* * * C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t * * * (News Global) Monday, September 27, 1993 Table of Contents # of Lines ============================================================================= 1. News Briefs (2 Items) ................................................. 23 2. China Again Demanded Compensation for Yinhe Ship from the U.S. ........ 42 3. Mooncake Prices Gone Skyhigh in Mid-Autumn Festival ................... 38 4. Beijing Officials Blames Bid Failure on Western Critics ............... 60 5. Economists Say Losing Olympics a Blessing for China Economy ........... 54 ============================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. News Briefs (2 Items) ................................................. 23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [AP, 9/26/93] BEIJING -- In the latest salvo of China's anti-graft campaign, the government has ordered police to stop charging 16 types of fees and to end 10 types of corrupt behavior, the newspaper Legal Daily said Sunday. Among the fees police must stop charging are those for missing person searches, for registration of residence changes and for handling criminal and public order cases. Among the corrupt practices police must stop are smuggling, bending the law to favor relatives and friends, tipping off criminals, having financial interests in entertainment centers such as dance halls and massage parlors, and accepting gifts or securities in connection with official business. (Forwarded by: Chengyan Liu) ___ ___ ___ [Business Wire, 9/24/93] Loral Corporation has signed an agreement with China Great Wall Industry Corp that would enable it to launch commercial satellites aboard Chinese-build Long March rockets in 1996 and 1997. The agreement will give Loral access to two launch slots at China's Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China. Access to the Long March rocket bolsters Loral's ability to provide its commercial satellite customers with cost-effective and reliable launch capability from various worldwide sources. Space Systems/Loral is currently under contract to build 20 communications and environmental satellites for domestic and international customers, and it has an order backlog approaching $1.1 billion. (Forwarded by: Chengyan Liu) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. China Again Demanded Compensation for Yinhe Ship from the U.S. ........ 42 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarded by: A CND Reader Source: UPI, 9/26/93 BEIJING -- China has again demanded compensation from the United States for the controversy over a freighter cleared of transporting chemical weapons material, saying its owners suffered losses of nearly $13 million, official media said Sunday. The demand was made by Vice Premier Zou Jiahua at a formal ceremony in the eastern port of Tianjin on Saturday on the return of the cargo vessel, the Yinhe, which the U.S. government had charged was carrying two chemicals used for producing poison gas. "The U.S. government should apologize in public for its erroneous actions in dealing with the Chinese Yinhe cargo ship and compensate for the losses the Chinese side has suffered," Zou said, according to reports in state-run newspapers. U.S. officials said in August that intelligence indicated the vessel was transporting the two chemicals to Iran. U.S. Navy warships and aircraft shadowed the ship for several weeks until China agreed to have it inspected at a Saudi Arabian port. The inspection failed to turn up the two chemicals, but U.S. officials believe the shipment may have been offloaded during the ship's earlier stops in Southeast Asia. The Yinhe's owners, the China Ocean Shipping Co., said the corporation lost $12.93 million during a 33-day delay while the ship drifted in Middle East waters awaiting a resolution and during the inspection time. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Huaqiu went as far to charge the U.S. action had violated the "basic rights" of the Yinhe's crew and their families. "The facts show clearly that the so-called world guardian of human rights actually uses human rights as a means to implement hegemonism and power politics and interfere in other countries' internal affairs on the pretext of human rights," Liu said. COSCO officials also claimed their corporation's reputation was "seriously damaged," the official Xinhua news agency reported. "The erroneous action taken by the U.S. side has not only violated China's sovereignty and freedom of navigation, but has caused major economic losses and harmed China's credibility throughout the world," Zou said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Mooncake Prices Gone Skyhigh in Mid-Autumn Festival ................... 38 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarded by: A CND Reader Source: UPI, 9/26/93 BEIJING -- Prices for traditional "mooncakes" eaten during China's most important autumn festival have gone sky high, with some of the pastries so expensive that a government newspaper grumbled Sunday they "do not match our reality." While customary boxes of four mooncakes now sell routinely for $17. 50, nearly a month's wage for many average Chinese, many have reached $175, the state-run Worker's Daily reported. It said China's markets are flooded with expensive mooncakes, some imported from Hong Kong, including "royal" and "golden feast" mooncakes wrapped in gold leaf paper. "In fact our country is still very poor," the Worker's Daily noted. "There are still some impoverished areas. The so-called royal and gold feast mooncakes do not match our reality." Mooncakes, round pastries the size and sometimes the consistency of hockey pucks, are eaten by the tens of millions during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls next Thursday and is the most important fall festival for Chinese. The ancient festival celebrated the full moon and the fall harvest but is now largely commercial. Chinese custom is to give gifts of mooncakes, commonly filled with bean or lotus seed paste, nuts and whole egg yolks. But the pricey mooncakes are "just for rich people" and means the delicacies have "lost their original significance," the Worker's Daily complained. One new mooncake offering sells for a staggering $1,560 a box, The newspaper said prices had been increased by packaging in wood or bamboo instead of the traditional cardboard and paper. "China has a long history of food culture and we need to make some improvements," the newspaper said. "If we put as much attention to education and scientific research as we put into mooncakes, how much faster our economic development would be." