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U.N. 4th World Conference on Women (Sept. 4-5 '95) [Folder 2]: [5]
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U.N. 4th World Conference on Women (Sept. 4-5 '95) [Folder 2]: [5]
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Records of the First Lady's Office (Clinton Administration)
Lisa Caputo's Files
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FOIA Number: 2012-0094-F
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the William J. Clinton
Presidential Library Staff.
Collection/Record Group:
Clinton Presidential Records
Subgroup/Office of Origin:
First Lady's Office
Series/Staff Member:
First Lady's Press Office
Subseries:
Lisa Caputo
OA/ID Number:
10231
FolderID:
Folder Title:
U.N. 4th World Conference on Women (Sept. 4-5 '95) [Folder 2]: [5]
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S
58
7
6
3
Ref.
PN4855
F57
1994
Forbes
WH
ediaGuide
ACCR FICAL EVIEW OF THE PRINT MEDIA
1994
ATION'S
MOST
268
MEDIAGUIDE
ty-Bloc Quebeçois-exists
just where the government
Michael Vatikiotis
to pursue the secession of the
turns to slow things down.
Far Eastern Economic Review
province, its leader faces a
"[Zhu] sent investigators to the
unique situation. "[Party lead-
provinces to gather information
Kuala Lampur. Vigorous and
er Lucien Bouchard] said he
and to bully local officials who
verbose, Vatikiotis exhausting-
would run a full-fledged oppo-
were circumventing Beijing's
ly covers the idiosyncrasies of
sition party rather than a single-
commands. He found some
Malaysia's political system.
issue one, but he eschewed
provinces building so many
Moreover, he writes for a high-
residence in the opposition lead-
bridges, highways, ports and
ly specialized audience, often
er's official lodgings. 'We don't
skyscrapers on concurrent
calling on readers' prior knowl-
intend to settle in Ottawa,' he
schedules that they were driv-
edge of his subject. In his +15
said. 'The presence of the Bloc
ing material prices skyward and
article on potential successors
in Ottawa is by definition tem-
overloading the system." In a
to Prime Minister Datuk Seri
porary." Trueheart's coverage of
perceptive 10-17 interview with
Mahathir Mohamad, Vatikiotis
Canada lacks any formidable
filmmaker Chen Kaige, whose
provides extensive detail on the
punch, leaving readers craving
"Farewell My Concubine" was
maneuverings and alliances but
more precise analysis.
banned and unbanned twice,
offers no explanation of the po-
Tyler examines the Kafkaesque
litical structure of the country
Patrick E. Tyler
task of working under a total-
or the issues that distinguish the
The New York Times
itar
gime in an identity
candidates. He makes clear the
S
',e a film director
importance of the November
Beijing. Moving in the summer
Chin
day is to be a politic
elections. "Those who clinch
from Washington to China,
in the nost dangerous sense,
the three vice-presidential posts
Tyler quickly hits stride, offer-
making political decisions about
will be viewed as likely succes-
ing fresh stories on topics rang-
art and content in a vacuum.
sors to the current national lead-
ing from film censorship to
The vacuum is the one created
ership. Umno [United Malays
economic policy. In his 8-28 ar-
by the Communist Party, which
National Organization] presi-
ticle highlighting both the Chi-
has taken an end-of-empire ap-
dents typically serve as prime
nese and American sides of the
proach to censorship. The cen-
minister while deputy presidents
debate over the legality of Chi-
sors won't say what the rules are,
become deputy prime minister."
nese missile sales to Pakistan, this
and once they have banned a
Vatikiotis furnishes a straight-
former Pentagon reporter pre-
film, they won't even tell di-
forward but soporific 8-5 piece
sents evidence that ultimately
rectors how to cut it to satisfy
on an Association of Southeast
favors the Chinese, as the Clin-
their objections. They simply
Asian Nations [ASEAN] securi-
ton administration's charge re-
ban films they don't like." In his
ty meeting in Singapore. Clum-
lies on recent changes in inter-
smart 11-23 piece on Chinese
sily reporting the event, he says
pretation of a 1987 accord.
abandonment of austerity mea-
participants struggled to initi-
"China and Pakistan have ar-
sures, Tyler shrewdly remarks,
ate substantive talks on various
gued that any Chinese sales of
"The throttle has already been
issues-such as collective secu-
parts or technology for M-11
opened, and foreign corporate
rity-but resolved little because
missiles to Pakistan do not vi-
investment continues to pour
of concern about maintaining
olate the missile proliferation
like water over Niagara. Signed
the group's facade of cohesion.
accord because the M-11's
contracts were a staggering $83
"One fear is that the focus on
range is less than the minimum
billion during the first nine
wider security issues could turn
of 300 kilometers, or 186 miles,
months of this year and seem
out to be controversial. This be-
covered by the agreement." In
headed for more than $100 bil-
came evident in Singapore where
his precise 10-3 account of new
lion by the end of the year."
the U.S. and China sparred with
Economic Minister Zhu Ron-
Pulling off a seemingly effort-
each other and the atmosphere...
gji's attempts to quell China's
less transition to his new beat,
was marred by the fundamen-
overheated economy and run-
Tyler displays his consummate
tal differences between them."
away inflation, Tyler explains
skills as a journalist.
In a refreshingly populist 7-22
PAGE
1
LEVEL 1 - 1 OF 26 STORIES
Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 31, 1995, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 4; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 472 words
HEADLINE: Chinese Aides Vex a Women's Forum
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER; Because of a production error, the following
article was omitted from some copies on Wednesday.
DATELINE: HUAIROU, China, Aug. 29
BODY:
Just after dawn today, a senior staff member of an international women's
forum assembling here left her hotel room for stroll around Huairou reservoir,
where the mist-shrouded Fragrant Hills loomed to the west and the morning light
caught delicate pagodas in silhouette.
A policeman stepped into her path and ordered her D. to her r
Later in the day, another senior official of the forum, a gathering parallel
to the Fourth World Conference on Women, found men with walkie-talkies going
through her belongings. When she challenged them, they said they were in her
room to pick up the laundry.
In the final day of preparation for the opening of the forum of
nongovernmental organizations, known as the N.G.O. forum, Beijing was awash in
recriminations over China's management of this mammoth meeting.
"It has been a very long day," said Colleen McCabe, a spokeswoman for the
forum, which has attracted nearly 30,000 women to this distant suburb of
Beijing.
After a long struggle to get here, most of the women in the forum have hotel
rooms, but many are angry.
The Chinese Government held up some visas; denied visas to hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of others; separated the nongovernmental forum from the main United
Nations conference opening on Monday, which is an hour away in Beijing, and
generally treated this convocation of women's advocacy groups as a hostile force
invading China.
"A lot of people have been searched," Ms. McCabe said.
At a morning press conference in Beijing, Tian Qiyu, China's Vice Minister
for Public Security, tried to impose some last-minute limitations on public
expression.
Referring to the forum site here, he said: "Within the designated area,
relevant organizations can have processions and demonstrations, but these
activities should not infringe upon the sovereignty of the host country and
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The New York Times, August 31, 1995
should not attack or slander the state leaders of the host country, nor shall
such activities be allowed in which violence is taking place against other
persons."
China actively pursued the opportunity to play host to the United Nations
conference. But in recent months the Government has arrested dissidents, pushed
migrant workers out of Beijing, rounded up prostitutes and the homeless and
executed dozens of people around the country in what was described as a law and
order crackdown.
In the afternoon a Government spokesman, Chen Jian, amended the statement of
the Public Security official, saying, "These two conferences are U.N.
conferences, and the place where these conferences are held are U.N.-designated
premises."
But he added: "Any organization or individuals attending the World Conference
on Women should not use it as an opportunity to interfere in China's internal
affairs. All activities outside these areas must abide by Chinese laws and
regulations."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Delegates presented a "peace torch" yesterday to en an
international women's forum in Beijing. (Associated Press)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: August 31, 1995
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PAGE
3
LEVEL 1 - 2 OF 26 STORIES
Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 30, 1995, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 737 words
HEADLINE: A Forum on Women Is Vexed By Chinese Security Officials
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: HUAIROU, China, Aug. 29
BODY:
Just after dawn today, a senior staff member of an international women's
forum assembling here left her hotel room for stroll around Huairou reservoir,
where the mist-shrouded Fragrant Hills loomed to the west and the morning light
caught delicate pagodas in silhouette.
A Chinese policeman stepped into her path and ordered her back to her
Later in the day, another senior official of the forum, a gathering parallel
to the Fourth World Conference on Women, found men with walkie-talkies going
through her belongings. When she challenged them, they said they were in her
room to pick up the laundry.
In the final day of preparation for the opening of the forum of
nongovernmental organizations, known as the N.G.O. forum, Beijing was awash in
recriminations over China's management of this mammoth meeting.
"It has been a very long day," said Colleen McCabe, a spokeswoman for the
forum, which has attracted nearly 30,000 women to this distant suburb of
Beijing.
After a long struggle to get here, most of the women in the forum have hotel
rooms, but many are running short of patience.
"A lot of people have been searched," Ms. McCabe said, "and I've had at least
a thousand questions from journalists about when and where the demonstrations
are going to begin," she said.
The reason for the questions is that many of the women arriving here are
angry. The Chinese Government held up some visas; denied visas to hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of others; separated the nongovernmental forum from the main
United Nations conference, which is an hour away in Beijing, and generally
treated this convocation of women's advocacy groups as a hostile force invading
China.
Perhaps because of the mood, the Government tried to impose some last-minute
limitations on public expression.
At a morning press conference, Tian Qiyu, China's Vice Minister for Public
Security, acknowledged the longstanding agreement that women could demonstrate
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The New York Times, August 30, 1995
on the land that had been made available to the United Nations.
But, he added, referring to the forum site here: "Within the designated area,
relevant organizations can have processions and demonstrations, but these
activities should not infringe upon the sovereignty of the host country and
should not attack or slander the state leaders of the host country, nor shall
such activities be allowed in which violence is taking place against other
persons."
Mr. Tian's statement, made in Beijing, reverberated through Huairou within
hours, further agitating many of the women preparing their agenda for the United
Nations conference, which runs from Sept. 4 to 15 in Beijing.
After all, they say, China actively pursued the opportunity to play host to
the conference to begin with.
But in recent months China has arrested dissidents, pushed migrant workers
out of Beijing, rounded up prostitutes and the homeless and executed dozens of
people around the country in what was described as a law and order crackdown.
The action was an echo of the kind of rough justice that marked the period when
the International Olympic Committee was considering Beijing as a site for the
2000 games.
Amnesty International, which was allowed into China for the first time in the
history of the human rights group, denounced the campaign of arrests and
repression that preceded the conference, including the execution of 16 people.
Pierre Sane, the secretary general of the organization, said, "We have heard
virtually every excuse from Governments to justify human rights violations, but
this is simply unbelievable: to welcome the world to Beijing, people must die?"
A Chinese Government spokesman, Chen Jian, retorted later, "Amnesty
International is an organization that has always harbored deep prejudices
against China, and its allegations are groundless."
"We didn't do those things they claimed," Mr, Chen said. The executions were
reported earlier in a Beijing newspaper controlled by the Communist Party.
In the afternoon, Mr. Chen amended the statement of the Public Security
official, saying, "These two conferences are U.N. conferences, and the place
where these conferences are held are U.N.-designated premises."
But he added: "Any organization or individuals attending the World Conference
on Women should not use it as an opportunity to interfere in China's internal
affairs. All activities outside these areas must abide by Chinese laws and
regulations."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Women who poured into China from around the world yesterday for
the forum for nongovernmental organizations, a gathering parallel to the Fourth
World Conference on Women, were greeted by tough security measures, police
interference, administrative hurdles and frustration. (Agence France-Presse)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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The New York Times, August 30, 1995
LOAD-DATE: August 30, 1995
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PAGE
6
LEVEL 1 - 3 OF 26 STORIES
Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 29, 1995, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1377 words
HEADLINE: Tough Stance Toward China Pays Off for Taiwan Leader
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: TAIPEI, Taiwan
BODY:
Mention President Lee Teng-hui to Jimmy Lin, a bicycle shop owner, and he
will begin gesturing with a wrench, or whatever is in his hand, saying: "He has
been President too long, already eight years. Now he wants four more years -- we
can't call this a democracy."
But mention mainland China's anger over Mr. Lee's visit to the United States
in June and the military muscle-flexing that has followed, and Mr. Lin will
switch gears to defend President Lee's policy of seeking greater international
recognition for Taiwan -- even if Beijing mistakes this for a strategy to
declare the island's independence.
"We are 50 rich, but we have no voice," Mr. Lin said. "Our voice is 50 low
that no one can hear it.
Mainland China's campaign of military intimidation against Taiwan, which it
regards as a renegade province, is causing millions of people on this island who
otherwise were ambivalent -- or opposed -- to extending Mr. Lee's rule to come
to his defense.
With the conclusion on Friday of China's second military exercise this
summer, and a new exercise rumored to be starting soon in the South China Sea,
the immediate effect has been to burnish a political image that had been losing
some of its luster.
Being called a "traitor to the motherland" has tied Mr. Lee's personal
destiny to Taiwan's as never before. His standing in opinion polls has gained 10
percentage points since Beijing loosed the People's Liberation Army to stage
maneuvers in the East China Sea, where it has fired a broad assortment of air-,
land- and sea-launched missiles into target zones about 100 miles off Taiwan's
northern coast.
"I think Beijing is stupid; they are going too far," said Antonio Jiang, a
prominent magazine publisher. "Lee Teng-hui is going to be elected and they are
painting themselves into a corner" by scorching Mr. Lee with weekly attacks in
People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper.
"I don't know how they can find the ladder to climb down," Mr. Jiang said.
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The New York Times, August 29, 1995
The confrontation has shaken business confidence, depressing real estate and
securities prices. And it has frozen negotiations to open direct transportation
and trade links across the Taiwan Strait, where 25,000 mainland industries have
received a total of $20 billion in Taiwan investment.
A palpable sense of fear and anxiety about the next six months exists here.
What is most dreaded is a protracted crisis.
"If that kind of pressure continues for a long time," Mr. Jiang said, people
will think President Lee "is no longer capable of managing the relationship with
Beijing."
There is no real panic, although people use the word a lot, as did the chief
executive of one of the island's largest and most profitable electronics firms.
"Business will continue as usual," he said, "but the business community is very
panicked."
In offices and tea houses, all manner of people tell dark jokes about
incoming Chinese missiles; they trade gossip about politicians and military
leaders who are rumored to be using their American passports to get their
families out of the country.
AS 1ª 0 send a signal to Beijing about the mutual threat to prosperity,
Taiwan's Cal-Comp Electronics announced last week that it was suspending plans
for a $20 million plant to manufacture computer monitors in China. The company's
chairman said he would shift production to a more stable location in Southeast
Asia if the risk of confrontation with the mainland continued.
To be sure, not everyone is defending the President.
Mention his name to Chi Chi-syun, a Chinese-language teacher whose
grandfather was beaten so severely by the Communists in 1949 that he was
mistakenly left for dead in a shallow grave, and she pours out her anxiety over
tea.
"I am really afraid," she said. "I'm afraid the mainland is going to invade
Taiwan because it believes Lee Teng-hui wants independence -- and I think he
does," she added, despite his insistence that he does not.
Mr. Lee's political advisers understand that an unrelenting sense of crisis
poses the biggest threat to his political fortunes.
"I would not deny that stability will be a very important issue in the
presidential campaign," one of Mr. Lee's advisers said last week.
For the island's pro-independence forces, there is a certain giddiness about
how Mr. Lee is advancing their cause, even as he says that is not his goal.
Some believe that if Mr. Lee were to win the presidency in March -- for the
first time by direct vote in island-wide elections -- it would
"institutionalize" Taiwan independence.
"Take Sichuan province, with more than 100 million people, or Guangdong
province," said Parris H. Chang, a legislative leader of the pro-independence
Democratic Progressive Party, comparing Taiwan and two of mainland China's
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The New York Times, August 29, 1995
largest provinces.
"Sichuan and Guangdong don't elect a President," he said. "But Taiwan is
going to do so, and that means that Taiwan is an independent, sovereign entity."
He added: "Unless they are going to invade us before the balloting takes
place to nullify what we are doing, the fact that we are going to the polls and
can vote for a President means we are casting a vote for independence."
Referring to the mainland as the People's Republic of China, Mr. Chang said,
"We are institutionalizing our independence and the P.R.C. is going to have to
accept this reality."
With his announcement last week that he will stand for election by universal
suffrage, President Lee is seeking to become the first Nationalist Party leader
to try to straddle Taiwan's gaping political contradiction: on the one hand, a
third of the voters support the Taiwan independence movement while the remaining
two-thirds are divided over when and how to seek reunification with the
mainland.
