had already tried to take the square on June 2, but thousands of young soldiers were quickly submerged by enormous crowds.
From the morning of Saturday June 3, the arrival of thousands of army vehicles on the outskirts of the capital sowed panic in the city center.
Residents ran around frantically preparing their defense.
On the evening news, the martial law headquarters raised the emotional temperature by warning Beijing residents to remain at home.
The most violent confrontations took place on at hastily-erected barriers across main avenues leading to Tiananmen.
Dozens of civilians died in the Muxidi district, six kilometers (3.5 miles) west of the square, while surrounding buildings were sprayed with heavy machine gun fire.
Towards midnight, the first tanks appeared on Tiananmen Square, riding over barricades under a hail of tracer bullets.
One tank which broke down under the portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Gate was set on fire by demonstrators.
By around 2.20 a.m., the 27th battalion entered the square. Three protesters launched themselves in a bus at the column of tanks. The bus came to a halt before it reached its target, riddled with machine gun fire. Its injured occupants were carried away by bicycle.
Tanks encircled the Monument to the Heroes of the People in the middle of the square which had served as the student headquarters during the protests.
The students agreed to leave the area at around 5.00 a.m., escorted off the square at gunpoint.
Most were arrested during the days which followed, when troops "retook" the universities.
The army "cleaned up" the square, burning the tents of the students and smashing the "Goddess of Democracy" statue which had symbolised the pro-democracy movement.
For the next few days, tanks patrolled the streets of Beijing. The world was captivated by the image of a single man who halted the progress of a column of tanks for around 20 minutes before being whisked to safety by bystanders.
The government has never published an official death toll for the crackdown. Only the mayor of Beijing, Chen Xitong, now serving a jail term for corruption, gave a figure -- around 200 civilians including 36 students -- for those who died.
The suppression of "the attempted counter-revolutionary rebellion" had also left dozens of soldiers dead, along with 6,000 injured, Chen said.
Chen tried to lend credibility to the theory that the army was called in to suppress a violent rebellion.
But independent sources estimate the number of dead in the capital's hospitals in the hundreds, possibly thousands.
"Most people in Beijing think around 500 ordinary people died," said one Beijing man in his thirties.
In the rest of the country, similar repressive measures were used on pro-democracy protesters, with at least 300 dead in Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan.
By Agence France Presse
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Beijing Spring: Six Weeks That Overwhelmed A Nation
BEIJING, Jun. 03, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) On the evening of June 3-4, 1989 the People's Liberation Army, greeted by cheering crowds when it "liberated" Beijing 40 years earlier, once again entered the capital.
This time, however, the army was moving in to brutally crush six weeks of demonstrations that had overwhelmed the nation.
Sparked by the April 15 death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party secretary-general purged two years earlier for overstretching the bounds of freedom, the movement spread quickly across Beijing university campuses, and to cities across China.
Although the protests were student-led in origin, their call for greater freedoms found support with the people of Beijing, where mass rallies in and around the vast Tiananmen Square brought together more than a million people on some days.
Among the students' demands were a quick end to rampant official corruption, freedom of the press and sanctions against the officials responsible for the financial crisis that had seen spiraling inflation erode the value of personal savings.
At the forefront of the protests, demonstrators demanded the resignation of then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who had started a program of economic reform and opening up in 1978, but pointedly omitted political reform from his agenda.
On May 13, students, demanding an open dialogue with authorities on making the regime more democratic, began a hunger strike on the square, stirring the public to participate in the protests in ever greater numbers.
Students continued to occupy the square after the hunger strike was called off six days later, remaining in place during a landmark visit by the Soviet president and father of "perestroika," Mikhail Gorbachev.
Secretary General Zhao Ziyang, who had backed talks with the students, visited the square on May 19 in what would be his last public appearance before he was expelled from the party leadership and placed under house arrest.
The next day, premier Li Peng announced the imposition of martial law in Beijing, the first clear indication that party hard-liners were gaining the upper hand over the reformists led by Zhao who sought reconciliation.
But for more than 10 days, the people of Beijing resisted the advance of largely unarmed troops, hoisting barricades to block the passage of military convoys along main arteries.
The army did not attempt to break through the human barriers and makeshift blockades, remaining gridlocked for days before retreating to the outskirts of the city.
On May 29, the Goddess of Democracy, a papier-mâché model of a woman brandishing a flaming torch, was erected on Tiananmen Square, standing face to face with the portrait of communist China's founder Mao Zedong.
It was a deliberate provocation to the regime.
After several foiled attempts to reach the square, the PLA, this time supported by tanks and bullets, opened fire on the night of June 3-4, killing at least 1,000 unarmed protestors according to independent estimates.
