Subject: CND-Global, June 6, 1993

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 00:51:12 -0500

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

                               (News Global)

                            Sunday, June 6, 1993

Table of Contents                                                 # of Lines
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1. News Briefs (2 Items) ................................................ 24
2. Hong Kong Wen Wei Po: China Orders Banks to Cool Economic "Chaos" .... 30
3. Thousands in Hong Kong Hold Night Vigil to Mark Beijing Massacre ..... 27
4. Government Said to Have Put Planned Wage Increase on Hold ............ 43
5. June 6, 1989: China Seen on the Verge of Civil War;
                 Protests Continue in the Provinces ..................... 94
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1. News Briefs (2 Items) ................................................ 24
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[AP, 6/4/93] HONG KONG - Britain and China reopened talks Friday on a $10.6
billion airport for Hong Kong after a seven-month break caused by friction
over the transfer of the British colony to Chinese rule.  The proposed Chek
Lap Kok Airport, which would replace the present overburdened facility, is
considered crucial to Hong Kong's future as an international financial
center. (Forwarded by: Zhao Hua)
                               ___  ___  ___

[AP, 6/4/93] NEW YORK - In recent weeks, the International Olympic Committee
has been contacted by human right groups protesting Beijing's presense among
six candidates to hold the 2000 Games.  They have asked the IOC to consider
human rights just as it does stadiums and hotel rooms in deciding who gets
the Games.  "We are genuinely worried that a recurrence of events at the
Berlin Olympics in 1936 is possible in Beijing," the Alliance for a
Democratic China, a Paris-based group, said in an open letter to the IOC.
The IOC says it's interested in sports, not politics, and won't as a
committee question human rights policies of prospective hosts.  But each of
the 93 members of the IOC could draw their own conclusions and use it as
part of their basis for voting in the secret ballot in Monte Carlo Sept. 23.
(Forwarded by: Zhao Hua)

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2. Hong Kong Wen Wei Po: China Orders Banks to Cool Economic "Chaos" .... 30
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Forwarded by: Liu Jian
Source: AP-DJ, June 5, 1993

HONG KONG - China, worried that finance is spinning out of control, has
ordered banks to reign in credit, stop engaging in business and pay peasants
for their summer harvest, a pro-Beijing newspaper said Saturday.

The report, quoting unidentified "senior leaders," said banks were
overextended. They had used credit to fuel booms in property and share
markets and spent vital funds setting up their own firms, it said.

Reforms of finance and banking in China have failed to keep step with
breakneck growth. Banks have to prop up inefficient state-run firms and do
not have enough autonomy to allow interest rates to regulate supply and
demand for loans.

Sixteen percent inflation in cities during the first quarter of this year
spurred depositors to withdraw savings and buy gold and consumer durables.
Last week, the Wen Wei said bank deposits fell 4.5 billion yuan in March.

The new regulations order banks to recover funds earmarked for major
state-approved construction projects and agriculture.

"Even though the financial situation is quite serious at the moment funds
for agriculture and the summer harvest must be guaranteed," the newspaper
said.

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3. Thousands in Hong Kong Hold Night Vigil to Mark Beijing Massacre ..... 27
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Forwarded by: Deming
Source: Reuter, June 5, 1993

HONG KONG - Thousands of people joined a candlelight vigil in a Hong Kong
park to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the June 4 massacre of
democracy demonstrators in Beijing.

Chanting pro-democracy slogans, the crowd turned Hong Kong's Victoria Park
into a sea of light as they watched newsreel of the massacre on a giant
video screen.

The rally attracted more than 12,000 protesters who heard speakers call for
the release of all jailed dissidents in China and the punishment of
officials responsible for the killings of hundreds of demonstrators in 1989.

Wreaths were laid at a replica of the "Goddess of Democracy" statue which
students erected in Beijing's Tiananmen Square before their protest was
crushed by Chinese troops and tanks.

A small group later marched to Hong Kong's Xinhua News Agency branch,
China's de facto consulate in the British colony, and left a petition there.

The event was organised by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the
Patriotic Democratic Movement in China.

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4. Government Said to Have Put Planned Wage Increase on Hold ............ 43
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Forwarded by: Zhao Hua
Source: UPI, June 4, 1993

BEIJING - Worried about soaring inflation and public anger at spiraling
prices, China has scrapped a planned 25 percent wage increase for tens of
millions of state employees, official sources said Friday.

The salary rise, one of the Communist Party's most publicized reform
measures, was part of an ambitious program to cut one-quarter of a bloated
government bureaucracy estimated at more than 30 million people.

Wages for civil servants were scheduled to rise July 1.

But the pay hike has been "postponed indefinitely," according to one
well-placed source in the top echelon of the leadership, who also said
uncooperative officials were endangering the entire bureaucracy reduction
program.