:y voters are fed up with the governing Nationalist Party. AS the political
hei of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Mr. Lee must preside over an often
corrupt vote-buying machinery controlled by a core of transplanted mainlanders
who have never assimilated this subtropical island.
"The K.M.T. needs Lee Teng-hui more than Lee Teng-hui needs the K.M.T., Mr.
Jiang said, using the initials for the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. "He
inherited its problems and corruption. Everyone despises the K.M.T., but they
respect Lee Teng-hui."
A native Taiwanese who was selected by the party to serve after the death of
Chiang Kai-shek's son in 1988, President Lee has consolidated his power by
wooing -- his critics say pandering to -- the pro-independence population, most
of them also ethnic Chinese, but with roots on the island going back hundreds of
years.
"He is delivering what the people really want," said Jason Hu, the
presidential spokesman. "You cannot survive in Taiwan unless you give the people
what they really want."
For the moment, President Lee's strategy is to lower his own voice so as not
to provoke further the Communist Party leadership in Beijing, now heavily under
the influence of military commanders who would like to drive Mr. Lee from power.
"What can we do?" Mr. Hu asked. "We cannot give in."
Although Taiwan's voice is small, it is being heard as an economic
powerhouse, with $90 billion in foreign exchange reserves and a
computer-manufacturing industry whose output is now the world's third-largest.
Mr. Lee's strategy has been to use some of Taiwan's wealth to buy respect,
lavishing aid on countries willing to grant Taiwan diplomatic recognition and,
this summer, offering to donate $1 billion to the United Nations on the
condition that Taiwan be admitted as a member, something Beijing, as a permanent
member of the Security Council with veto authority, has said it will never
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The New York Times, August 29, 1995
allow.
Taiwan's de facto independence was guaranteed in the 1950's by the United
States Navy and is maintained today by a robust Taiwan military, whose air force
will soon be equipped with more than 200 top-of-the-line French Mirages and
American F-16's.
Jimmy Lin, the bike man, sees the irony.
"Independence is impossible," Mr. Lin continued as he bustled around the
gleaming road warriors in his bike shop the other day, his pot belly inflating
his blue shop apron. "And reunification with the mainland is impossible. So
what we have to do is make ourselves stronger -- it's a paradox."
GRAPHIC: Photos: President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan has soared in opinion polls.
(Reuters) (pg. A1); Like many people in Taiwan, Jimmy Lin, a bicycle shop owner
in Taipei, defends President Lee Teng-hui's policy of seeking greater
international recognition despite military intimidation by China, which views
the island as a renegade province. "We are 50 rich," Mr. Lin said, "but we have
no voice." (Albert Huand for The New York Times) (pg. A8)
Map of Taipei, Taiwan " A8)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: August 29, 1995
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PAGE 10
LEVEL 1 - 4 OF 26 STORIES
Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 28, 1995, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1097 words
HEADLINE: U.S. and China Plan Meeting Of Their Leaders in October
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 27
BODY:
After two days of talks that left "fundamental differences" in
Chinese-American relations unresolved, a senior State Department official said
today that China nonetheless wanted to proceed with preparations for a summit
meeting between President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin in October.
The positive tone from the r al, Under Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff,
suggested that both Washington anu eijing were Phermined to build on the
momentum created last week with the release of the Chinese-American human rights
activist Harry Wu and the subsequent White House Decision that Hillary Rodham
Clinton would attend the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing in September.
After a half-hour meeting with Foreign Minister Qian Qichen today and
several hours of discussions with Mr. Qian's subordinates on Saturday, Mr.
Tarnoff said at a news conference: "While on substance the differences were not
bridged, I think we did have a full airing of views. And there was a commitment
on both sides that there are other aspects to the relationship we are determined
to proceed to work on together, notably the upcoming meetings of our foreign
ministers and Presidents."
The importance of this restrained and generally positive outcome to the visit
is that it may begin to stabilize the fragile Chinese-American relationship,
which erupted in May when Mr. Clinton decided to allow Taiwan's President, Lee
Teng-hui, to make a private visit to the United States in June.
A summit meeting is still anything but assured. Administration officials,
however, have been saying for weeks that there is a tight "window" in which to
try to prepare for a meeting between President Clinton and President Jiang
during the 50th-anniversary celebrations for the United Nations. It is thus
necessary to press an American diplomatic effort, the officials said, if only to
stop the deterioration in relations and the escalating demonstrations of
military power that China, and now Taiwan, are planning in the East and South
China Seas.
The additional significance of the positive tone emerging from the talks this
weekend is that it signals an easing in the explosion of anger among China's
military leaders over American policy toward Taiwan.
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The New York Times, August 28, 1995
It may also signal that Foreign Minister Qian, who has been the architect of
China's recovery from the isolation that followed the 1989 Tiananmen massacre,
has somewhat redeemed his influence in the management of foreign policy. It is a
policy that has been undermined this summer in internal factional struggles both
with the military leadership, and with the State Security Ministry, which
supervised the apprehension and handling of Mr. Wu, the human rights activist.
In his remarks to reporters, Mr. Tarnoff placed great emphasis on a
reiteration that "far from seeking to isolate China, we desire to engage the
People's Republic in a wide-ranging and constructive relationship with us and
with the international community."
But Mr. Tarnoff said he could report no immediate progress on restoring
ambassadorial relations that were in effect downgraded in June or on ending the
cycle of military exercises China has undertaken this summer to intimidate
Taiwan.
"I observed that two great powers such as China and the United States should
have ambassadorial representation in their respective capitals in order for them
to maintain a constructive exchange of views," he said.
Since Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy retu
in June, China has yet to agree to
the nomination of James Sasser, a former Set or from Tennessee, and the Chinese
Ambassador, Li Daoyu, has not returned since being called back to Beijing in the
same month.
Mr. Tarnoff continued: "I don't claim we have a meeting of the minds on the
Taiwan issue. We did not receive any demands. We did not receive any threats."
But he said it was "welcome" news that China had ended its second military
exercise of the summer on Friday, and he admonished both sides that "military
exercises on one side or the other are not conducive to the kind of atmosphere
that we hope would prevail."
Although giving what appeared to be a bleak report on the lack of agreement
on the status of Taiwan, human rights in China and weapons proliferation, Mr.
Tarnoff said he was "encouraged" by the tone of the talks. Chinese officials, he
said, "made clear how seriously they regarded the issue" of Taiwan, where the
Nationalist Government once represented all of China at the United Nations, but
with which Washington broke relations in 1979, when it established diplomatic
ties with Beijing.
Mr. Tarnoff appeared to be unpersuasive in arguing that China should be
willing to tolerate future visits by Taiwan leaders as long as they are
"private, unofficial and personal in character."
In a dispatch issued by the official New China News Agency, Foreign Minister
Qian was quoted as saying: "The U.S. permission of the visit by Lee Teng-hui had
brought about serious consequences to relations between China and the United
States, greatly hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and intensified the
relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait."
"China hopes that such kind of event will never occur."
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In earlier public statements, Chinese leaders have demanded that President
Clinton take "concrete steps" to atone for the "mistake" he made in reversing
longstanding United States policy on visits of Taiwan leaders. By allowing
private but high-profile visits of Taiwan leaders, the United States is
indulging in what Beijing sees as a strategy by Taiwan's President to pander to
the island's pro-independence voters.
After President Richard M. Nixon opened relations with Beijing more than two
decades ago, United States policy was to encourage China and Taiwan to negotiate
their future under a "one China" policy. This diplomatic strategy deferred the
issue with an expectation that political and economic development would
eventually draw the two sides into some permanent accommodation.
Beijing considers Taiwan a province of China, but in recent years, has sought
to lure the Nationalist Government in Taipei to expand trade and investment ties
with a goal of eventual reunification.
Mr. Tarnoff conceded that he was not able to say that he had "turned a
corner" on any of the contentious issues that have incited a summer of tensions
between Washington and Beijing.
Still, he said, "I certainly detected on the Chi
ide an interest in
engaging, in talking about our differences and in look 3 for ways for the
dialogue to resume."
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The New York Times
August 24, 1995, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 2; Column 3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 850 words
HEADLINE: Taiwan President Throws His Hat in a Powder Keg
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: TAIPEI, Taiwan, Aug. 23
BODY:
Shouting defiance of mainland China and calling on his divided Nationalist
Party to rally around him, President Lee Teng-hui announced today that he would
run in the island's first democratic presidential election.
Facing nearly 2,000 delegates of the Nationalist Party, whose forces fled
mainland China in 1949, Mr. Lee, 72, embarked on a political
ign that is
likely to further inflame relations with Beijing.
Although Mr. Lee has never endorsed independence for Taiwan, nis wooing of
the ethnic Taiwanese vote here has already aroused suspicion bordering on
paranoia in Beijing, and contributed to a deep estrangement between China and
the United States. China has been pursuing a campaign of invective and military
pressure in the hope of weakening the Taiwan leader.
Mr. Lee's decision to run, while widely expected, was opposed by some senior
members of the Nationalist Party leadership, old-guard supporters of
reunification with China. The critics, including two party vice chairmen who
spoke bitterly of Mr. Lee today, fear that flirting with pro-independence voters
may further antagonize the Communist Party leadership in Beijing.
But despite some important defections, Mr. Lee's domination of the party
machinery this week and his strong standing in the numerous opinion polls
conducted over the course of the summer -- even as Beijing singled him out for
political extinction -- have demonstrated his resilience.
Though it has driven down Taiwan's stock market and depressed real estate
prices, the mainland's pressure campaign of military exercises, including
ballistic missile firings to within 85 miles of Taiwan's northern coastline, has
been politically ineffective thus far, and may have backfired.
One Western diplomat who has monitored the electoral process here said the
mainland's tactics were actually "enhancing Lee Teng-hui's electoral chances --
his support has firmed up."
Subjecting the office of President to universal suffrage is the last major
step in Taiwan's democratic reform process and the elections next March are
likely to make Mr. Lee not only the first democratically selected leader of the
21 million Taiwanese, but he will be distinguished as the first native born
President. Both of his predecessors, Chiang Kai-shek and his son were born on
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the mainland.
This fact of birth has imbued Mr. Lee with the political cachet of a populist
Taiwanese figure who may secretly harbor aspirations for an independent Taiwan
despite Nationalist Party orthodoxy that Taiwan and the "motherland" will be
reunited.
Where Beijing's leaders believe Mr. Lee, through his campaign to raise
Taiwan's political profile internationally and to get the island re-seated in
the United Nations, is charting a course for Taiwan independence, Mr. Lee says
he is merely "promoting" the economic and democratic achievements of the island.
Taiwan's population is divided among those who want to someday reunify with
the mainland, those who want formal independence and those who prefer to wait
and see while enjoying the de facto independence that Taiwan has lived under for
more than four decades.
Beijing has long warned that a formal declaration of independence would be an
act against the sovereign concept of "one China" and would draw a military
response.
In the presidential race, opinion polls conducted this month have shown at
in a field of five candidates, Mr. Lee commands between 30 and 40 percent the
electorate. His strongest rival, Chen Li-an, who gave up his Nationalist Party
membership last week to run on a platform of restoring harmony in relations with
the mainland, has polled between 13 and 23 percent. The other contenders,
including the openly pro-independence candidates, are polling under 10 percent,
an indication that Mr. Lee himself has finessed the independence issue by
charting what appears to be a course toward independence while denying that is
his purpose.
Mr. Lee's announcement followed two muscular speeches in which he admonished
his Communist rivals on the mainland to "face up to history and reality" about
Taiwan's status in the region. He vowed to continue his crusade for greater
political recognition for the island in disregard to military bluster from the
mainland.
"We will carry out this policy and not accept any suppression," he said
during his main address to the delegates on Tuesday.
The Nationalists currently hold 58 percent of the seats in Parliament, a
majority that has continuously withered in recent years from gains made by the
Democratic Progressive Party, which favors independence for Taiwan, and the New
Party, a smaller group of former Nationalist Party members disaffected over a
range of issues, including corruption.
Mr. Lee's candidacy will be ratified by a rubber stamp vote of delegates on
Aug. 31. His only opponent within the party withdrew his challenge but said he
would seek independent public support for his candidacy. Rival bids for the
presidency are being mounted by at least three other candidates, two of whom are
defectors from the top ranks of Mr. Lee's party.
GRAPHIC: Photo: President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan announcing his candidacy for a
second term. (Agence France-Press)
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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 23, 1995, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1002 words
HEADLINE: Sound and Fury in East Asia
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 22
BODY:
Summing up his life's achievements, China's paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping,
once told a visitor, "There is only one thing that I shall have left undone in
my lifetime: the resolution of the Taiwan question."
"I'm afraid I shall not live to see it," he said.
He passed his 91st birthday today, homebound, invalid and insulated from the
world's gaze, without any public observance of the event, which has been his
preference. It is not known whether he is aware that, for the first time in
decades, Chinese and Western officials are wondering aloud whether there is a
danger of war breaking out over Taiwan.
In addition to the obvious risks of conflict, any fighting between Taiwan and
China would have serious economic costs to both countries, which have a close
trade relationship despite their immutable political stances. And any fighting
would surely cause serious strains for the United States, which has ties to both
countries.
Seat of the Nationalist Government of the late Chiang Kai-shek, who fled the
Communist victory on the mainland in 1949, Taiwan has long defied the mainland
as a renegade province. For years it allied itself with American military power
in the Pacific and, as the Republic of China, kept the Communist People's
Republic of China out of the United Nations.
Now, Taiwan is defying the mainland again.
After enduring two rounds of threatening Chinese military exercises off
Taiwan's coast, President Lee Teng-hui on Saturday called on Asian and Pacific
nations to erect a new security shield against China.
"China has been building up its military power in recent years, posing
threats to Taiwan and other Asia-Pacific countries and drawing international
concern," Mr. Lee said, adding that "the possibility of military conflict
remains."
Mr. Lee's appeal thus far has drawn no public response from Japan, South
Korea and China's Southeast Asian neighbors, but officials from several of these
countries say they have been profoundly shaken by the unfolding crisis and are
considering their options.
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"I think 30 years from now people are going to look back at this summer as a
turning point," said one Western diplomat, "but I'm afraid it's going to be a
turn for the worse."
Not a shot has been fired in anger, but the lines of confrontation are being
drawn, these officials say.
The Chinese President, Jiang Zemin, who earlier this year sought to extend an
olive branch to Taiwan by offering terms similar to those that will bring Hong
Kong back to Chinese rule in 1997, has now apologized in private to China's
military leadership for pursuing too "passive" a policy toward Taipei.
The powerful military leaders seem to have brought Mr. Jiang around to their
way of thinking, and the Chinese President is now siding with their push for a
campaign of increasing military intimidation against the island of 21 million in
coming months, Chinese and Western officials say.
China's Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, has been severely chastened for his
failure to predict the White House turnabout that approved President Lee's visit
to the United States in June, a decision that infuriated Beijing because it
broke a policy that five American Presidents had adhered to, emboldening
Taiwan's independence forces.
This week Mr. Qian will be pressing for a firm "guarantee" from Under
Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff that Washington will never allow a repeat visit
to the United States by Taiwan's leader, a promise Mr. Clinton's senior advisers
have said, 50 far, he is unwilling to give.
"There is no flexibility on this issue," a Chinese official said this week.
"If we give Lee Teng-hui any encouragement, he will go for independence, and 50
I am afraid there is going to be a war, because this is how our policy dictates
we must respond to independence."
Untested by any previous crisis of this severity, Mr. Jiang, the former party
secretary of Shanghai who never commanded military forces before being tapped as
Mr. Deng's successor in 1989, is now contending with strong nationalistic
currents in China's military leadership. Most of its senior members are older
and have served the party far longer than Mr. Jiang, who is 68.
"It is not clear that Jiang is out front," explained an analyst in one
Western embassy. "He is part of a consensus, and as is always the case in China,
you can let other elements of the leadership have their head and get out front
until the flaws in their strategy become apparent and then China pulls back."
The region is still shaking off the effects of China's first exercise in
July, when Beijing fired six M-9 ballistic missiles to target zones equidistant
from Taiwan and Japan. AS one expert pointed out, it was "unprecedented" for
China to demonstrate such a powerful weapon, capable of carrying nuclear
warheads, by firing it out of its territory near Taiwan and Japan, where no
effective defense against such a missile system exists.
But some Western embassies believe that Mr. Jiang would be able to pull back
from military options if he can wring concessions out of Taipei or Washington.
Chinese officials already have been heartened by the assurances they have taken
from a three-page letter President Clinton conveyed to Mr. Jiang saying that
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The New York Times, August 23, 1995
the United States opposes independence for Taiwan or its admission to the United
Nations.
China's first two military exercises off Taiwan's northern coast will be
followed by a third and larger scale exercise, American military officials say.
Taiwan is preparing to counter with its own large-scale exercise, which could
begin next month.