By June 5, the central government was claiming to have successfully suppressed what it termed a "counter-revolutionary rebellion" instigated by a handful of people and aimed at overthrowing communist leadership.
In the following months, thousands were arrested across the country and hundreds of workers and students were handed heavy prison sentences. An escape route was set up by sympathizers in Hong Kong to smuggle those on the government's most-wanted lists out of China.
Amnesty International last month released a report naming 241 known prisoners still languishing in Chinese jails for "crimes" in connection with the Tiananmen protests. Other dissidents put the number at more than 3,000.
Ding Zilin, a Beijing professor whose 17-year-old son was killed on the night that shocked the world 10 years ago, has researched more than 130 families who lost relatives in the massacre.
By Agence France Presse
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Chronology of China's 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement
BEIJING, Jun 03, 1999 (Reuters) This year marks the 10th anniversary of the bloody June 4 army crackdown on the pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Following is a chronology of the main events of the protest:
April 15 - Former Communist party chief Hu Yaobang, who allowed a cultural thaw and questioned Marxism before he was ousted in 1987, dies of a heart attack. Students at prestigious Peking University cover the campus with memorial posters calling for democracy.
April 17 - Protests begin in Tiananmen Square, the political heart of China, as students call for democracy and reforms. Crowds of up to 100,000 appear despite official warnings against protests.
April 22 - Communist leaders attend Hu's funeral in the Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square, with tens of thousands of students and workers gathered outside.
April 26 - Chinese official media break their silence on the protests. A commentary in the People's Daily, the Communist Party flagship, says activists will be punished severely.
April 27 - Around 50,000 students defy government warnings and break through police lines in Tiananmen Square. Crowds of up to one million join in support.
May 5 - Communist party leader Zhao Ziyang expresses sympathy with widespread student dissatisfaction with corruption and Communist Party mistakes.
May 13 - 1,000 students, a number that grew later to 3,000, begin week-long pro-democracy hunger strike to coincide with former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's summit visit to Beijing that attracted many foreign reporters.
May 15 - Gorbachev arrives in Beijing.
May 19 - Zhao Ziyang visits Tiananmen square and begs students, with tears in his eyes, to leave the square. It is the last time Zhao is seen in public. He is ousted by the Communist Party politburo on June 23-24.
May 20 - Hardline Premier Li Peng goes on television to bark out the declaration of martial law in Beijing.
May 23 - More than 100,000 people march in Beijing to demand Li Peng's removal.
May 29 - Numbers in the Square fall to 2,000 tired and hungry students, the lowest since the occupation began.
May 30 - "The Goddess of Democracy", a 10-meter (30-foot) replica of the Statue of Liberty, is unveiled in Tiananmen Square, bringing renewed energy to flagging demonstrators.
June 2 - Defector Hou Dejian, a Taiwan-born pop star, is joined by three intellectuals in a hunger-strike on the square.
June 3-4 - Soldiers carrying machineguns charge towards Tiananmen but are thrown back in disarray by ordinary citizens supporting the protesters. Later, teargas is sprayed and running clashes take place near the square. Tanks and armored personnel carriers take over the square in a seven-hour assault ending at dawn. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people are killed.
By Reuters
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Exiled Dissidents Evaluate Tiananmen Protest Legacy
BEIJING, Jun 03, 1999 (Reuters) Li Lu has lived the American dream. Like millions of immigrants, he arrived in the United States with little money and no English. Now, just a few years later, he runs a thriving investment business in Manhattan.
But like many other immigrants, Li still longs for his country of birth, and this week has special significance. June 4 is the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and Li is one of dozens of Chinese dissidents now living in the United States who played an instrumental part in the uprising.
Some are now part of mainstream America, some are active politically, but all remember what they were doing 10 years ago and still ponder the bloody pro-democracy protest's legacy.
In 1989 Li was a 23-year-old economics student at Nanjing University. With the first signs of student unrest in Beijing, he took a train to the capital, sensing a moment when profound changes his generation demanded were actually within reach.
"The choice was either staging a battle that might involve the risk of your life or an alternative of a permanent slavery. In 1989, some of us, I guess our generation collectively, decided it's time to fight," he told Reuters. Within days, Li was a key strategist of a student movement that became a national popular protest, winning support from people throughout China and the world. He was a leader of the hunger strike in May that won support from millions of Chinese who were not students and supervised delivery of food and other necessities for tens of thousands of protesters from all over China camped in Tiananmen, Beijing's ceremonial square.