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Beijing Officials Blames Bid Failure on Western Critics ............... 60 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarded by: A CND Reader Source: UPI, 9/25/93 BEIJING -- Still reeling from its close loss to Sydney in the race for the 2000 Olympic Games, Beijing officials blamed their misfortune on "flagrant interference and dissemination of rumors" by Western critics, official media said Saturday. After Thursday's heartbreaking 45-43 loss in voting by the International Olympic Committee, Chinese leaders politely applauded their Sydney rivals and said China had gained confidence from the experience. But while the officials continued to express their best wishes to Sydney, they shifted some of the blame for their loss onto Western critics who had opposed the bid because of the government's poor human rights record. "Some people stuck to flagrant interference and to dissemination of rumors and verbal attacks against the Beijing bid," Beijing Bid Committee boss Chen Xitong told the state-run Xinhua news agency in Monte Carlo. While he did not mention the United States by name, the reference to the U.S. congress was obvious. Chen attacked Congress for its hypocrisy, saying "some countries never talk about their own problems of human rights," according to Xinhua. "They keep flagrantly interfering with the affairs of other countries on the excuse of human rights," he said. Before the vote, U.S. Congress passed two much-publicized resolutions calling on IOC members to vote against the Beijing bid, and analysts say the resolution provided the margin of difference in the close vote. Other Beijing officials quickly joined Chen in attacking Congress, human rights groups and the Western media. "For the last two-plus years, the Western media has made numerous attacks on our problems of human rights and democracy," Beijing Bid Committee Secretary-General Wei Jizhong was quoted by the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily as saying. "Political attempts to interfere in the Olympic movement's matters were not fair," BOBICO spokesman Wu Jianmin added in a People's Daily report. International human rights watchdog groups portrayed this year's Olympic selection process as a referendum on Beijing's human rights record, saying the games should not be awarded to China until it improves prison conditions and releases political prisoners. But BOBICO chief Chen said the human rights criticism is unfair. China must first worry about feeding and clothing its more than one billion people before it can worry about a few individuals's right to freedom of speech, Chen said. Chen acknowledged that Beijing had little international support for its human rights position, but vowed to carry on with its hardline political policies. "No country will be sharing this issue with us, so we will have to go it alone," he told Xinhua. He also confirmed earlier reports that he had invited officials of the French group International Federation of Human Rights to China to make an inspection of China's prisons. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Economists Say Losing Olympics a Blessing for China Economy ........... 54 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarded by: Chengyan Liu Source: Reuter, 9/24/93 Written by: Mark O'Neill BEIJING -- Losing its high-profile bid for the 2000 Olympics is a political embarrassment for China but also an economic blessing, economists said on Friday. Unlike the other contending cities, China's booming economy badly needs cooling not stimulating. The economists said the spending needed for the Olympics would have made the economy even harder to control and worsened imbalances which the leadership is struggling to correct. They also said that more spending on Beijing, already the country's most advanced city, would have only widened the gap between it and the poorer interior, diverting money from projects urgently needed elsewhere. "Foreign and domestic investment in China is booming and will be not affected by losing the Olympics. Nor will it affect the rising influx of tourists," said a western diplomat. "Investor and consumer confidence is buoyant. There is no need for a further stimulus." In early July, the government unveiled a 16-point plan to cool the economy. Industrial output in the first six months of the year grew 25.1 percent over the same 1992 period, while capital construction grew a staggering 70.7 percent. Both slowed slightly in July and August but remain too high, while inflation in 35 major cities was 22.2 percent year-on-year in August. One Japanese economist in Beijing said the Monte Carlo result was good news for the economy. "The government can barely control the economy now. With further stimulus, it would become even more difficult. GNP growth this year will be about 13 percent but 8 percent would be more suitable," he said. "Foreign firms wanted Beijing to win so they could benefit from a construction boom to bring the city to Olympic standards, but that would be good for them not China as a whole," he added. "Beijing, Guangdong, Fujian, Shanghai and other areas can attract investment on their own now but other areas need money from the center to build infrastructure to a level to draw investors. They are more likely to get it now," he said. Beijing's official bid called for spending of $7.5 billion by the central and Beijing governments on the capital between now and the year 2000. The diplomat said the impetus behind Beijing's bid was not economic -- a major factor in the bids of Sydney, Manchester and Istanbul -- but political, to raise the status of China in the world and show off the success of its reform policies. "The problem for the leaders now is to explain what has happened politically. Economically, there is no explaining to do," he added. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor: XU Ming Yang | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | China News Digest (CND) offers the following services: | | (1) Global News (Daily) (2) US Regional News | | (3) Canada Regional News (4) Europe & Pacific Regional News | | (5) Hua Xia Wen Zhai (Weekly Chinese Magazine) | | (6) InfoBase: anon FTP to CND.ORG[132.249.229.100]:pub/InfoBase | | To subscribe or get info, mail request to: CND-INFO@CND.ORG | | To contribute news, please send it to: CND-EDITOR@CND.ORG | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+