One of China's neighbors, Singapore, went ahead with a state visit to Beijing
this week, where the subject of China's pressure on Taiwan never came up in
public.
As if to pre-empt the subject, President Jiang was quoted on national
television tonight as telling Singapore's President, Ong Teng Cheong, and Senior
Minister Lee Kuan Yew that, "a stable and developing China will not be a threat
to any country."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 19, 1995, Saturday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1156 words
HEADLINE: CHINA WAR GAMES VIEWED AS TACTIC TO PRESS TAIWAN
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 18
BODY:
With its second military exercise near Taiwan this summer under way, China is
preparing an escalating series of naval, air and missile force maneuvers
intended to bring Taiwan's political leadership to heel, American military
officials and foreign diplomats say.
ans for the new exercises over the coming weeks and months have broad
su; jrt among Chinese military and civilian officials and represent a distinct
turr away from a resumption of dialogue with Taiwan, which China believes is
forsaking its adherence to the principle of "one China" and pursuing world
recognition as an independent nation.
China is putting more emphasis on military options because its leaders have
concluded -- wrongly in the view of many analysts -- that President Lee
Teng-hui, who has pursued a more visible and independent global role for Taiwan,
can be weakened politically by such a campaign.
"It's foolish, but that is where they are headed," said a China specialist
who recently completed consultations in Taiwan, Beijing and Washington. "China
is determined to remove Lee Teng-hui from power and they are going to ratchet up
the military pressure until they accomplish that."
Western military analysts and diplomats fear that events could spiral out of
control, leading to deliberate or accidental military conflict between China and
Taiwan. This in turn would create dangerous political and military choices for
the United States, which seeks good relations with both Taiwan and China but
would find it difficult to abandon Taiwan.
At risk also is the economic integration between the economies of Taiwan and
China, where Taiwanese businessmen have invested $20 billion in industries, part
of a booming trading relationship that would be costly to unhinge.
On Tuesday, China opened its second round of military exercises off Taiwan
with air and naval missile firings in the East China Sea as well as naval
artillery tests. They were conducted in an area 80 to 100 miles north of Taiwan.
"The exercise this time is different," Taiwan's Defense Minister, Chiang
Chung-ling, said in Taipei. "They have air and sea forces in joint combat
exercises in addition to guided-missile tests and artillery firing."
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In addition, more than 100 Chinese fishing boats were reported this week to
be entering Taiwan waters off Matsu Island, just off the mainland province of
Fujian. Such provocations in the past have drawn fire from Taiwan military
forces.
China's neighbors already are nervous over the territorial of Beijing in the
South China Sea and the buildup of its rapid-response military forces intended
to fight small-scale wars away from its borders.
Prime Minister Li Peng of China, in a meeting on Thursday with Senator J.
Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat, continued Beijing's hard line on Taiwan,
referring to China's sovereignty over the island as a "core principle" involving
China's "territorial integrity and the cause of reunification."
Details gleaned of Chinese military planning are being held closely by United
States officials, but they have forced Pentagon planners to consider what
military response American forces in the Pacific would make if an inadvertent or
deliberate clash occurred between Chinese and Taiwanese forces, or if China
sought to disrupt Taiwan's trade by blocking its sea lanes, American officials
say.
"Accider" appen when armed forces are maneuvering near each other and they
run the risk war by inadvertent surprises," said CharlesW. Freeman Jr., who
until last ye: was an Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of Asian policy.
Open conflict in the Taiwan Strait would also force Japan and South Korea to
weigh their own responses since American military units on their soil could
become involved in resupplying Taiwan.
"Put simply," said John W. Lewis, a longtime China scholar at Stanford
University who has consulted with Chinese military leaders here this summer,
"the stakes for peace and stability in Asia are quite high."
"The danger is the risk of a full-blown military crisis that arises from
escalating military bluster on both sides of the Taiwan Strait or from some
accident or miscalculation among military forces that are no longer
communicating well in an increasingly inflamed political environment."
Even as the threat of a military crisis increases, American officials are
worried about other factors that could add to the tension.
*Continued Chinese military pressure is likely to lead to requests from
Taiwan to its allies in Congress for major new arms sales, including submarines
and ballistic missile defense systems.
*United States officials believe they may be only weeks or months away from
proving irrefutably that China shipped M-11 ballistic missiles to Pakistan in
violation of its commitment not to do so, thereby triggering a legal requirement
for the Clinton Administration to impose new sanctions on China.
The continued detention of Harry Wu, the Chinese-American human rights
advocate, and increasing repression aimed at China's dissidents, is working
against the restoration of normal communication and ambassadorial relations,
which were effectively downgraded in June when ambassadors were called home from
both capitals.
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*If Mr. Lee becomes the first democratically elected President of Taiwan in
elections next March, Clinton Administration officials believe they will face
irresistible pressure from Congress to invite him to Washington, an act that
would enrage Beijing further.
With concern deepening over possible military conflict in the Taiwan Strait,
a number of China specialists and former Government officials from the Carter,
Reagan and Bush Administrations are mobilizing efforts to urge Congress and the
Clinton Administration to come to terms on a common strategy toward China and
Taiwan.
Such efforts are being complicated by the growing ideological debate over
China policy, as a number of members of Congress see irreconcilable differences
with Beijing over its human rights record and weapons proliferation activities.
Some have called for "containment" strategies and for elevated relations with
Taipei.
"United States policy since 1972 has sought to build peace, stability and
prosperity between China and Taiwan, and this policy has yielded tremendous
results in nurturing economic and political reforms and in creating an
environment for Beijino and Taipei to integrate their economies, set aside 45
years of enmity and
:ate their own future under the 'one-China' banner."
said Professor Lewis, a. informal adviser to Defense Secretary William J. Perry.
"This policy is now dangerously close to being reversed."
Yet at the same time, a growing number of Americans and members of Congress
believe that the United States cannot morally ignore the democratic flowering on
Taiwan, which only began to emerge a decade ago from a long period of political
repression and human rights abuses.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Hundreds of Taiwanese fishing boats were docked in the
northeastern port of Suao yesterday, as their owners refused to put to sea
because of fears of Chinese missile tests near the north coast of the island.
(Reuters) (pg. 6)
Map of the East China Sea. (pg. 6)
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Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
July 17, 1995, Monday, Late Edition Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1650 words
HEADLINE: Gold Hunters, Defying Beijing, Mine Vast Areas of Rural China
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: XINING, China
BODY:
A frenzied and chaotic gold rush is under way across vast expanses of rural
China, where newly wealthy "gold lords" and the peasants who toil and fight for
them are challenging the authority of the state.
Here in the far western province of Qinghai and in other parts of China,
modest gold deposits, long unde exclusive trol of the Communist Party
and state mining combines, are be ; overrun by & wave of entrepreneurial and
well-armed private miners.
"I've heard the bullets whizzing by my ears and seen people beside me
dying," said a woman in her 40's, who got rich and went bust during four years
as a "gold boss" in a remote mountain region 400 miles west of here. "Even if
the Government wanted to control us, we are stronger than they are right now,"
she said, "and our guns are normally much better than the ones carried by the
Public Security Bureau."
Lawlessness and violence, much of it induced by gold fever, has spread to
every province rich in minerals and continues to embarrass the Communist Party
leadership, no longer sure of its control over the 900 million rural Chinese.
The chaos here is part of a broader breakdown of Government authority in
large parts of the country as Beijing has relaxed its rigid economic controls
and millions of people have joined the scramble to get rich.
The new stress on making money during the last decade has made getting rich
by digging gold respectable, if not altogether legal, and has also stripped away
the priggish revulsion of the Mao Zedong era for all that glitters -- whether
jewelry, religious adornments or just hoarded bars of gold. Gold industry
researchers say China, Hong Kong and Taiwan together are leading the world in
wholesale and retail gold purchases, a surging demand that drives the gold rush
here.
For millions of poor Chinese, the seemingly meager payoff for leaving farm or
factory to dig gold is enticing. Here, a couple of hundred dollars made during
the course of a summer from backbreaking work on mining teams 15 the local
definition of "getting rich." (In rural areas, the average annual income per
person is only about $120.)
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And so the gold seekers come, lugging their tents and mess kits and
mud-crusted sheepskins for warmth and leaving behind farms or low-paying factory
jobs. With an estimated 130 million Chinese designated as "surplus labor" in the
countryside, the pool of potential miners tempted by tales of riches in the
mountains is huge.
Across Qinghai Province, known for its high plateau grasslands, its sweeping
mountain ranges and barren deserts, tens of thousands of Chinese peasants, often
supervised by gold lords, are shredding mountainsides with explosives, poisoning
rivers with their runoff and weakening Government control of vast, remote tracts
in western China.
The environmental damage is bedeviling central authorities concerned that the
country's already degraded base of natural resources is being depleted.
The Qinghai Daily newspaper recently complained that widespread and
unregulated gold mining had seriously damaged state-owned mining areas, added to
soil erosion along major rivers and pushed some rare animal species, like the
snow leopard and white-lipped deer, toward extinction.
Rivals Fight It Out On a Mountainside
The prospectors are oblivious, however. mining camp was dumping tons of
sediment into a tributary of the Yellow River within sight of police patrols and
near a large highway sign that proclaimed the river a "land and river erosion
protected area."
But the local police, undermanned and sometimes outgunned, seem uninterested
in extending their reach much beyond the city limits.
Last year, 2,000 miners from rival towns near here faced off on a
mountainside. In dispute was the prime gold digging turf. Armed with handguns,
machine guns and homemade cannon, they fought a marathon battle, leaving several
dead and forcing the provincial authorities to dispatch 50 members of the
People's Armed Police to separate the fighters.
Even the birthplace of Mao Zedong in Hunan Province has not been spared an
invasion by gold lords. Seven were executed late in 1993 for setting up illicit
operations outside Mao's hometown, Shaoshan. They were blamed for a crime wave
50 serious that a local newspaper complained that with all the robbery, murder
and brawling, "not even the chickens and the dogs feel secure."
China's top judicial authorities have warned that security problems in rural
China "are escalating enormously."
For tens of thousands of Chinese peasants dreaming of wealth, the reality of
the gold rush means only the chance to work for $1.25 a day in biting cold and
at high altitude, conditions so harsh that many try to flee only to be captured
and returned to work in leg irons for the duration of their contracts.
"I was sure I was going to die," said Yan Demin, 32, who was part of the
first wave of prospectors who, in the mid-1980's, headed for Qinghai's central
mountains. Many struck it rich, but Mr. Yan and his friends "lost our trucks
when they sank six feet into the mud" in the mountains.
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"We had to walk out for three and a half days with no food," he said. "All
you think of is home," he added, "of your wife, of your children, your mother,
your father. Even if I knew where some gold was, I wouldn't go back."
Hardships Don't Stop
Fortune Hunters
Still, they come.
They are peasants, or surplus farm laborers, the urban unemployed, or just
workers taking a few months off from their Government or factory jobs to strike
out for the mountains.
For six months of work, many go home with a few hundred dollars and the lucky
ones go home with a few thousand.
"If you make a thousand yuan" -- $120 -- "you get rich," said Zhou Zhongfu,
31, who came down from the mountains this year after only 25 days because there
was not enough water in the streams to wash the sand through the sieves. "If you
make 500 yuan, it's O.K., but this year we lost money."
Many of the gold lords here come from syndicates nized by an underworld
society dominated by China's Muslim minority, which ha built a black market to
service the soaring demand for decorative gold and jewery among prospering
Chinese and other Asians.
Officially, all private mining is illegal in China, but as one longtime
employee of the local Communist Party Committee asked, "What is really legal or
illegal out here?"
Twenty miles east of here, a farmer named Li Chunxi organized 50 peasants to
run an open-pit gold mine on a tributary of the Yellow River. The police come by
each day, he said, but after he paid a "fee" of $300 to mine the riverbed, they
don't bother him anymore.
On a good day the group can gross $400 by working in three shifts around the
clock. Hardly pay dirt for backbreaking work.
"Even though digging for gold is harder than farming," Mr. Li said, "we
prefer the work because we can make more money."
Kings of Mountain Fly Their Own Flag
Others are getting richer.
"I was a gold boss for four years," said the woman who made and lost her
fortune. She has lived through countless gun battles and made more than $30,000
her first year as a gold boss.
She is just over 40, with a hard, piercing stare and speaks like a gangster
in the Chinese dialect of Qinghai. She had slipped into an aging beige sedan
with curtained windows to talk to a foreign visitor.
"This is all illegal," she said, referring to her mining exploits. "I hope
you can protect my identity because if they find out, they will come and get
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The New York Times, July 17, 1995
me."
She did not say who "they" were.
"The first thing we would do when we struck gold," she said, "was set up a
pillbox on the mountaintop and train more of our workers how to use guns; then
we would use our blankets to make a flag, which meant: this mountain belongs to
us. That's the way we marked our territory."
Then the digging began.
A small army of workers used dynamite to gouge rock and sand from the
mountainsides and then "wash" it through cascades of sieves where the gold
appeared.
If another gold boss cast "the red eye" of envy toward her claim, work might
be interrupted for a gun battle. If some workers died in rock slides or
gunfights, "it's the same as one or two chickens dying," she said.
Now bankrupt because, she says, her partner cheated her, she is working in a
factory office here in the provincial capital, but she cannot wait to get back
in the game.
"I can't stand this poverty," she said. Then, tugging at her . .01 tunic, she
added, "Look at me, I can't even afford fancy clothes!"
A Mountain of Gold Bought for $70,000
Another gold boss named Mi Zhanglu is said to have paid someone in the
provincial government $70,000 for a mountain named Ha Shen Zhang near the
western city of Golmud and has since been mining $5 million in gold a year from
its ores.
"No one knew the mountain had so much gold in it," said a miner, an admirer
of Mr. Mi. According to local lore, Mr. Mi was once so poor that he and his wife
had only one pair of pants between them.
"Now he drives a Land Cruiser and communicates with a cellular phone and his
whole mountain is guarded by men with guns and cellular phones," the miner said.
Instead of going to the mountain, some villages buy tons of rock from Mr.
Mi's syndicate and crush it in a huge homemade milling machine. The crushed rock
contains traces of gold, which will bond with liquid mercury dumped into the vat
by villagers. In the end, a puddle of mercury bonded with gold is heated and the
gold is separated.
In Shangwuzhuang, 30 miles north of here, the Muslim villagers are making $50
to $100 a day milling the rocks bought from the gold lords. Most have renovated
their houses, bought motorcycles for the young men and with their surplus riches
they are making plans.
"Perhaps we will use the money to make a pilgrimage to Mecca," said Ma Jun,
taking his turn at the mill.
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GRAPHIC: Photo: A gold rush has drawn an army of fortune hunters to rural China,
One, Li Shengcun, panned for gold on the bank of the river where he is camped.
(Patrick E. Tyler/The New York Times) (pg. A4)
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The New York Times
July 13, 1995, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A;
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Column 1;
Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1131 words
HEADLINE: China Is Insisting Clinton Reaffirm One-China Policy
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: BEIJING, July 12
BODY:
Delivering its first outline of "practical steps" to begin thawing its
relations with the United States, the Chinese Government said today that
President Clinton should reaffirm that there is only one China and that Taiwan
is part of China, and declare that Taiwan's President will not be allowed to
make any more visits to the United States.
A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official, speaking on the condition that he
not be identified, cited a restoration of the status quo on Taiwan before last
month, when its President was allowed to visit the United States, as a minimum
requirement for Washington before another high-level meeting between the two
countries could be held.
Such a meeting could take place, Chinese officials said, as early as the end
of this month, when Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the Chinese
Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, go to Brunei for a regional security forum
convened by Southeast Asian countries.
American officials have reaffirmed the "one China" policy in recent days, and
President Clinton could do the same without risking serious political damage.
But a declaration that the Taiwan President was no longer welcome in the United
States would be seen as an admission of error, and could well be unacceptable to
the President and to the Republican-controlled Congress, which pressed Mr.
Clinton to allow the Taiwanese visit.
The senior Foreign Ministry official did not specify any actions Beijing
might take to meet American concerns, which center on China's human rights
record and trade issues. But Chinese officials hinted for the first time that
the American human rights campaigner Harry Wu, detained on June 19 as he entered
China and charged with espionage last Saturday, could be released after the
conclusion of a formal investigation.
One official urged Americans to be patient in allowing the investigation to
be completed before pressing for Mr. Wu's release.
A second official, also speaking on the condition he not be identified, said
today that China had followed an unwritten policy of not imprisoning Americans
charged with carrying out illegal political activities inside China.
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Though Chinese officials have taken pains to say Mr. Wu's case is in the
hands of the authorities in central Hubei Province, these statements today
indicate that the strong outcry in the United States over Mr. Wu's arrest is
beginning to have an impact on the Chinese leadership.