DID RADICAL STRATEGY LEAD TO MASSACRE?
He was a radical who insisted protesters continue occupying the square after the government declared martial law and some leaders were saying the protest could achieve nothing more. In the years since the bloody crackdown in which thousands died, some people have accused Li and other radicals of a reckless strategy leading to a massacre that could have been avoided.
Li still ponders whether his actions were correct. He says he does feel guilt over the deaths but insists early withdrawal from the square would not have prevented the violent crackdown on the democracy movement -- it just would have obscured it. "The crackdown would have been conducted secretly, without people watching it. Instead, by staying in Tiananmen Square, we forced the government to really show its own face in front of all the people around the world," he said.
After the crackdown, Li hid for a time in China and was on the government's list of "most wanted" fugitives. He escaped to Hong Kong via the democracy movement's "underground railroad" but had to leave his family behind. With the support of leading U.S. human rights activists, he enrolled in Columbia University in New York and in 1996 he received three degrees on one day -- a bachelor's degree, a business degree and a law degree.
He now manages his own investment fund in New York and his family recently was allowed to visit him from China. But he says exile remains a painful psychological challenge for the activists. He is banned from the country he wants to reform and has to rely on his inner resources to maintain his effort.
'I'M STILL VERY MUCH A CHINESE'
"You know you're fighting for a country that's thousands of miles away and you're not allowed to go back. But what really motivated us to fight for that cause in the first place still runs through our blood. I'm still very much a Chinese," he said. "You have to go inward, finding the center within ourselves, within our heart and ... carefully nurturing that."
Ten years ago China accused Wang Juntao of being one of the "black hands" or principal conspirators behind the protests. He worked for an influential network dedicated to democratic reform that tried to mediate between the student protesters and the Communist Party and to unite students, intellectuals, workers and ordinary citizens behind a common strategy to end the standoff in Tiananmen Square peacefully.
Unlike Li, Wang was arrested in the crackdown, convicted of sedition and handed, along with his close associate Chen Ziming, the longest sentence of any prominent intellectual involved in the protests -- 13 years in prison. But as his health deteriorated, international pressure built for his release, and he was sent into American exile in 1994.
Now a doctoral student at Columbia, he organizes forums to bring visiting Chinese scholars and professionals together with their Western counterparts. He hopes such contacts will aid the process of building reform and democracy in his homeland.
Wang remains as committed to political reform in China as he was in 1989 but says the tactics now have to be different. "During the 1980s we had to be brave to fight for democracy. Now we have to be smarter," he said.
Not all of the Tiananmen exiles in the United States were colleagues of Wang and Li in China's intellectual or academic elite. Lu Jinghua now runs a small computer repair business in midtown Manhattan and lives with her family in a Queens neighborhood full of immigrants from all over the world.
In 1989 she was a young dress shop manager in Beijing who had come to see Communist leaders as a corrupt elite in what was supposed to be a people's republic. She led like-minded fellow workers to join the protests in Tiananmen Square.
While the intellectual elite might have been preoccupied by democratic reforms in the abstract, Lu, the daughter of Communist party loyalists, said the workers were angry about inequalities they saw on the street.
'THE ARMY SHOULD PROTECT THE PEOPLE'
Now 37, Lu is still bewildered by what happened in 1989. "It's impossible. How could the Chinese send troops to kill their own people?" she asked. "The People's Liberation Army should protect the people and the people would support the army. We were taught that when we were very young."
Shen Tong, only 20 when the protest started, was a moderate among student leaders and was eclipsed by radicals who insisted on occupying the square even as the threat of military action grew. The crackdown forced Shen to flee China in June.
He secretly returned in 1992 and spent some weeks travelling, trying to build up democratic reform efforts, until he was arrested and forced to leave. Now 30, he heads the nonprofit Democracy for China Fund in Newton, Massachusetts, raising money to support enterprises promoting democracy in China through publishing, broadcasting, and education.
When he looks back on events a decade ago he recalls a mass movement of people who felt love and interconnectedness, but he says heady emotion clouded judgment.
"When the massacre happened there was despair and all of a sudden this short-lived, beautiful dream was gone, and what's left of that is blood on the street and bullet holes in our windows," Shen said. "We couldn't see some inevitables, that the government was not ready to give in and if we continued to push forward there would be a confrontation."
All student leaders, moderates or radicals, must take some responsibility for the carnage when tanks moved in, he says. "This is a movement that in no small part we shaped, we promoted, and whatever results come out of that I just feel we're responsible ... for those people, especially the ones I saw with my own eyes who were injured or shot to death."