He said powerful officials were resisting the loss of their power and their
perks. But the change of course on wages has angered officials whose
salaries have failed to keep pace with the spiraling inflation rate.

The central government had allocated $700 million for the one-time wage
increase. For the average civil servant, wages would have risen about 28
percent from the present average of 250 yuan ($44) to 320 yuan ($56) a
month.

The state-run China Business News, in its May 21 edition, hinted at the
policy change with a report that finance officials had balked at the
expensive price tag because the budget was already in deficit due to price
reforms and continued subsidies to bankrupt state-run enterprises.

"At present the national finances are suffering from serious losses and the
government's financial strenth is inadequate," the newspaper paraphrased Li
Deshui, head of the State Planning Commission's national economy department,
as saying.

"There is no way to raise public servants' salary status according to the
original plan," he said, adding that wage hikes would have to be
scaled-down to pass finance ministry scrutiny.

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5. June 6, 1989: China Seen on the Verge of Civil War;
                 Protests Continue in the Provinces ..................... 94
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Source: Compiled by Zuofeng Li from Los Angeles Times, Reuters, June 6, 1989

BEIJING - China teetered this morning on the edge of civil war, with troops
presumed loyal to hard-line President Yang Shangkun in control of central
Beijing but positioned defensively at strategic points in apparent
anticipation of attack by rival forces.

Troops and armored vehicles were reported moving toward Beijing from the
east, according to Western diplomats.

A military attache in the British colony of Hong Kong, reached by telephone
this morning, said that infantry units of the air force landed at the
Nanyuan military airport south of the capital Monday night and engaged in
skirmishes with other military units at or near the airport.

Other small-scale duels broke out between rival troops Monday, according to
Western witnesses, only about one mile west of Tian An Men Square.

At about 7 p.m. Monday, tanks accompanied by armored personnel carriers and
truckloads of troops fanned out to points along the Second Ring Road that
loops around the main part of the city.

About 20 tanks continued to stand guard this morning at the Jianguomen
bridge on the eastern side of the city, about half facing east in defensive
positions.  The others faced north, south and west to control access to the
strategically important bridge, which crosses the Second Ring Road.

About 100 military vehicles, including armored personnel carriers and troop
trucks, were abandoned by soldiers on the west side of the city during the
predawn hours Monday and later set afire by residents. Crowds around the
charred vehicles reported that the soldiers who had left them and taken
refuge at a nearby museum compound had said they were unwilling to fire on
unarmed crowds.

Closer to the city center, shooting broke out between two groups of troops
near the Minzu Hotel, only about one mile west of Tian An Men Square.

Western diplomats who spoke to reporters for the news agency United Press
International said that later in the day they saw two armored personnel
carriers engage in a machine-gun duel at the same location, sending bullets
through fifth-floor windows of the tourist hotel.

Throughout many parts of the city, citizens erected barricades of buses,
trucks, metal-and-concrete street dividers and vegetable market stalls.
Citizens stood guard at intersections, many of which were virtually
impassable.

The lack of transportation and an eerie tension on the streets kept most
workers at home away from their jobs Monday and today. Most stores remained
closed and there was worry that food shortages may soon crop up. Relatively
few Beijing residents keep stores of food on hand because of a lack of
refrigerators. Panic buying of food supplies began to break out.

"We have dried noodles, but that is about all. And we're almost out of
cooking oil," complained a homemaker standing in a long line at a vegetable
stand near the Temple of the Sun park.

In the old neighborhoods near Tian An Men Square, soldiers were seen Monday
running into alleyways and shooting at fleeing residents. One witness said
that a teen-age girl was shot in the chest near Tian An Men.

Rifle shots could be heard from the direction of the square in the evening,
and a building was set afire on Xidan street and Changan Avenue to the west
of the huge central open space.

Reports from other areas of China on Monday indicated that the situation
was chaotic in many other cities outside Beijing.

Posters in Shanghai carried the message "The Blood Has Been Shed," referring
to the weekend violence in Beijing.  Protesters blocked traffic virtually
throughout the city, an official at the U.S. Consulate said. The Shanghai
municipal government warned that it would take "strong measures" unless the
streets were cleared.

The situation in Shanghai further deteriorated in the evening, with
authorities warning that they were about to move against the throngs of
residents in the streets.

In Chengdu in Sichuan province, a diplomat reported that cars of Chinese
officials were being overturned.

In Hangzhou and Wuhan, protesters sat on rail lines, blocking trains to
Shanghai and a main north-south line.

According to reports, demonstrations of varying scale have been held in
Tianjin, Qingdao, Nanjing, Xian, Changsha and Canton.  Worker and shopkeeper
strikes are brewing in some cities.

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