But it also seems clear that the case of Mr. Wu has handed the Chinese
leadership a high-value bargaining chip to use to force Washington to reaffirm
its commitments on Taiwan's status.
The Foreign Ministry official's remarks appear to signal a Chinese
willingness to find a way out of the crisis that has undermined constructive
communication between Washington and Beijing and has threatened to spill over to
the rapidly developing trade and economic relationship between the United States
and China.
The official acknowledged that there were powerful voices within the circle
of Chinese leaders that viewed American intentions toward China as increasingly
hostile, and he said these voices would only grow in strength if a new
diplomatic accommodation cannot be reached.
Still, he said, Beijing insists that President Clinton take the first step.
The Clinton Administration's decision to admit President Lee Teng-hui of
Taiwan reversed 16 years of Washington policy and infuriated Beijing, which
regards itself as the sole legal government of Taiwan.
Chinese officials said Washington should reaffirm the American commitment to
the three joint communiques that form the bedrock of diplomatic relations
between China and the United States, beginning with the 1972 Shanghai Communique
negotiated during President Nixon's first visit to China.
Each of these communiques affirms that the Beijing Government is the sole
legal government of China and that Taiwan is part of China.
Communist Party leaders say Mr. Clinton's decision to reverse policy and
allow President Lee's private visit to attend a reunion at Cornell University
last month has undermined the communiques.
"If the American administration knew that Lee Teng-hui was seeking to create
the image of two Chinas, or one China and one Taiwan, and still allowed him to
visit the United States, this indicates that the United States has changed it
policy toward China," an official said.
The Foreign Ministry official also said Washington should reaffirm that only
one China can be seated at the United Nations.
Taiwan is seeking international support to regain the United Nations seat it
lost to the People's Republic of China in 1971. But China, as a permanent member
of the Security Council, can veto any proposal to seat Taiwan.
[The State Department spokesman, Nicholas Burns, said today: "We have made
abundantly clear from the President on down for the past several months that we
have a one-China policy and that we recognize the People's Republic of China as
the sole representative of the Chinese people."
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[Regarding Taiwan, Mr. Burns said, "We've also made it very clear that on the
subject of Taiwan we will retain unofficial relations only. We will not change
that policy, and we have assured the Chinese Government to that effect."
[A senior State Department official said, "I doubt very much there will be
many visas forthcoming for Taiwan's President or other senior Taiwanese
officials. We've always said we would do this on a case-by-case basis only."]
But China appeared to be demanding a more elaborate statement, especially on
the question of the future access of Taiwan's leader to America.
"Since the President made the decision for Lee Teng-hui to visit the United
States," the Chinese Foreign Ministry official said, "the President should make
a statement. The statement should be clear about the commitment the United
States has made in the three Sino-U.S. communiques, and it should say that the
United States doesn't allow Lee Teng-hui to visit the United States."
Wu's Wife Urges Protest
WASHINGTON, July 12 (AP) -- The wife of an American human rights campaigner
imprisoned in China suggested today that Hillary Rodham Clinton turn down an
invitation to a women's conference in China in protest.
The White House said no decision had been made on whether Mrs. Clinton would
attend the United Nations International Woman's Conference in September. Mrs.
Clinton is the honorary chairwoman of the United States delegation.
Ching Lee Wu, the wife of Harry Wu, said she was generally pleased with
efforts being made to win her husband's release. "They are all concerned about
Harry very much," she said after meeting with the national security adviser,
Anthony Lake, at the White House.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Ching Lee Wu, whose husband is in jail in central China on
charges of spying, spoke to reporters yesterday outside the White House after
meeting with Anthony Lake, the national security adviser. She wore a yellow
ribbon to show support for her husband, Harry Wu. (Reuters)
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The New York Times
July 9, 1995, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 5; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1244 words
HEADLINE: BEIJING ARRESTS RIGHTS DEFENDER
BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER
DATELINE: BEIJING, July 8
BODY:
Harry Wu, a Chinese-American human rights campaigner known for his daring and
secretive travels through China to document prison labor abuses, was charged
with espionage today.
Mr. Wu has been detained since June 19, when Chinese border authorities
discovered his identity at a remote checkpoint in western China as he entered
the country from Kazakhstan with an associate.
His arrest comes at a time of fraying relations between Washington and
Beijing, and the start of legal action that could return Mr. Wu to a Chinese
prison cell for the rest of his life 15 certain to bring an outcry from human
rights groups and members of Congress.
Mr. Wu, 58, spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps, from 1960 to 1979. In a
memoir published last year, he wrote that his secret forays "meant risking my
own rearrest and reimprisonment," but he insisted on taking such risks to expose
the abuses in the system under which he suffered.
One human rights advocate in Hong Kong today called the arrest an effective
"declaration of war against the United States on the human rights issue."
"This move by Beijing calls for the most robust and sternest response from
Washington," said Robin Munro, Hong Kong director of Human Rights Watch.
Though Mr. Wu has been a singular irritant to the Communist Party leadership,
the timing of the arrest and the seriousness of the charge are likely to worsen
the strains between Washington and Beijing. In addition to conflicts over human
rights, trade issues and missile sales, tensions have been growing since
President Clinton's decision in May to allow a private visit to the United
States by the President of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui.
In the current inflamed atmosphere, it may be politically impossible for
Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown to lead a business delegation here this
summer as planned, or for Hillary Rodham Clinton to address the United Nations
International Women's Conference to be held in China in September. A spokesman
for Mrs. Clinton said on Friday that she was considering accepting such an
invitation.
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Western officials and some Chinese said today that Mr. Wu's risky enterprise
made his arrest somewhat predictable.
Chinese officials say that since 1991, Mr. Wu, in an effort to deceive them,
has entered the country under the names Harry Wu and Peter H. Wu.
The official New China News Agency, in a dispatch from the central city of
Wuhan, said Mr. Wu had been arrested "on charges of entering into China under
false names, illegally obtaining China's state secrets and conducting criminal
activities."
Mr. Wu, the press agency said, "slipped into China's areas and units closed
to foreigners on several occasions, engaged in espionage and bought secret
information and stole secret documents."
"He carried these secrets abroad," the dispatch said, "and provided them to
foreign organizations and institutions."
Senior State Department officials say Mr. Wu has had only one American
passport, as Peter H. Wu, the name under which he was naturalized as an American
.en in January 1992.
Mr. Wu has often testified at Congressional hearings on human rights abuses
in China after collecting evidence by sneaking into labor camps and secretly.
filming what he has seen there. In 1991 he used a hidden camera to film a report
for the CBS News program "60 Minutes."
Last year, in cooperation with the British Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Wu
tried to document on film that China was removing organs from executed prisoners
for use in transplants to wealthy or powerful Chinese recipients.
While human rights experts say they believe that abuses in the organ donor
system occur in China, the BBC discovered that Mr. Wu's videotape, ostensibly
showing kidney transplant surgery, was actually a routine heart operation. A BBC
investigation is under way.
It was not clear what legal representation Mr. Wu will be afforded to defend
himself against the espionage charges. In Washington, Nicholas Burns, the State
Department spokesman, said the United States had been informed that "we will be
allowed access to Mr. Wu."
"We have decided to send our top consular official to Wuhan with the
expectation that we may be able to see him on Monday," he said, adding, "We very
much regret the detention of Mr. Wu and the accusations made against him."
Attempts by an American Embassy officer to reach Mr. Wu after his initial
detention in Xinjiang Province failed, and led to recriminations between
Washington and Beijing over whether China was adhering to consular agreements.
Chinese officials said that since Mr. Wu immigrated to the United States from
the central city of Wuhan, his case had been turned over to the Wuhan Public
Security Bureau, which carried out the arrest.
Mr. Wu and his wife, Ching Lee Wu, has been living in Milpitas, Calif., 40
miles south of San Francisco, where he is the director of the Laogai Research
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Foundation. Laogai is Chinese for China's "reform through labor" prison system,
in which sentences of up to three years are handed down without trial, legal
representation or appeal.
Born in Shanghai in 1937 as a wealthy banker's son and educated by the
Jesuits of prewar Shanghai, Mr. Wu was of the class of Chinese that had risen
from chaos to an almost European living standard. This way of life was shattered
when the Communists won the Chinese civil war in 1949, and Mr. Wu's family
suffered the indignities of the enforced social leveling.
By the time he reached the Beijing Geology Institute in the early 1950's, Mr.
Wu was a stranger in the new culture of the Communist Party. The capitalist
background of his family put him under constant suspicion and, in 1958, when he
accepted Mao Zedong's invitiation to "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred
schools of thought contend," his criticisms of the party, like those by
thousands of other intellectuals, led to swift retribution.
He was judged guilty of being a counterrevolutionary rightist and put under
the "supervision of the masses," a form of social persecution. For two years he
was a virtual prisoner in his college and, the morning after his graduation, he
was arrestf
imprisoned. His stepmother, upon hearing of his arrest,
committed suicide.
The next 19 years, including the tumultuous period of the Cultural
Revolution, were spent in one "reform through labor" camp or another, unfolding
for him the gulag that the Chinese Communists had built to capture millions of
"bad elements," which included common criminals, former Nationalist opponents of
the Communists and political dissidents of every stripe.
"Despair at life with no meaning after being dumped in China's human dustbin
drove many inmates who should have been respected professionals to suicide," Mr.
Wu later wrote. Human life, he said, had "no more importance than cigarette ash
flicked in the wind."
After the death of Mao in 1976, it took three years for Mr. Wu's case to be
reviewed 50 he could be released, and then he waited another five years for a
passport to visit relatives in the United States. Once settled there, his fervor
to document abuses in the Chinese penal system drew him back to China again and
again.
"I felt urgently the responsibility not just to disclose but to publicize the
truth about the Communist Party's mechanisms of control, whatever the risk to
me, whatever the discomfort of telling my story," he said. "Each time I
revisited my past, I hoped it would be the last time."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Harry Wu. (Agence France-Presse) (pg. 10)
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The Washington Post
August 03, 1995, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1227 words
HEADLINE: China Expels Two U.S. Attaches Accused of Spying
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Thursday)
BODY:
China today expelled two U.S. Air Force officers who were taken into custody
five days ago. Chinese authorities had accused them of spying at restricted
military zones along the southeastern coast.
The episode is bound to further complicate efforts to patch up tattered
U.S.-Chinese relations just two days after Secretary of State Warren Christopher
and Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen met inconclusively in Brunei to discuss
ways of easing tensions. China has lodged a strong protest over the purported
spy mission and has demanded that there be no further such incidents.
The official New China News Agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen
Guofeng as saying that the two Hong Kong-based U.S. military attaches had
"sneaked" into the restricted areas and "illegally acquired military
intelligence by photographing and videotaping" the areas before being detained
"on the spot" at 10:04 a.m. Saturday by Chinese soldiers.
The two attaches, Col. Joseph Wei Chan and Capt. Dwayne Howard Florenzie,
were released today, said State Department spokeswoman Sharon Bowman. She said
no further details of the release were available pending information from the
U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The embassy would not comment on what Chan and
Florenzie were doing in China.
Meeting with journalists Wednesday, Christopher refused to comment on the
detention and expulsion. Instead, he said he was pleased by the tone of the
meeting with the Chinese foreign minister, and that he had welcomed the chance
"to look him in the eye and say we have not changed our policy" on recognizing
only one China.
"I think the foreign minister had to be impressed with the letter we gave him
from President Clinton," Christopher added.
The White House said the two attaches were on "authorized travel," but it did
not specifically deny the spying charges. "We're not aware of anything out of
the routine about their travel in China," press secretary Michael McCurry said.
He said they were traveling with valid visas and diplomatic passports.
For the Clinton administration, the incident is particularly ill-timed. It
has been trying to smooth China's ruffled feathers after an unofficial visit to
the United States by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui and to persuade China to
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release Harry Wu, a Chinese American human rights activist jailed on espionage
charges. Relations between the two countries have hit one of the lowest points
since diplomatic normalization in 1979, as suspicions grow in Beijing that the
United States has decided to treat China as a strategic rival and pursue a
policy of containment.
Although the Air Force officers' detention began five days ago, it was not
publicly disclosed until Wednesday. U.S. officials in Brunei said Christopher
learned about it from American sources several hours before meeting with Qian on
Tuesday but decided not to raise the matter officially in the belief that it was
better to go "through the usual channels." Neither Christopher nor Qian referred
to the matter during their 90-minute conversation, officials said.
But the announcement cast a shadow over the talks. Shen said the detained
Americans, both Air Force liaison officers at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong
Kong, had entered China July 23 on visas issued for the purpose of consulting
with officials at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Consulate General in
Guangzhou.
Instead, he said, they "violated Chinese laws during their stay in China" and
"seriously undermined China's national security." He said state security
authority * had conducted an investigation and "the facts are clear and evidence
irrefutable."
Diplomats, who possess immunity from prosecution, are usually expelled
promptly in such cases. It was unusual that the two Americans were held for an
extended period. Pentagon officials said in Washington that both Chan and
Florenzie were defense liaison officers -- the equivalent of defense attaches at
an embassy. Florenzie is an intelligence officer also trained in acquisition
management. Chan is an operations commander and a political-military affairs
officer.
U.S. defense attaches are assigned to every U.S. embassy and most consulates
around the world, and foreign countries similarly station military attaches in
the United States. The attaches' job is to monitor and report on the activities
of military forces in their host country, as well as to carry out
security-related tasks at an embassy. They usually work closely with
intelligence officers.
Chan, who has served 28 years in the Air Force, is from Fort Wayne, Indiana.
He is married and is a graduate of the University of Indiana. Florenzie, who has
been in the Air Force 11 years, is from Jersey City, is married and has two
children. He graduated from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
It remained unclear what installations the officers were photographing, if
any. In addition to conventional military facilities, China considers a wide
range of public infrastructure to be military secrets and 50 restricts the
photographing of bridges, airports and train stations.
China's southern coast is a sensitive area with a number of military
installations. It faces Taiwan, the island nation controlled by a rival
Nationalist government and which China regards as a renegade province.
The Chinese military staged exercises in the area last week, firing six
surface-to-surface missiles in five days -- a demonstration viewed as an
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attempt to intimidate Taiwan. Some military analysts said China moved extra
missile launchers and antiaircraft weapons into the region for the exercises.
Aides to Christopher suggested the possibility that the seizure of the
attaches was an attempt by China's military command to sabotage the
Christopher-Gian meeting. Such a strong political position by the military would
be a departure from its history of obedience to the ruling Communist Party.
Moreover, any effort at political sabotage might have been more effective had
the announcement been made before Christopher and Qian met.
Sources in Beijing have suggested that there has been tension between
military leaders and the foreign minister. In May, after talks with Christopher,
Qian had assured the Chinese leadership that the United States would not issue a
visa to Taiwan's Lee, but military leaders were skeptical, sources here said.
Two days later, the Clinton administration reversed itself and granted the visa
under congressional pressure, undercutting Qian's credibility.
The current crisis in U.S.-China relations was triggered by Lee's visit to
the United States in June for a reunion at his alma mater, Cornell University in
Ithaca, N.Y. -- the first visit to the United States by a Taiwanese leader since
U.S.-China relations were reestablished. China said the visit violated U.S.
agreements made in 1979 to downgrade relations with Taiwan and observe a "one
China" policy.
The Clinton administration has said the visit was strictly personal.
Nonetheless, China recalled its ambassador to Washington and has not agreed to
accept former Democratic senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee, the Clinton
administration's choice, as the new U.S. ambassador. The previous ambassador,
Stapleton Roy, left Beijing in June to take a new post.
writers Michael Dobbs in Brunei and Dana Priest in Washington contributed to
this report.
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August 31, 1995, Thursday, Final Edition
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LENGTH: 997 words
HEADLINE: Women's Forum Opens in China Amid Disputes
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 30
BODY:
As a torch was passed from hand to hand and a performer sang a song called
"Keep on Moving Forward," more than 15,000 women cheered the opening today of
the Nongovernmental Organizations Forum on Women amid controversies over visas,
venues and Chinese restrictions on demonstrations by participants.
At the opening we mony in a Beijing stadium, Chinese performers put on a
variety show that fe ured orange-clad dancers with yellow and green pompoms, a
126-piece all-female Chinese orchestra playing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy,"
thousands of balloons, Peking opera, women carrying plaster doves and members of
the Song & Dance Ensemble of the general political department of the Chinese
army.
"Look at the world through women's eyes -- look and act," said Supatra
Masdit, a Thai politician in charge of the meeting of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs). "The women's movement will go forward into the next
century with higher spirits and
will help create a new and democratic
relationship for humankind."
A rallying call was issued in six languages: "Let us celebrate women's power
-- our strength.'
Thursday marks the beginning of more than 10 days of workshops and assemblies
to be held in the Beijing suburb of Huairou for delegates from organizations
concerned about women's issues. They hope to influence a "program of action"
document that is to be debated and issued by governmental representatives at the
U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women that starts Monday.