Tiananmen dissidents now in the United States are mostly in their 30s, have established new lives but remain emotionally and in some cases politically connected to their homeland. While another such popular uprising is unlikely anytime soon, Li Lu, Shen Tong, Wang Juntao and other activists are committed to reform in China and are disappointed with the extent to which the West has pushed issues such as human rights.
While the West has welcomed some of the most famous Chinese dissidents into exile, Shen says, it has ignored lesser-known democrats, political activists, writers and others who manage to remain in China and continue promoting liberal democracy.
He is puzzled by the lack of support compared to what Western governments do in other countries. "You support guerrillas, you give arms to opposition forces, and we're talking about a peaceful opposition (in China) that advocates liberal democracy, rule of law and market economy," he said.
Li Lu shares Shen's concerns about the West's reluctance to pursue human rights and reform in China. "The fire that got us to Tiananmen Square in the first place still exists," he said.
The best thing the United States could do is demand that Beijing reverse its judgment of the Tiananmen protesters as criminals, Li said. "For one thing, it would say that whatever the people and the students stood for in 1989 becomes a legitimate right for all Chinese, so people can speak, can organize themselves and demand a dialogue with the government."
By Reuters
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China Defends CNN Blackout In Beijing As "Understandable"
BEIJING, Jun 3, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao Thursday denied knowledge of a blackout on the US Cable News Network (CNN) news channel in the capital because of its Tiananmen anniversary coverage, but defended any such moves as "understandable".
"I'm not aware of this. Actually, some western media are trying to use the 10th anniversary of the June 4 incident to turn up anti-China propaganda," he said at the weekly news conference.
"This has aroused the dissatisfaction of some people (and) some departments and people have taken some measures. This is understandable."
Highlighting the anniversary of the June 4 incident "is not journalism" but is "rather akin to politics" and would not be well-received, Zhu said.
On Tuesday, the authorities pulled the plug on the channel at hotels and buildings in Beijing.
"Because of recent programs about 'June 4th' broadcast on the American CNN TV station, the Public Security Bureau (police) and the Tourism Bureau have decided to require all departments to stop receiving the CNN signal until June 8th," said a document issued to building security departments around the city.
Guests who enquired about the blackout should be told the satellite signal is experiencing problems, with any complaints directed to the Tourism Bureau, it said.
The guarded diplomatic residential compounds, where embassy staff and foreign journalists reside, were exempt from the ban.
The order was signed by the Administrative Department for Foreign Service Hotels and Beijing Public Security Bureau, and dated May 31, 1999.
June 4 marks the 10th anniversary of the bloody crackdown when the army suppressed six weeks of peaceful student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
China has warned that any activities at home or abroad aimed at commemorating the bloodshed will not be well-received, and has repeatedly called for social stability in the run-up to the anniversary.
By Agence France Presse
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Immigrants, Beijingers Still Haunted By The Bloodshed Of 1989
BEIJING, Jun 03, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) "I will never set foot on Tiananmen Square again. Too many people have died there," says a 50-year-old woman who lived next to the Xiehe Hospital, within hailing distance of the square.
Ten years after the bloody crackdown that focused the world's attention on Tiananmen Square, the painful memories of June 4, 1989 remain with her despite years of silence in the official media.
"I didn't personally participate in the demonstrations, I didn't even go to the square to see all the students," she said.
"But I'll never forget the flood of victims that poured into the hospital that night."
Millions like her witnessed the army's recovery of Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4, putting a violent end to six weeks of student-led pro-democracy demonstrations.
Even before the tanks overran downtown Beijing, media organizations, which for more than a month had enjoyed unprecedented freedom to report the truth, had been brought back under state control.
Journalists sympathetic to the protests were dismissed from their posts or detained, while the central authorities were quick to label the events a "counter-revolutionary rebellion."
Months of "ideological rectification" followed the repression as the regime sought to forget the incident and focus on China's economic development. The 1989 movement became taboo for top officials, who are only questioned on the events of 1989 by the foreign press.
"You know why Chinese don't have a chance to know the truth? The Communist Party, the army, and state propaganda. These three things mean the people will never be free," said a man who claimed to have visited the square each day during the protests.
Another Beijinger who lived in a quiet alleyway in the city's Wangfujing shopping district remembers being woken in the middle of the night by the sound of tanks making their way to the heart of the city.
"My husband and I ran out to the main road and saw all the armed troops heading to the square. A neighbor standing on the sidewalk yelling "animals" at the passing convoys was shot in the shoulder," she recalled.
Memories of the brutal suppression still haunt the students of 1989.