"There is enormous potential for putting pressure on governments and
institutions to change," said Bella Abzug, the former New York City
congresswoman who now helps run the Women's Environment & Development
Organization.
The NGO Forum is offering participants a dizzying choice of events -- 5,000
workshops and panels on subjects ranging from "Sexism and the Buddhist Religion"
to "Women's Empowerment" and "Cooking With Sunshine: A Global Strategy." Other
sessions will deal with human rights in China, women's banking, affirmative
action and family planning.
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Though most of the sessions will focus on the problems women confront around
the world, today's ceremony was a well-orchestrated celebration beneath a blimp
that read: "Equality Development Peace Friendship." The performances took place
against a giant cutout of a woman who appears to be bravely turned toward a
strong headwind. "The Goddess of Joy is holy and pure, and the good earth is
bathed in the brilliance of the sun," the Chinese program notes said, describing
the backdrop.
Behind the upbeat opening ceremony on the eve of the forum, controversies
still swirled about the Chinese hosts and comments by a security official who
said public demonstrations would be confined to an area the size of a basketball
court within the sealed-off NGO Forum site in Huairou.
At a news conference this morning, Irene Santiago, the NGO Forum's executive
director, said the Chinese never told organizers of any such restrictions. There
is "no such instruction -- nor will such instruction ever be given," she said.
"We're certainly not going to allow that a small area of the big forum site is
designated as an area for freedom of expression."
The letter of agreement signed by the Chinese government gives organizers
jurisdiction over the site
ted to them in Huairou, a town near the Great
Wall an hour's drive north of
jing, Santiago said.
The spat was just one of the tensions between the boisterous forum
participants and government officials anxious to make sure the enthusiasm for
participation and demonstration doesn't spill out of the forum and into the
Chinese population at large.
For the most part, organizers have done their best to avoid antagonizing
their Chinese hosts. Gertrude Mongella, a former Tanzanian lawmaker who chairs
the U.N. conference, said she expected the meetings to be orderly and would not
"allow any unruly behavior that will disrupt the working of the conference."
Though she rejected the tough Chinese guidelines, she said she understood
China's distaste for criticism.
"What else would they have said? I wouldn't allow anybody to come and attack
my leader in Tanzania," Mongella said.
It was unclear how many groups and individuals who wanted to attend the
meeting had been barred either by rejection of visa applications or simply
through bureaucratic delays in the Chinese consular system.
Santiago said organizers have protested to China about its exclusion of
groups from the rebellious province of Tibet and from Taiwan, regarded by the
Communist government here as a breakaway province of China.
"We are trying to make sure that they are heard here," she said.
China also barred all 30 would-be participants from Niger, allegedly because
applications were misplaced. But Niger recognizes Taiwan and is widely believed
to have been barred for that allegiance.
Getting here is only part of the battle. Many women today complained that
they were unable to obtain tickets required to get into the opening ceremony.
Many women also chafed at close surveillance by police in Huairou hotels and
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by solicitous forum organizers who have tried to steer women onto buses for
orderly trips to meeting sites.
An elderly Japanese woman staged a lone protest against nuclear testing as
thousands of women gathered for the gala opening ceremony, the Reuter news
agency reported. The woman stood on the main steps to the China National Olympic
Stadium, holding up a banner in English: "Stop nuclear tests. Nuclear weapons
results of non-feminism government. I am a mother of a Nagasaki victim."
The woman, who appeared about 70 years old, staged her brief protest in the
face of a huge security presence. She wanted China to halt its own nuclear
weapons testing program.
"I came here to appeal," she told the reporters. "Stop nuclear tests. I want
all over the world to know."
When Chinese police approached the woman, she disappeared into the crowd.
GRAPHIC: Photo, ap; Photo, reuter , Ind delegates chant "Women's rights!" in
their region's tent at forum site in 1140 SU, near Beijing. Women representing
different cultures of the world pass a "prace torch" during the opening
ceremonies of the NGO Forum at a Beijing stadium.
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The Washington Post
August 30, 1995, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1280 words
HEADLINE: Chinese Get Word: Shun Naked Women; Gathering U.N. Conference Daunting
for Beijing Hosts
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 29
BODY:
With roughly 30,000 foreigners arriving here to attend the United Nations
Fourth World Conference on Women, Chinese citizens have received some
suggestions on how they should deal with the infl
One -- If working at the parallel meeting of nur vernmental organizations
(NGOs) that opens Wednesday in the Beijing suburb C Huairou, wear bug spray
because the flies might transmit AIDS carried by lesbian attendees, one work
unit was told.
Two -- If you are a police officer or a hotel desk clerk and you spot a naked
woman demonstrating in a public place, toss a white sheet or a coat on top of
her, press reports suggested. If you are a taxi driver, do not pick up naked
women in your cab.
Three -- If you are working in one of the offices in the Kempinski Hotel
complex where delegates are staying, take the service elevator -- for "security
reasons," said a memo distributed to offices in the complex.
This week, thousands of women from around the world are pouring into Beijing
for the World Conference on Women, which starts Monday, and the NGO Forum.
The meetings will be taking place in a carnival atmosphere and will feature
celebrities such as first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Winnie Mandela and Jane
Fonda, as well as American antiabortion activists, black-robed Iranian Islamic
fundamentalists and experts on international financial institutions. A
bedraggled group that traveled from Poland across the former Soviet republics
and much of China on a U.N. "Peace Train" arrived Monday; another train of
participants arrived today from Paris.
But many Chinese authorities are not enjoying the show. Instead they are
doing their best to make sure that the thousands of delegates here do not
contaminate Chinese people with too many foreign ideas.
In an event that went uncovered by China's state-controlled media, Amnesty
International held its first news conference ever on Chinese soil today,
assailing China's human rights record and the recent execution of 16 people who
the government said posed a danger to the delegates attending the women's
conference.
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For the Chinese government, the huge event represents both a triumph and, as
the Amnesty news conference illustrated, a headache. On the one hand, it gives
the government the sort of recognition it has long craved. On the other hand, it
poses a myriad of potential problems for a government long obsessed with
controlling its own citizens and the information they receive.
One issue of extreme concern to Chinese authorities is the prospect that some
of their foreign guests will want to brandish placards and shout their views.
Many women believe that 15 the reason the Chinese government decided to move the
NGO Forum to the suburb of Huairou, nearly an hour's drive outside Beijing;
Chinese officials said the original conference site, a Beijing stadium, had
structural defects.
Now it appears that that precaution was not enough. At Huairou, the
government has created a designated protest spot -- a middle-school athletic
field -- within the confines of the forum site, where an extra 5,000 police
officers will be on duty -- one for every six delegates.
Even there, speech would not be completely free, said Public Security Vice
Minister Tian Qiyu, China's security boss for the women's conference. "Inside
the site, NGOs are permitted to have demonstrations and pr ions, but these
should not infringe on the sovereignty of the host country at should not
slander or attack leaders of the host country," Tian said toc at a Beijing
news conference.
But the NGO site, which is sealed off from the Chinese public, is officially
designated as U.N. territory during the conference, so Tian's edict elicited a
pointed response from the NGO Forum organizer, Supatra Masdit, who has
frequently praised China's efforts to play host. "The laws of the host country
prevail only outside the site of the forum," Masdit said. Foreign Ministry
spokesman Chen Jian later contradicted Tian's decree, saying U.N. rules, not
Chinese, applied in areas designated by mutual consent as "U.N. premises."
Amnesty took advantage of the U.N. protection for its news conference,
"This is the first time that Amnesty International has been allowed into
China, and sitting here in the capital of a country whose government has a grave
human rights record, we cannot be silent," said Pierre Sane, secretary general
of the London-based human rights group.
In reference to the executions, he added, "We have heard virtually every
excuse from governments to justify human rights violations, but this is simply
unbelievable -- to welcome the world to Beijing, must people die?"
In a briefing later, Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen said, "Amnesty
International is an organization that has always harbored deep prejudices
against China, and its allegations are groundless." He denied the executions
took place before the conference, though they had been reported in the official
Beijing Daily.
Despite these disputes and widespread fears that the conference would turn
into a public relations fiasco for China, the initial registration process for
conference participants seems to have gone relatively smoothly.
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The Washington Post, August 30, 1995
Although Chinese customs officials carefully checked some participants' bags
this weekend, the checks for subversive materials became less frequent as the
number of arriving participants grew, and most people made it through customs at
Beijing's airport with unusual speed. Most people said they managed to register
for the meetings in 10 minutes or SO.
The official New China News Agency put a bright face on the facilities in
Huairou, where the Chinese government did not have time to erect enough
buildings to hold all the participants. Instead it is using about 80 tents.
According to the news agency, one of the tents "looks just like a heavenly
temple" and another from Tibet, it said, was decorated with "lucky symbols."
To be sure, not everyone was satisfied.
The New York-based Human Rights in China, a group of Chinese exiles sharply
critical of the Communist government, protested that one of its members was
barred from attending the meeting.
For many of the Beijing-based Chinese, the conference is a curiosity or a
nuisance. In an effort to reduce traffic, the government has issued new +raffic
regulations. A group of people who had completed the requirements for
driving licenses were told they would have to wait to receive their lic. ,es
until after the conference. Some restaurants have been told to turn dow:
reservations from large groups to limit meeting opportunities in the city.
For some Beijing residents, however, the conference is a chance for business
or fun.
An entire Beijing high school class learning English was sent to Huairou to
work. Each student is receiving $ 1.20 a day.
One student complained that the diversion of the class from Beijing showed
that there were no human rights in China. But after spending a couple of
fun-filled nights away from home in a Huairou dormitory, she changed her mind.
The students will also start school late after getting a week off following the
conference.
Sixty Chinese companies will display their products for conference
participants, who received special "shopping vouchers" with their conference
materials. Foreign companies also jumped on the opportunity to promote their
products. On billboards all over Huairou, Apple Computer advertises itself as
the technical sponsor of the event. And McDonald's is offering
hamburger-and-french-fry lunches. Hong Kong-based clothing retailer Esprit is
giving away bags that say "Look at the World Through Women's Eyes."
GRAPHIC: Photo, ap, Members of Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party
protest at Hong Kong office of the New China News Agency, saying China used red
tape to keep them from attending the conference activities on the mainland.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 28, 1995, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A20
LENGTH: 884 words
HEADLINE: Clinton May Meet With Chinese Leader in U.S.; Washington, Beijing in
Agreement on Preparing for Possible Summit Talks in October
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 27
BODY:
China and the United States have failed to bridge their differences over
Taiwan, but Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff said today that he discussed
with senior Chinese officials the possibility of a meeting between President
Clinton and China's leader in October.
"We agreed that both sides would begin to prepare thoroughly for such a
meeting, making every effort to discuss frankly and in a constructive spirit a
wide variety of issues of concern," Tarnoff said at a news conference after
talks with Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and Vice Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing
over the weekend.
Chinese President and Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin is expected to be in
New York in October to attend the 50th-anniversary session of the U.N. General
Assembly. U.S. officials said President Clinton was committed to a meeting with
Jiang, even if it draws criticism from Republican rivals as the presidential
election season heats up.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher earlier had held out the possibility of
a U.S.-China summit this fall if China released American activist Harry Wu from
prison. Wu was expelled Thursday and is back in the United States.
"I think basically there would be a [presidential] meeting of some kind, and
whether it would take place in New York or Washington, that part has not been
determined," said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine K. Albright on
the CBS program "Face the Nation."
Tarnoff's meetings were part of an effort to halt the recent slide in
Sino-American relations and reestablish official contacts. China suspended those
contacts in May after the United States issued a visa to Taiwanese President Lee
Teng-hui 50 he could visit his alma mater, Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
China objected because it regards Taiwan as one of its own provinces and opposes
Taiwan's efforts to break out of its international isolation.
"I saw a very serious determination to engage in details and talk in depth,"
Tarnoff said. "I expect that we can resume contacts in the coming weeks."
During his half-hour session with Tarnoff, Qian repeated China's opposition
to future visits to the United States by Taiwanese officials, an issue
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The Washington Post, August 28, 1995
expected to arise again in March following Taiwan's first democratic
presidential election. According to the New China News Agency, Qian said, "China
hopes that such kind of event will never occur."
"They did make their case on Taiwan forcefully and at some length," said a
U.S. official. Tarnoff reiterated that the United States would review
applications on a case-by-case basis and that all Taiwanese visits would remain
"private and unofficial" ones.
Tarnoff said he believed the United States and China could move ahead on
other issues despite their differences on Taiwan.
"While in substance, the differences [over Taiwan] were not bridged, I think
that we did have a full airing of views, and there was a commitment on both
sides that there are other aspects of the relationship which we are determined
to proceed to work on together," Tarnoff said.
A summit meeting between Clinton and Jiang could help, officials here say.
Although Clinton has met Jiang twice at meetings of the Association of South
East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Seattle, no top Chinese
leader has been hosted in Washington in more than 15 years, and it has been more
than a decade since a senior official made a special trip to the United States.
Progress might be easier now that China has expelled Wu, the Chinese-born
American who was detained as he entered China on June 19 and convicted of
espionage before being expelled on Thursday. Wu, who has testified frequently
before congressional committees, had returned to China to expose conditions in
China's prison and labor camp system, in which he spent 19 years.
Tarnoff said that Wu's expulsion had "removed an obstacle" to improving
relations but that there had been no quid pro quo for Wu's release. Immediately
after Wu's release, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that she would
attend part of the U.N.-sponsored Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in
early September.
Many Republicans have opposed her participation because of China's human
rights violations and because, they say, the conference will pursue a left-wing
agenda.
"If Bob Dole wants to say we shouldn't have anything to do with China and cut
them down to size, let him," said a U.S. official in reference to criticisms by
the Republican Senate majority leader and presidential candidate. "I think the
president will stand his ground. It's possible there won't be enough ground to
stand on, but we're determined to go forward. The president has made a policy
decision that the [U.S.-China] relationship is worth working on. If it doesn't
go anywhere and is a disappointment, 50 be it."
Qian will meet with Christopher in New York in late September, Tarnoff said.
The two sides are hoping to stress areas in which there has been some
cooperation: anti-narcotics enforcement; intellectual property protection;
attempts to persuade North Korea to open nuclear facilities to international
inspection; U.N. Security Council measures on Iraq and Bosnia; and Chinese
pledges to stop future transfers of long-range missile technology.
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The Washington Post, August 28, 1995
GRAPHIC: Photo, Peter Tarnoff's talks in Beijing were part of an effort to halt
the recent slide in U.S.-China relations.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
COUNTRY: CHINA; UNITED STATES;
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Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 27, 1995, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A20
LENGTH: 1609 words
HEADLINE: In China, Promise and Pitfalls; Amid Economic Changes, More Women Are
Running the Show
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING
BODY:
Cheng Hong might have followed the predictable career path of a poor but
secure physics teacher.
A graduate of Beijing University, Cheng was assigned to teach physics at the
Capital Medical University for a salary of less than $ 10 a month. In a
different era, this would have been her fate for life.
Instead, Cheng moonlighted as a fashion model, making more in a day than she
made in a month teaching. Through her modeling job, she met some Taiwanese
investors who helped her and a sister start their own small clothing design and
manufacturing company. Today, Cheng, 31, and her sister run a company with 40
employees, eight retail outlets and more than $ 1 million a year in revenue.
In China's era of economic change, the growing private sector has given a
small but significant number of women the opportunity to run their own shows and
make their own fortunes. Whereas academia or letters were once the only path to
public recognition for Chinese women, now independent business is offering a new
niche.
The stories of three women show that business isn't easy, either. Cheng rose
to become a successful fashion designer, Ma Xiaowei heads a computer software
and data processing company, and Tan Lulu is an independent theater producer
whose hit play fell victim to the jealousies of the male-dominated, state-owned
theater establishment.
Most of the emerging businesswomen are young -- between 22 and 40. They have
come of age in the era of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who endorsed the slogan
"to get rich is glorious." The generation before that went through the Cultural
Revolution, when capitalism was pilloried and political indoctrination replaced
formal education as well as labor in poor rural areas. Few people from the
Cultural Revolution generation were able to get their educations or careers back
on track.
Cheng Hong was one of fewer than a dozen women studying physics in the
Beijing University class of 1985. But even before she graduated, she had started
working as a model, a relatively new occupation in a nation where for two
decades men and women all wore identical shapeless suits like those pioneered by
Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong.
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The Washington Post, August 27, 1995
To solve the problem of a permit, she hooked up with an official theater
group in Beijing. The theater left the work to Tan. Last October, the play
opened and became wildly popular. Black market prices for tickets rose to 10
times the $ 3.60 Tan was charging. After six shows, she made back her
investment.
Then her troubles started. Tan said: "The owners of the national theater
thought: 'She made money! That's not right. A woman? Twenty-something? We can't
permit that. That's what they thought in their hearts."