"After the crackdown, I fled to the mountains of Shanxi province and hid until authorities at my university had finished handing students over to police," a man, 22-years-old in 1989, said.
"It hurts me to talk about Tiananmen, even today. Two of my classmates were killed on June 4 and another two are still in jail 10 years later," he added.
A street vendor said that for months after the repression she was forced to hide a relative who had come from the provinces to join the protests.
"My cousin didn't leave the house for the entire summer. He wasn't able to return home until tensions cooled," the woman said.
Recent state-sponsored outpouring of emotion for three Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Tiananmen witnesses.
"I get so angry when I see these television reports about the 'revolutionary martyrs' killed in the embassy bombing. Why should we mourn with the parents of those three? Think about how many parents lost children in 1989, and the government doesn't care at all about them," a Beijing teacher said.
However, many of China's youth, too young to remember the events of 10 years ago, do not refute the official version of events.
"Nothing happened on Tiananmen Square. The army just removed a few hoodlums who had made a mess," said one teenager.
His father hastened to add: "He was only five-years-old back in 1989. At that time, we didn't have the courage to explain to him what had really happened."
By Agence France Presse
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Comments by Czech President on Tiananmen Anniversary
June 2, 1999 Web posted at: 12:02 PM EDT (1602 GMT)
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (Reuters) -- Czech President Vaclav Havel said the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China 10 years did not die in vain, because they boosted the cause of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe later in 1989.
In a statement to be read at Harvard University on Thursday's anniversary of the crackdown, the former dissident playwright said Beijing's suppression of the student movement strengthened democratic efforts in communist Europe.
"I am convinced, that the Tiananmen tragedy and its innumerable victims have not been worthless," said Havel, who rose to power in the student-led revolution which toppled the Czechoslovak communist government later in 1989.
Havel, jailed several times for his dissident activities, said he heard about Tiananmen Square "at the same time that I was being persecuted by the communist police trying to achieve the same freedom as were my distant Chinese fellow-fighters."
"I would like to declare my solidarity for those, everywhere in the world, who are striving to obtain their human dignity.. longing to achieve freedom...thus I would like to fulfill a basic human responsibility as an inhabitant of our planet," he said.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed when People's Liberation Army soldiers armed with machine guns and tanks stormed central Beijing on June 3 and 4, crushing seven weeks of demonstrations in and around Tiananmen Square.
In the autumn of that year, a wave of pro-democracy protests swept through communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, leading to democratic revolutions throughout the region.
In most countries, the protests did not have a violent character.
Prague's near-bloodless overthrow, dubbed "The Velvet Revolution," began on November 17 when police crushed a peaceful demonstration of students in Prague with batons. Nobody was killed but dozens were injured.
Havel became president at the end of 1989.
The Prague government has maintained diplomatic relations with communist China, but Havel and other officials have hosted unofficial visits of democratically elected leaders of Taiwan, angering Beijing which considers the island a renegade province.
By Reuters
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Beijing authorities shut down CNN signal
June 2, 1999 Web posted at: 4:11 a.m. EDT (0811 GMT)
BEIJING (CNN) -- The Beijing Public Security bureau has ordered all hotels, office buildings, and apartments that normally receive CNN to shut down the signal until June 8 -- four days past this Friday's anniversary of the violent government crackdown in 1989 against democracy demonstrators who had gathered in Tiananmen Square.
"Because of recent programs about 'June 4th' broadcast on the American CNN TV station, the Public Security Bureau and the Tourism Bureau have decided to require all departments to stop receiving the CNN signal until June 8th," said a written document issued to building security departments around the city.
The order was issued on Monday morning by a department of the Beijing Public Security Bureau in charge of all hotels, office buildings and apartments open to overseas nationals, CNN has learned.
By Tuesday evening, the CNN signal had been shut off nearly everywhere around Beijing with the exception of diplomatic compounds, where diplomats and journalists live and work.
In the event of guest complaints or inquirires, the document advised building and hotel managers to tell guests that "the satellite signal is experiencing problems."
It also advised managers to "increase their political alertness," stressing that any unusual events or activities must be reported to the Public Security Bureau at once.
Hotel and building managers contacted by CNN cited maintenance as the reason for the loss of the CNN signal.
But one hotel staffer who declined to give his name said: "I hear it's been shut off all over the city for the rest of the week." Another said: "It seems to have something to do with the political climate these days. But you'll have to ask the Tourism Bureau."
As of Wednesday afternoon, it appeared that the order was limited to Beijing. Hotels contacted in other major cities continued to receive the CNN signal as usual.
CNN International is distributed and sold legally in China, in conjunction with Chinese government-approved partners.
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