So the theater company refused to give Tan her full share of the profits for
the remainder of the run. A national tour has collapsed. Two actors loyal to Tan
were cut from the cast and have been blacklisted from other productions.
Tan's appeals to higher-level officials have gone unheeded. The courts have
refused to hear a legal case on the issue.
Tan said the affair reflects the problem of changing the entrenched Chinese
system, a challenge even more difficult for a woman.
She said the theater people shared the mentality of the allegorical Chinese
easants with a fish pond. In that folk tale, a person comes to a village where
.he peasants live beside a smelly, useless pond. He works three years and turns
it into a clean, thriving fish pond. He makes a lot of money and the village
benefits from a cleaner environment and cheaper fish. But the peasants grow
jealous, declare the pond national property and shoo the entrepreneur away. Soon
the pond returns to its former decay.
"I'm the entrepreneurial peasant," Tan said. "I'm up against the power of the
state and I'm just on my own." According to Tan, "in China, the more successful
you are, the more people hate you. In the United States, people want to be like
you if you're successful. In China, people attack you 50 you'll be just as bad
off as they are."
She said her struggle is typical of the "big conflict between new and old
power structures in China." Her part in the conflict is made more difficult by
the fact that the old structure is dominated by men in their fifties, while she
is a woman in her twenties. "When they see me, they don't respect me," she said.
"It's an unequal relationship."
Meanwhile, Tan is planning a new production and will use the money she made
-- more than $ 12,000 -- even after her theater partners slashed her share of
the previous play's profits. This time, she doesn't need to go to the bank.
Ma Xiaowei graduated from college with a major in management in 1990 and went
to work as a secretary for a Los Angeles-based joint venture started by a
Chinese American. She worked her way up to the sales department, gradually
learning about the business, which was making high-resolution graphics boards
for personal computers.
In 1993, the company invested to help her start a new company to develop
software and do data processing. "Frankly, I had no money to set up a company,"
she said. And before working for the joint venture, "I didn't know what
management was."
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The Washington Post, August 27, 1995
Although Ma was young, very few older Chinese people possessed any more
experience with computers. Computers were rare and expensive. Technology lagged
behind the West. Moreover, because state-owned companies for years only reported
to central planners instead of accountants, Chinese business hadn't trained
people in modern data processing or sales. Today, at 27, Ma employs 28 people on
a full-time basis and 10 others who get paid by the character to enter data into
computers.
They help companies with computer communications and networking and have a
contract to set up the China Securities Regulatory Commission's internal
information system to track China's roughly 300 publicly listed companies. That
dovetails well with a service Ma markets to provide information and analysis
about Chinese companies and the economy. She hopes to have about 1,000 people
and companies each paying $ 2,410 a year to receive her service.
Ma comes from a family of professional women. Her maternal grandmother was a
university graduate and her mother was a professor at a music conservatory. Like
many successful women in China, she doesn't acknowledge much distinction made
between men and women.
"Whe'
you're a man or a woman, you're under very high pressure. I don't
think thei 15 much difference," Ma said. "You can't wait for men to give you
equal righ Mostly you must depend on yourself."
GRAPHIC: Photo, steven mufson; Photo, hilary smith for The Washington Post, Ma
Xiaowei took a job in a computer joint venture and learned the business. That
company encouraged her to start her own, where she now employs 28 people. Tan
Lulu took Beijing's Broadway by storm after borrowing money to stage "Don't Come
Back to Me After We're Divorced." Then her troubles began.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
COUNTRY: CHINA;
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Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 26, 1995, Saturday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A21
LENGTH: 1106 words
HEADLINE: Domestic Pressures Could Slow Mending of U.S.-Chinese Relations
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 25
BODY:
China's expulsion this week of detained American human rights activist Harry
Wu removed an irritant from U.S.-Chinese relations, but domestic political
pressures that turned Wu's arrest for espionage into a potent symbol in both
countries could slow down a healing in relations between the two global powers.
In the United 5, the activist who has exposed prison conditions in his
native China became symbol of American concern for human rights and of
Washington's determination to protect its citizens. With the 1996 presidential
election season starting, Wu's case became a political football for candidates
vying to show strength in foreign policy by talking tough about the importance
of his release.
In China, surprisingly similar domestic political pressures also made Wu a
potent symbol. Here, in the twilight of senior leader Deng Xiaoping's life,
domestic politics helped make Wu a symbol of China's determination to stand up
to the United States, protect state secrets and domestic order, and squelch
challenges to the ruling Communist Party from domestic dissidents and
disgruntled exiles.
Although domestic political pressures are more transparent in the United
States, Brantly Womack, a University of Virginia professor of Chinese politics,
says parochial concerns are also key in China. "Chinese politics are secret,"
Womack said, "but it's clear that with domestic problems and the political
succession, domestic concerns are the primary thing on the mind of the central
leadership even with something as closely related to the external situation as
Harry Wu."
High on the list of domestic concerns is the need to look tough enough to
govern this nation of 1.2 billion people after the death of 91-year-old Deng and
to satisfy influential military leaders concerned about standing up to other
nations.
Although the decision to detain Wu might have been made by lower-level
security officials, Wu's case handed Beijing hard-liners an opportunity to
undercut their rivals. Already fuming over the U.S. visa granted to Taiwanese
President Lee Teng-hui to make a private visit to the United States in June,
hard-liners seized on Wu's case to defy Washington, which many Chinese officials
feel has been bullying China on issues ranging from human rights to trade to
missile sales.
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The Washington Post, August 26, 1995
In a speech today to veterans at a seminar to mark the 50th anniversary of
the end of World War II, Communist Party chief and President Jiang Zemin called
for vigilance against Western plots to infiltrate and interfere in China's
internal affairs, the Reuter news agency reported.
"Hegemonism and power politics still exist," Jiang said. "Western hostile
forces have not for a moment abandoned their plot to 'Westernize' and 'divide'
our country."
Domestic political pressures probably contributed to the timing of Wu's
release on Thursday, before start of substantive talks in Beijing between senior
Chinese Foreign Ministry officials and Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff. To
have released Wu after the talks would make it appear as though China were
giving in to American pressure.
If it was supposed to be a conciliatory gesture to Washington for the Chinese
government to expel Wu after a Wuhan court convicted him and sentenced him to 15
years in jail, the gesture was heavily disguised in combative rhetoric.
The domestic need to strike a tough posture also has been fueling the
rhetorical salvos Beijing h..
en firing at Lee, who has pursued greater
international recognition ful
.wan. The Communist government in Beijing
regards Taiwan as a renegade P vince of China. Today Beijing announced the
conclusion of the second set of missile tests held within close range of Taiwan,
in what appears to be an intimidating reminder of strategic realities in the
region.
While playing to militant constituencies and sending a tough message to
foreigners, China's leaders also have attempted to use the Wu case to bolster
their legitimacy by claiming to adhere to the "rule of law." Wu could not be
released before being brought to trial, the government insisted. Some government
officials noted the irony that the United States, which generally has tried to
promote the rule of law in China, wanted Beijing to short-circuit judicial
process and expel Wu.
But human rights observers note that the "rule of law" in China does little
to protect defendants. Wu was tried in a one-day session closed to all except
his lawyers and a U.S. Embassy official. As in most Chinese trials, the outcome
was never in doubt.
"The criminal justice system in China, especially where dissidents are
concerned, is the plaything of the Communist Party," said Robin Munro, Hong Kong
director of Human Rights Watch/Asia. Munro said he marveled at the "chutzpah" of
Chinese government "spin doctors" who hid behind alleged respect for judicial
process.
The use of Wu as a "pawn" in relations with the United States, Munro said,
only demonstrated the Communist Party's control of the court system.
Another domestic concern for the Chinese government has been to use the
detention of Wu to send a message to other Chinese exiles who might think about
returning to expose conditions or challenge Communist Party rule. Since the
crackdown on student demonstrators in 1989, the number of Chinese exiles has
increased, and many take part in organizations devoted to bringing about
political changes here.
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The Washington Post, August 26, 1995
Beijing's harsh rhetoric about Wu has continued even though the activist is
already back home in California.
Today's People's Daily published a lengthy article titled the "Present, Past
and Confessions of Wu Hongda," Wu's Chinese name, giving the official Chinese
version of his story.
Before Wu left China in 1985, "he was a man who was morally corrupt and did
many evil deeds" -- including repeated theft, fraud to obtain goods and money,
and seducing women students when he was a college teacher, the paper charged. It
added that in the early 1980s Wu used fake receipts to obtain radios and
electric fans, and forged his superior's signature on travel expenses.
Wu has said he was initially detained in a politically motivated campaign
against rightists, or those with a higher education or a bourgeois background,
and for his failure to repent he spent 19 years in China's sprawling gulag of
prisons and labor camps. He moved to the United States in 1985, became a citizen
and repeatedly returned to China to expose conditions in the Chinese prison
system.
"His heart was full of hatred," the
ole's Daily said. "He felt China owed
him, and he wanted to settle an old scor with China."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
COUNTRY: CHINA; UNITED STATES;
LOAD-DATE: August 26, 1995
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LEVEL 1 - 6 OF 39 STORIES
Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 23, 1995, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A28
LENGTH: 1233 words
HEADLINE: Sex & Love & Morality = Confusion; Chinese Women Finding Line Between
'Right' and 'Wrong' Has Blurred
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING
BODY:
If "Dear Abby" had a Chinese equivalent, it would be the letters column in a
popular monthly magazine called Information for Rural Women.
"Dear Sister Chueng Zi," began one letter in t May 1995 issue. "I am a girl
who is deeply in love." The problem? The woman's 1. or drinks heavily and her
family fears he will be an abusive husband. He wan to marry her, but she
"can't say yes.' He says she does not love him and that "everything between us
is a lie.'
Recently, another woman took an interest in him. "What should I do now?" the
young woman asked. "Should I leave him or agree to marry him?"
As China lurches into the modern era, Chinese women find themselves caught
amid rapidly changing ideas about sex, love, marriage and morality. It is a
change as far-reaching and tumultuous as any political or economic aspect of
China's transformation.
"I think that over the next five or 10 years there will be two major issues
preoccupying Chinese social life," journalist Dai Qing has written. "The first
will be de-Maoificiation
The other will be the issue of sex. I anticipate
a great conflict, tremendous discussion and a transformation of people's
behaviors and attitudes."
Disappearing fast are the puritanical ideas of the early Communist era.
Although the prodigious sexual appetite of the late Communist Party Chairman Mao
Zedong was recently chronicled in a book by Mao's physician, the official
policies of Mao and his successors have stressed monogamy, purity and morality.
"After the revolution, the only moral sex was within the marriage," said Wang
Xingjuan, founder of the Women's Hotline, a telephone advice service in Beijing.
"Premarital sex and extramarital sex were considered immoral."
With a loosening of economic and social controls, however, the lines of what
is right and wrong have blurred, and women face more difficult and numerous
choices about their private lives. Talking about such issues is still largely
taboo, but an increasing number of organizations are trying to help women cope
with matters of love, sex and marriage.
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The Washington Post, August 23, 1995
At the Women's Hotline in Beijing, Wang said, the overwhelming majority of
calls concern "love problems." At the top of the list, 26 percent of the callers
ask about how to deal with lovers; 24 percent have problems with marriage and
family; and 16 percent ask about maternal health.
The most troubled urban women are those who grew up during the Cultural
Revolution of 1966-1976, when sexual mores were particularly strict and ordinary
adolescence was interrupted by political upheaval and rebellion.
"You could have kids but not talk about love," Wang said.
The result, Wang said, is that many people who grew up during the Cultural
Revolution "are convinced that sex is dirty, 50 they have suppressed their
sexual desires. A lot of them believe that if a man touches them, he's a
gangster.'
"I get calls from women married three months who won't let their husbands
touch them," Wang said. "Then the husbands say, 'Okay, you don't want to have
relations, 50 let's get a divorce,' and the women say, 'No, I love you. 11
Younger women in Beijing are caught in a different sort : aradox. Although
one-third of university students polled said they believe it okay to have
premarital sex, men still want to marry virgins. As a result, any women face
conflicting pressures in trying to decide when first to have sex. Those who do
have premarital sex later face anxieties if they wed someone else. Recently,
there has been a surge of interest in reconstructive surgery designed to make
women appear to be virgins, Wang said.
Another issue is whether a woman who has had sex with one boyfriend should
tell a new boyfriend about it. "We tell them that they should have their own
secrets," said Wang. "Your past is your own. Men have sex, and no one thinks
about it. There shouldn't be a double standard.'
Many of the callers to the Women's Hotline are men. On Thursday afternoons,
which are reserved for calls about sex, male callers outnumber women.
In rural areas, women have to deal with yet another set of problems. There,
women's concerns usually revolve around conflicts between love and the marriage
arrangements made for them by parents.
"Dear Sister Chueng Zi," wrote a reader of the rural women's magazine in the
October 1994 issue. "Three years ago, I dated this guy from my village, but in
the end his parents arranged for him to marry someone who was better off than I
was. I was a good friend of that girl. Besides, with his parents' strong
disapproval of me, I could not contest their decision."
Now, the writer said, she was on the verge of marriage herself, but she still
longed for her old friend. "When we need help at my house, he often comes over
to help us," she wrote. "I have grown to love him even more. However, I know
that we can never develop a new relationship."
The magazine often tries to help women reconcile themselves to their
situations; it also tries to help women in need.
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A 27-year-old woman now employed in Beijing as a domestic worker had written
to the magazine begging for help. A native of Shaanxi Province, her parents had
married her off to a 40-year-old widower in Hebei Province for $ 600. He beat
her when she failed to give him children, and she fled to Beijing. There, she
contacted the magazine for help in getting a divorce.
The magazine contacted the man, who insisted that he should get his money
back. The magazine editors pointed out that if they went to court he could get
into trouble, and they negotiated him down to $ 60. He later remarried a widow
with a daughter of her own, and he sent a gift to the magazine.
"He complained that the first woman looked in the mirror all day but said
that the new wife doesn't and that she cleans the house diligently," said Xie
Lihua, editor of the publication. The woman who obtained the divorce continues
to work in Beijing, and she wrote a note thanking the magazine for helping her
"get rid of a marriage that hung like a thousand jin stone around her neck."
One problem common to both the cities and the countryside is abusive
husbands. The Jinglun Family Center was opened in Beijing last October to deal
exclusively with complaints of family violence, but traditional inhibitions
about airing private affairs in public have kept the number of calls
he
center to a minimum.
But tales of abuse are common. A survey of 2,000 women by the Beijing
Marriage and Family Research Institute showed that while 1 percent of women said
they were beaten frequently by their husbands, 20 percent said they were at
least occasionally beaten.
In what is believed to have been the first case concerning marital rape in
China, a court in the northeast earlier this year sentenced a man named Jing
Zhiping to six years in prison. Jing and was married for only six days when his
wife returned to her parents' house and demanded a divorce. The two sides argued
about the return of gifts the husband had made to the wife's family, and during
the divorce proceedings he and his brothers abducted the wife and raped her
repeatedly.
And in one of the most serious abuse cases reported, a Sichuan farmer last
year locked his wife in a tiny room without light for 78 days. In a country that
boasts that women "hold up half the sky," the woman was not even permitted to
see a star.
GRAPHIC: Photo, hilary smith for The Washington Post, Magazine editor Xie Lihua
holds up some of the scores of letters she receives each day from women seeking
advice.
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The Washington Post
August 21, 1995, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1697 words
HEADLINE: For Many Chinese Women, Tradition Means Prejudice and Abuse
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING
BODY:
Two sisters from rural Sichuan Province were taking a train to Guangdong
earlier this year in search of work when they met a man from their home village.
He persuaded them to get. off the train, and they were abducted and sold into
marriage by a broker.
One of the sisters managed to send a letter to a magazine called Information
for Rural Women, which rescued them through contacts at the All China Women's
Federation.
The unfortunate episode says much about the troubles women in China have, but
the unhappy sequel says even more. Back home, the sisters complained about being
treated like dirt by a fellow villager. But their neighbors said they "deserved
it" for traveling 50 far from their homes.
Meanwhile, the men awaiting them in Guangdong Province complained that they
did not get the wives they had paid for. And villagers in Henan Province, home
of the jailed marriage broker, protested that he was treated unfairly.
More than 45 years after China was "liberated" by the Chinese Communist
Party, nearly half the population still faces traditional prejudices,
discrimination in the workplace, abuse at home and pressure to meet society's
expectations.
Evidence that women remain second-class citizens comes from many quarters of
China. Seventy percent of China's 220 million illiterates over the age of 15 are
women. Although barely a third of the salaried labor force, women make up the
majority of those laid off by state-owned enterprises. And millions of women do
the heavy lifting in the countryside when the men leave to seek better pay in
the cities.
"The life of a beast of burden is certainly not the liberation that Chinese
women have 50 painstakingly sought," Li Xiaojiang, a professor at Zhengzhou
University, wrote in a book on the subject.
With the approach of the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women, to
be held in Beijing Sept. 4-15, China can claim that the condition of women has
improved vastly since the Communists took over. The Communists ended the brutal
practice of foot binding, a tradition in which the bones in a girl's feet were
broken and bound because men found small feet alluring. The constitution of
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1950 guaranteed women the right of equality, and a new marriage law that year
supposedly gave women the right to choose their own marriage partners and demand
divorces. Even in rural areas, girls were given at least access to basic
education.
The Communist regime assigned jobs to everyone, regardless of sex. For the
first time, large numbers of women went to work outside the home.
A recent State Council study declared that "Chinese women enjoy equal rights
with men in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and family life
and
they have become, like all Chinese, masters of the state and society.
In China, the expression 'women hold up half the sky' has become the most
vivid expression the entire society uses to praise the role played by women."
But the gap between the party's rhetoric and China's reality is wide, and for
evidence there is the ruling Communist Party itself. Not a single woman serves
on the party's ruling Politburo or the powerful Standing Committee of the State
Council. Only three of 40 government ministries are headed by women. Of the 189
members on the Communist Party Central Committee, only a dozen are women. Women
hold less than 11 percent of government posts above the county level, and these
are usually in the areas of culture, education or health. Even the Chinese
Organizing Committee for the U.N. conference is dominated by men from the
Beijing party and security apparatus.
"Politics has always been a man's domain," said Wu Qing, a member of the
Beijing municipal people's congress. But, she warned, "If the country wants to
develop, all the policies should have women's views, and women should be
considered part of the policymakers."
"Why are there few women in top leadership?" asked Wang Xingjuan, founder of
the Women's Research Institute and a hot line for women with problems. "The
answer is that we still have traditional values. It's still very much a man's
world in China."
The obstacles women face in China begin before they are born. Many
demographers believe that millions of girls here are either killed at birth or
aborted during pregnancy. In urban China, the proportion of all pregnancies
terminated by abortion rose from less than 3 percent in 1960 to about 30 percent
in 1987; in rural areas, the proportion rose from virtually none to more than 15
percent.
The increase coincided with China's efforts to enforce a one-child policy
after 1979. In the same year, China began manufacturing ultrasound machines,
which can show the sex of a fetus. It now has the capacity to produce more than
10,000 machines a year.
Statistics suggest that the population-control policy, combined with the
spread of medical technology, has given Chinese couples the means and the
incentive to winnow out girls. The ratio of boys to girls at birth has been
rising steadily. Between 1982 and 1989, the number of boys born for every 100
girls rose from 107 to 114, well above the biologically normal level of 105 or
106. Among second children, the ratio of boys to girls rises to 120.
Girls frequently are abandoned in train stations, bus terminals or the steps
of city halls by disappointed parents. Because parents rarely want to give
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away a son unless he is severely handicapped or ill, orphanages are crowded with
girls.
One sign of the stress this causes is the high suicide rate among rural women
between the ages of 17 and 27. "I think it is because they are about marriage
age, and many are either unhappy with their mates or are blamed for bearing
daughters for their husbands, said one woman who has worked extensively with
rural women. Most of the women kill themselves by swallowing pesticides.
A recent change in the one-child policy allows a couple to have a second
child if they have a daughter at least 8 years old and the mother is at least
30. The revision reflects China's pro-male bias by suggesting that having a
daughter is such a disappointment that a couple meeting such misfortune deserves
a second chance.
Once past the initial hurdle of being brought into the world, women face
remnants of China's Confucian tradition, which teaches that a woman has three
obligations: to obey her father before her marriage, to obey her husband and to
obey her eldest son after the death of her husband.
To some extent, communal living, identical Mao suits, Communist rhetoric and
homogenization of Chinese life covered up the traditional ways of thinking that
continued after Communist rule began. With the loosening of social controls,
many of the underlying beliefs were laid bare.
"A lot of things were there, but they were covered up," said Wu. "Now
everything has come into the open." She said it has become clear that women were
pushed into lower-paying jobs and promoted more slowly.
The abduction of women for marriages is another sign of the times. This
practice, common before 1949, was eradicated by the Communists. Now stories like
that of the two sisters from Sichuan are frequent. Deputy Public Security
Minister Bai Jingfu told the Legal Daily this year that police have rescued
24, 751 women in two years and arrested 49,839 abductors. University women
kidnapped from coastal areas have turned up as far away as Inner Mongolia.
Moreover, police have faced widespread opposition to their rescue operations.
"Some village-level cadres have gone so far as to stir up the masses to besiege
and beat up police trying to rescue the women, making the anti-abduction work
hard," said a report in the Legal Daily. In December, Anhui provincial
authorities executed 11 members of an abduction gang.
Because China is trying to catch up with the developed world as fast as
possible, it has confronted almost simultaneously many of the issues that
Western women have faced across the span of the Industrial Revolution,
19th-century urbanization, the sexual revolution and the feminist movement.
These changes have created opportunities as well as oppression. Millions of
women have jobs in textile factories, earning meager wages but still much more
than they once did in rural areas. Others have become successful in businesses,
from vegetable market stalls to computer software companies.
The city of Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong, shows both sides of China's
modernization drive and its impact on the lives of women. At local hotels,
prostitutes solicit business. One said she makes $ 1,200 a month, more than
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she would have made in her rural home town in a decade. On the streets outside,
flower girls as young as 5 peddle roses well into the night.
In the textile factories at the heart of the boom city's export industry,
women predominate. They average three years there, working long hours, often
seven days a week. They live in squalid dormitories with as many as 10 women in
a room sharing a single toilet. But they come because the average worker makes
as much money in a month or two as she would in a rural area in a year. They can
save money, then return home able to buy a sewing machine or a small business --
and perhaps have a greater say in whom they marry.
"If your family is poor, they might use the money to buy daily necessities,"
said a 29-year-old textile worker who has been sending about $ 100 a month back
to her family in Zhejiang Province to the north. "Richer families will keep the
money in the bank for a girl's marriage." She already had saved several thousand
dollars.
Conditions in China today seem ripe for a women's movement. To an extent not
possible only a few years ago, women are speaking openly about their problems
and are starting mutual support groups, such as the three-year-old women's hot
line in Beijing.
And yet, there is no women's movement such as the ones found in the United
States or other developed countries. In China, a vigorous women's movement could
face the same difficulties as a student, religious or worker movement that
sought to distinguish itself and its interests from the general party line.
GRAPHIC: Photo, hilary smith for The Washington Post, Millions of women in
China, including those above selling cutting boards stacked at the ends of a
yoke and below making griddled flatbread, do much of the heavy work but are
treated like second-class citizens.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
COUNTRY: CHINA;
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Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 20, 1995, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: BOOK WORLD; Pg. X01
LENGTH: 2423 words
HEADLINE: LETTER FROM BEIJING; Let a Thousand Books Bloom
BYLINE: Steven Mufson
BODY:
WHEN THE Yilin Publishing House held a new book signing in Shanghai recently,
people lined up around the block as if they were waiting for tickets to the
latest blockbuster movie and police were called in to maintain order. The hot
"new" book? A Chinese translation of James Joyce's Ulysses.
So far, about 100,000 copies have been sold, and the publisher has now
ollowed it up with a companion volume to help people understand the 1922
uvel's complex dialects and allusions and the stream-of-consciousness style it
employs in describing a single day in the lives of two Dubliners. Joyce's
bestseller is only one of many unusual things happening in the Chinese
publishing world, where publishing houses are printing books that range from
translations of Martin Heidegger to translations of the sequel to Gone With the
Wind, from scholarly tracts on Chinese culture to trashy Gothic novels, from
computer manuals to children's books.
Six years after the crackdown on Tiananmen Square extinguished one of China's
most rebellious and creative artistic periods, the publishing world is
experimenting with almost every imaginable way to make a splash -- and a buck.
Publishing houses are looking for commercial niches in the Chinese market and
coming up with new titles and new ways of circumventing the traditional Chinese
state-owned monopoly on book distribution.
It is a revolution in publishing, not because of its politics, but because of
its anti-politics. Much of today's writing in China lacks any clear political
purpose. After successive eras of politically motivated literary movements --
the liberation era rallying cries, 1950s idealism, the stiff Cultural Revolution
heroic genre, the anti-Cultural Revolution "scar" literature, the muckraking
literary journalism and "Misty Poets" of the 1980s -- what the reading public is
really focusing on is books like Scarlett, which has sold 600,000 copies here.
Other bestsellers in recent years include Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, which
has sold 1.3 million copies; the kung fu novels of Hong Kong writer Jin Yong;
and a series of 23 cartoon versions of Chinese classics, which altogether have
sold 10 million copies.
It is a spectacle that would undoubtedly have appalled longtime Communist
Party Chairman Mao Zedong, who in a famous pronouncement declared that
"literature and art are subordinate to politics, but in their turn have a great
influence on politics." It's hard to imagine what the chairman would have said
about the manipulative Southern belle Scarlett or the very Victorian Jane Eyre
or the frequently violent kung fu novels.
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One sign of the changing times is that Joyce's Ulysses was once denounced by
the same man who later translated it. "I first heard of the book in
1930, "recalls 85-year-old Xiao Qian, who was then a student at the Catholic
University of Beijing. There the head of the English department denounced the
book as anti-Catholic. Later as a student in London, Xiao bought and read the
novel. At Cambridge, he studied Joyce, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and E.M.
Forster, who became a friend and correspondent of Xiao's.
After a stint as a war correspondent and following the communist victory in
China, Xiao returned to teach at a university in Shanghai. There he condemned
Ulysses as a self-indulgent novel that served none of the purposes China's
communists sought in literature. "At that time China's views of literature were
very utilitarian. We used literature to eradicate illiteracy and poverty and
improve living standards. I was strongly against the ivory tower," Xiao recalls.
The popular novels of the day were stories of revolutionary struggle and
socialist transformation, such as Yang Mo's Song of Youth and Zhou Erfu's
Morning in Shanghai. China's prudish Marxists also objected to Ulysses because
they viewed parts of it as pornographic.
But China changed, and 50 did Xiao. He was labeled a "rightist" in 1957, and
his car- 15 an editor ended. He spent two stints doing manual labor on a state
farm, giv. ! him more than six years of forced introspection. Many of his
possessio: , including more than 80 letters from E.M. Forster, were burned
during the Cultural Revolution. He consoled himself with one of the only books
he was allowed to bring to the farm: a book of American and British songs such
as the old Welsh air "All Through the Night." He was barred from writing under
his own name, but he was allowed to translate books such as Tom Jones and other
works by Henry Fielding.
Now he recognizes Ulysses as a great book that helped change our view of the
modern novel. In 1990, however, when the publishing house asked him to translate
it, he still balked. "I'd read the book. On every page there would be something
not found in any dictionary," he says. "Fortunately I have a younger wife." She
insisted, and they translated it together.
It took them five years to do it, and they included nearly 6,000 footnotes to
explain references to everything from the Bible to Irish history. What, after
all, did Joyce mean when the character Stephen Dedalus in a climactic, drunken
scene swings his cane and cries "Nothung!" (Nothung is the name of the sword
wielded by Siegfried in Wagner's Ring Cycle.) The translation required a great
deal of creativity as well as research. In chapter 10, when Joyce parodies the
evolution of English from Anglo-Saxon to the 20th century, Xiao and his wife,
Wen Jierou, put the beginning in classical Chinese and end up with modern
newspaper-style Chinese. The final chapter, written in Molly Bloom's uniquely
colloquial speech, is translated into contemporary Beijing colloquialisms.
The book's popularity caught him and the publishing house by surprise,
especially because many intellectuals bemoan the decline of serious culture amid
the current capitalistic avarice of contemporary China. Somehow this book became
a happening. "Serious people are always eager to know what's new in the West,
and here's something new," says Xiao. "It's 70 years old, but it's new." "People
won't necessarily read it from beginning to end," said Yilin's chief editor, Li
Jingduan, "but they feel they have to buy it."
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Although Yilin was willing to underwrite this project with modest
expectations, it has made a business of pursuing books primarily for their
market potential. For example, it has translated four John Grisham novels into
Chinese. They just haven't sold as well as Ulysses.
To Each According to His Taste
THE ENTIRE RANGE of the Chinese publishing experience can be seen in the
business life of SDX Joint Publishing Co., one of the oldest of roughly 540
publishing houses in China. Founded in 1932 as an independent house, SDX was
nationalized in 1951 and became an editorial department. The number of books it
published fell as political troubles grew; during the Cultural Revolution it
only produced 20-30 titles a year, down from 200-300. It steered clear of
controversy, focusing on somewhat esoteric liberal arts and social-science
books. One example: a 1958 book about the Qing Dynasty scholarly examination
system. "We tried hard to become the publishing house of intellectuals," says
editor-in-chief Dong Xiuyu. Now, however, the company expects to churn out 240
titles this year with separate lines of books for high-, middle- and low-brow
audiences.
For the intell-
ls, SDX still carries such works as translations of Martin
Heidegger and Gusta flaubert as well as Thomas Jefferson, Edgar Allan Poe,
Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson. A translation of Jean Paul Sartre's
Being and Nothingness published in 1987 has sold 100,000 copies -- a book that
once would have been banned for its existential outlook, the antithesis of
socialist optimism.
Other popular books among the reading elite: anti-Japanese history books by a
well-known Chinese historia, and a series by Chinese writers in cooperation with
Harvard University Press about Taoism, sociology, comparative culture, history,
law and economics. For the middle-brow audience, SDX carries 50 books on
traditional Chinese culture, history and traditions. Whereas the Cultural
Revolution tried to eradicate "the four olds" -- old customs, old habits, old
culture and old thinking -- the past 10 years has seen a resurgence of interest
in those traditions.
The house has also brought out translated editions of three of British
publisher Dorling Kindersley's series of 100 "Eyewitness Guides" for children.
The books are beautifully printed, with high-quality paper and fine pictures.
The first three -- about dinosaurs, volcanoes and birds -- are selling at the
relatively steep price of $ 6 to $ 7.50. The one about dinosaurs, which started
with a 7,000-copy print run, has just gone into its second printing.
And then the firm has its low-brow, mass-market line. It includes the
23-volume comic book version of Chinese philosophical classics done by a
Taiwanese writer and illustrator. So far, the firm has sold 10 million copies of
his books, usually in complete sets that cost $ 14.50. Sales have been 50 brisk
that the firm is having trouble keeping up, according to Dong.
Jin Yong's kung fu novels are also popular, and, Dong says, they are good
quality. "His history is good, his cultural background is good; he's one of the
best." Though there are probably more than a million pirated copies of his
novels in circulation, Dong says she still expects to make money off entire sets
of Jin's 36 novels, which she is selling for nearly $ 60. "Why are these books
popular?" Dong asks. "Because the people are complicated. The characters are
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complicated. They aren't one-dimensional heroes. They have good sides, they have
bad sides. They're like real people." The same certainly can't be said of past
communist stalwart literary protagonists.
But attempts at suppression still persist. The government closed down the
Xinjiang University Publishing House and sacked its director for publishing what
the government described as "pornography" and books with "political problems."
Without specifying what the offending books were, the official Xinhua news
agency said that "some of the books not only contain absurd and harmful
contents, but also violate national foreign policy." Xinjiang is a region with a
large Muslim population and an active separatist movement.
One point of book control has been the Xinhua Book Distribution Co., which
has traditionally held an air-tight monopoly over the distribution of books
through its roughly 9,600 outlets around the country. To gauge pre-publication
interest in a book, Xinhua distributes a list with nothing other than the name
of a book, its publisher and the price -- no room for description. It's rare
that the Xinhua network orders more than 2,000 copies of a book in advance.
Increasingly book publishers are turning to the so-called second channel to
circumvent the Xinhua monops nd avoid state control. This channel is run in
part by "book kings" -- agents no pay cash for discounted books in bulk and
sell the works through their n works of stalls and contacts. These are
frequently fly-by-night operations that work without any government sanction.
"It's hard for the government to stop them," says one publisher. Some book kings
also run their own publishing houses, buying into respected publishers, which
put their imprimatur on a book even if it's edited and printed independently.
Even established firms are seeking new outlets in today's entrepreneurial
climate. SDX Joint Publishing, though state-owned, has seven of its own
bookstores in different cities through which it sells 30 percent of its books.
Shanghai Translation Publishing House -- which has published Jane Eyre,
Scarlett, The Red and the Black and a popular English-Chinese dictionary and has
bought the rights to 33 Ernest Hemingway novels -- sells 55 percent of its books
through its own distribution company.
Jesse Ning, a former lawyer at Baker & McKenzie, once handled business for
the French publishing giant Hachette, which publishes a Chinese version of Elle
magazine. Today Ning is trying his hand at the Chinese publishing game. He has
purchased Maxworld, Robert Maxwell's Chinese publishing venture that was
orphaned when the flamboyant British publishing tycoon went overboard and
drowned. Ning now publishes books and a sports magazine in China. He has
approached other magazines such as National Geographic about Chinese editions.
The German publishing giant Bertelsmann is also trying to break into the
Chinese market with its own second channel. The company, which started as a book
club in Germany, has launched a book club in Shanghai. It has mailed over
100,000 catalogues, but the response isn't clear yet. Finally, a "third channel"
appears to be opening in the person of door-to-door book salesmen a la the
Encyclopedia Britannica. It's a technique that has gone out of style in the
United States, but here in China companies are recreating the method. One
company is peddling a one-volume encyclopedia licensed by Dorling Kindersley.
So far, however, these new channels pose little threat to the political
correctness that dominates Chinese culture. "The publishing industry is so
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controlled, self-censorship is very effective," says Ning. "No one wants to be
out of the mainstream."
Publishers may use these channels for commercial reasons, but the new system
of distribution is part of a broader process of loosening government controls
and monopolies. It holds out the potential for expanding private initiative,
individual tastes and, perhaps, independent thought.
Third Generations
The recycling of a classic from one language to another can result in novel
reconstructions. Here is a passage from James Joyce's Ulysses retranslated into
English from the Chinese: "Think with my eyes through which I identify symbols
of various kinds: spawn and seaweed, the rising tide, an old-fashioned jackboot,
snivel green, silvery blue, rust -- all are symbols with color. The limits of
transparency.
If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a hedge
door, if not, it is a door. Close your eyes and try."
Joyce's original: "Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and
seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust:
coloured signs. Limits of the diaphar :
If you can put your five fingers
through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see."
Steven Mufson is The Washington Post correspondent in Beijing.
GRAPHIC: Illustration, A frame from the comic book version of Sun Tzu on the art
of war
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 07, 1995, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1605 words
HEADLINE: China's 'Raging Silver Wave'; Rapidly Aging Population Strains Society
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING
BODY:
Xi Yuke lies in bed, cheeks sunken, cigarettes by his side and a tumor the
size of a Ping-Pong ball on his collarbone. As he reaches to shake hands, the
84-year-old former bus company manager trembles and stares with the frightened
certainty of what lies ahead.
Xi is one of the lucky ones. He has been in ut, g's only hospice for four
months, and his work unit is footing the bill. His on, too busy working to take
care of X1 during the week, visits dutifully on Sundays.
Xi's situation is rare because China has no old-age homes, virtually no
pension funds or social security insurance and an already heavily burdened
health care system. Moreover, in China's rush to a more market-oriented economy,
few people want to spend the time or money to care for senior citizens.
But an ever larger portion of the population is growing old. Newspaper
commentators have called it the "raging silver wave." People over age 60 made up
8.8 percent of the population in 1990, but that figure will grow to 18.8 percent
by 2025. There are 110 million people over 60 today; by 2025, the number of
elderly will approach 400 million. That will put pressure on families, companies
and the government, all of whom will have to take care of them.
The demographic trend is mirrored across Asia, from Thailand to Japan. As
health and living standards improve, Asians live longer and start having fewer
children -- and the proportion of people over 60 will double in the next 30
years.
In China, however, the rising ratio of senior citizens to young people is due
in part to China's flip-flop on family-planning policy. Mao Zedong, the longtime
chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, initially believed that large families
were essential to making China strong. Throughout most of the 1950s, with Mao's
encouragement, many couples had four or five children.
By the 1970s, however, China began to counsel birth control to slow rapid
population growth. In 1980, people were urged to have only one child. Today,
those who violate the guidelines face heavy fines and, in some cases, forced
abortions or sterilization.
As a result, the family structure has been turned upside down. Instead of
many children supporting their parents, each couple must support up to four
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parents and a child. "Thousands of small families will have to suffer the strong
impact of the aging population," said an article in the newspaper China
Environment Daily. "Many families will become breathless and crumble under the
impact of this burden."
A survey taken two years ago suggests that in rural areas about 3 percent, or
nearly 2 million elderly, are physically mistreated by their children. According
to surveys in the cities of Harbin, Shenyang and Changchun, the elderly make up
a disproportionately large number of the people taken in at "collection centers"
for the homeless.
In May, the state television network broadcast a documentary about a
92-year-old Tianjin woman who filed suit against her five children. The children
had tried to shove responsibility for the old woman, a widow, onto one another
and had refused to take her in. In court, they made little effort to hide their
disgust with their aging mother.
This hard-heartedness isn't just the stuff of television programs. Consider
the plight of the hospice in which Xi is resting.
The Songtang hospice was founded by Li Wei, who has mada areer
of
comforting the elderly. A member of the generation that matu. during the
1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Li was banished to Inner Mongol: where he became,
after brief training, a "barefoot doctor." Equipped with less background than a
second-year undergraduate pre-med student, he tended to the sick.
One patient was an older man, once a university professor, banished to teach
rural elementary school. When the man fell ill with stomach problems, Li said he
treated him as best he could, then sent him to a hospital. The diagnosis:
advanced stomach cancer.
Li cared for the professor in his final months. AS he neared death, the
professor seemed distraught that he would die bearing all the opprobriums of the
Cultural Revolution: counterrevolutionary, son of a landlord, snake spirit.
So Li offered to appeal the man's case to the local military unit. Li said
that upon reflection, however, he became worried about the risks of speaking
out, and he didn't do it. Instead, he returned to the professor the next day and
simply told him the verdicts had been reversed. If the professor had doubts, he
wished them away and seemed peaceful when he died a short while later.
Troubled by the deception, yet pleased to have eased the professor's mind, Li
said he decided to devote himself to comforting the sick and dying. In 1990 he
opened the Songtang Hospice.
Housed in a crumbling building, it is staffed by nurses and real doctors who
seem efficient, caring and cheerful. They have planted trees outside. Most rooms
have four beds and a nurse on duty round the clock. Several patients have
recovered and returned home. Others pass their final days in greater comfort
than they would have elsewhere. Eager to use any method to comfort his patients,
Li has decorated his office with an ancient Buddha, a crucifix and other
religious artifacts.
However, instead of being welcomed in a capital with more than a million
senior citizens, Li's hospice has been hounded from place to place by a
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combination of money-hungry officials and neighbors who don't want people dying
nearby. Li abandoned his first hospice site, within the walls of a military
compound, because soldiers at the gate were demanding bribes from those entering
and harassing young female nurses. He was chased away from his new site, in a
residential area, by an angry crowd of people who feared the ghosts of the dead
would bring them bad luck. Many people in the crowd stole hospice equipment
while Li tried to reason with them and while patients sweltered in hot
ambulances.
His current building has 60 beds. But he has been ordered to vacate the
premises to make way for a new stretch of highway, Beijing's fourth ring road.
Already pressed for money, he fears he will soon have to close his doors.
Li believes that the plight of his hospice reflects Chinese society's
callousness toward the elderly.
"Traditionally, the reason Chinese people wanted lots of boys was because it
was the sons who were responsible for taking care of the parents in old age," Li
said. "Some of those attitudes, though, are beginning to change."
Even when social attitudes are not a problem for the elderly, mon"
According to one survey, 37 percent of elderly people in Shanghai ha no
stable income. In rural areas, the figures are higher. There, according to the
China Environment Daily, 95 percent of the elderly get no welfare from either
the state or the rural collectives where they worked their entire lives.
Instead, many are forced to keep working or to rely entirely on the kindness of
family and friends.
"Lots of people have worked for their country for free, essentially, and they
come to retirement and have no money," Li said. "The state doesn't support them.
It doesn't have the money."
Retirement payments generally have been made by places of employment, which
also provide housing, schooling and funeral arrangements. Some big state-owned
enterprises pay nearly as many retirees as employees.
Newspapers are full of hard-luck tales about people being laid off and denied
pensions. One worker went to court because his company fired him after 27 years
and said he had been a temporary worker and therefore not entitled to retirement
benefits. The worker won.
The Mao baby boomers will start reaching retirement age in 20 years. To avoid
an economic disaster, the government has to start planning now.
So far the planning has been left to local governments.
"Our pension plan is in an initial stage," said Wang Ju, director and senior
economist of the Shanghai Social Insurance Bureau. "Every year we raise a lot of
money, but we have 1.7 million people who have retired in Shanghai, so we have a
big outlay." Each year, Shanghai's government must deal with 100,000 new
retirees.
At the moment, the fund is staying afloat -- barely. It has levied a 3
percent tax on the salaries paid 4.2 million workers, and charges their work
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units 25.5 percent. Workers, who usually don't see a pre-tax breakdown of their
salaries, generally are oblivious to the tax. Yet the fund has only enough
surplus to cover one month's retirement obligations.
The amounts paid out are modest: an average of $ 40 a month.
Shanghai is in better shape than most places. It has a steady stream of young
people moving from the countryside to work in the city.
"The family control is rather strict in Shanghai, so in five or 10 years
maybe the new labor force won't cover our obligations," said Jiang Weiming, the
fund's deputy administrator. "But we import a lot of labor 50 we can slow down
that process of society's aging in Shanghai.
That won't help matters in the countryside, however, where the elderly will
have even fewer people to lean on. That could undermine support for the
one-child policy.
"The concept of 'raising kids to prepare for one's old age' and 'the more
children the more bliss' are demographic concepts established on traditional
rural society where the family was the basis for supporting the old," said a
commentator in China Environment Daily. "If a social system for supporting the
elderly is not developed, it will be hard to make people really accept birth
control policies, especially in rural areas."
GRAPHIC: Photo, afp, An elderly man plays recently in Beijing's Tiananmen
Square. The proportion of senior citizens in China's population is expected to
double in 30 years. Asia's Aging Population Fertility rates Children per woman
of childbearing age Area
1960-65
1970-75
1985-90 East Asia
5.35
4.40
2.30 China
5.93
4.76
2.38
Hong Kong
5.30
2.89
1.36 Japan
2.01
2.07
1.68 South Korea 5.40
4.11
1.73 Life Expectancy at
Birth Area
1960-65
1970-75
1985-90 East Asia
51.0
63.8
70.3 China
49.5
63.2
69.4 Hong Kong
67.6
72.0
77.0 Japan
69.0
73.3
78.3
South Korea 55.2
61.5
69.4 PcT. of Population 60 or older Area
1960
1990
2025 East Asia
7.3
9.5
19.6 China
7.2
8.8
18.8 Hong Kong
4.8
12.9
31.0 Japan
8.9
17.2
30.3 South
Korea 5.3
7.5
22.0 An elderly man gets a haircut for about
the price of a beer from an elderly barber in the Nanshi District of Shanghai as
a cyclist rides past the "open air" shop. SOURCE: United Nations
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
COUNTRY: CHINA;
LOAD-DATE: August 07, 1995
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LEVEL 1 - 10 OF 39 STORIES
Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 03, 1995, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1227 words
HEADLINE: China Expels Two U.S. Attaches Accused of Spying
BYLINE: Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Thursday)
BODY:
China today expelled two U.S. Air Force officers who were taken into custody
five days ago. Chinese authorities had accused them of spying at restricted
military zones along the southeastern coast.
The episode is bound to further complicate efforts to patch up tattered
U.S. -Chinese relations just two days after Secretary of State Warren Christopher
and Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen met inconclusively in Brunei to discuss
ways of easing tensions. China has lodged a strong protest over the purported
spy mission and has demanded that there be no further such incidents.
The official New China News Agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen
Guofeng as saying that the two Hong Kong-based U.S. military attaches had
"sneaked" into the restricted areas and "illegally acquired military
intelligence by photographing and videotaping" the areas before being detained
"on the spot" at 10:04 a.m. Saturday by Chinese soldiers.
The two attaches, Col. Joseph Wei Chan and Capt. Dwayne Howard Florenzie,
were released today, said State Department spokeswoman Sharon Bowman. She said
no further details of the release were available pending information from the
U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The embassy would not comment on what Chan and
Florenzie were doing in China.
Meeting with journalists Wednesday, Christopher refused to comment on the
detention and expulsion. Instead, he said he was pleased by the tone of the
meeting with the Chinese foreign minister, and that he had welcomed the chance
"to look him in the eye and say we have not changed our policy" on recognizing
only one China.
"I think the foreign minister had to be impressed with the letter we gave him
from President Clinton," Christopher added.
The White House said the two attaches were on "authorized travel," but it did
not specifically deny the spying charges. "We're not aware of anything out of
the routine about their travel in China," press secretary Michael McCurry said.
He said they were traveling with valid visas and diplomatic passports.
For the Clinton administration, the incident is particularly ill-timed. It
has been trying to smooth China's ruffled feathers after an unofficial visit to
the United States by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui and to persuade China to
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release Harry Wu, a Chinese American human rights activist jailed on espionage
charges. Relations between the two countries have hit one of the lowest points
since diplomatic normalization in 1979, as suspicions grow in Beijing that the
United States has decided to treat China as a strategic rival and pursue a
policy of containment.
Although the Air Force officers' detention began five days ago, it was not
publicly disclosed until Wednesday. U.S. officials in Brunei said Christopher
learned about it from American sources several hours before meeting with Qian on
Tuesday but decided not to raise the matter officially in the belief that it was
better to go "through the usual channels." Neither Christopher nor Qian referred
to the matter during their 90-minute conversation, officials said.
But the announcement cast a shadow over the talks. Shen said the detained
Americans, both Air Force liaison officers at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong
Kong, had entered China July 23 on visas issued for the purpose of consulting
with officials at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Consulate General in
Guangzhou.
Instead, he said, they "violated Chinese laws during their stay in China" and
"seriously undermined China's national security." He said state security
authorities had conducted an investigation and "the facts are clear and evidence
irrefutable.'
Diplomats, who possess immunity from prosecution, are usually expelled
promptly in such cases. It was unusual that the two Americans were held for an
extended period. Pentagon officials said in Washington that both Chan and
Florenzie were defense liaison officers -- the equivalent of defense attaches at
an embassy. Florenzie is an intelligence officer also trained in acquisition
management. Chan is an operations commander and a political-military affairs
officer.
U.S. defense attaches are assigned to every U.S. embassy and most consulates
around the world, and foreign countries similarly station military attaches in
the United States. The attaches' job is to monitor and report on the activities
of military forces in their host country, as well as to carry out
security-related tasks at an embassy. They usually work closely with
intelligence officers.
Chan, who has served 28 years in the Air Force, is from Fort Wayne, Indiana.
He is married and is a graduate of the University of Indiana. Florenzie, who has
been in the Air Force 11 years, is from Jersey City, is married and has two
children. He graduated from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
It remained unclear what installations the officers were photographing, if
any. In addition to conventional military facilities, China considers a wide
range of public infrastructure to be military secrets and so restricts the
photographing of bridges, airports and train stations.
China's southern coast is a sensitive area with a number of military
installations. It faces Taiwan, the island nation controlled by a rival
Nationalist government and which China regards as a renegade province.
The Chinese military staged exercises in the area last week, firing six
surface-to-surface missiles in five days a demonstration viewed as an
R
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attempt to intimidate Taiwan. Some military analysts said China moved extra
missile launchers and antiaircraft weapons into the region for the exercises.
Aides to Christopher suggested the possibility that the seizure of the
attaches was an attempt by China's military command to sabotage the
Christopher-Gian meeting. Such a strong political position by the military would
be a departure from its history of obedience to the ruling Communist Party.
Moreover, any effort at political sabotage might have been more effective had
the announcement been made before Christopher and Qian met.
Sources in Beijing have suggested that there has been tension between
military leaders and the foreign minister. In May, after talks with Christopher,
Qian had assured the Chinese leadership that the United States would not issue a
visa to Taiwan's Lee, but military leaders were skeptical, sources here said.
Two days later, the Clinton administration reversed itself and granted the visa
under congressional pressure, undercutting Qian's credibility.
The current crisis in U.S.-China relations was triggered by Lee's visit to
the United States in June for a reunion at his alma mater, Cornell University in
Ithaca, N.Y. -- the first visit to the United States by a Taiwanese leader since
U.S.-China relations were reestablished. China said the visit violated U.S.
agreements made in 1979 to downgrade relations with Taiwan and observe a "one
China" policy.
The Clinton administration has said the visit was strictly personal.
Nonetheless, China recalled its ambassador to Washington and has not agreed to
accept former Democratic senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee, the Clinton
administration's choice, as the new U.S. ambassador. The previous ambassador,
Stapleton Roy, left Beijing in June to take a new post.
writers Michael Dobbs in Brunei and Dana Priest in Washington contributed to
this report.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
COUNTRY: CHINA;
LOAD-DATE: August 03, 1995
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