Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!daemon From: chengpi@ecf.toronto.edu (CHENG) Newsgroups: ut.chinese Subject: News Digest Message-ID: <89Oct17.103536edt.20852@ecf.toronto.edu> Date: 17 Oct 89 14:35:27 GMT Sender: Distribution: ut Lines: 298 Approved: nobody@csri.toronto.edu Original-To: utchinese * N e w s D i g e s t * (ND Canada Service) -- Oct. 17 (I), 1989 Table of Contents # of Lines 1) Students in China Learn About Power of The State ................. 198 2) China CCP Steps Up "Purifying Party Organization" ................. 94 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Students in China learn about power of the state By Vernon Loeb Knight-Ridder Newspapers -- via ND special correspondent in Montreal --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shanghai His summer holiday was just beginning when a letter arrived from his university. Return to Shanghai at once, it said. He knew what it was all about. His father made the trip back with him, hoping that 30 years in the Chinese Communist Party would win some consideration for his son, a student leader. A bushy-haired 21-year-old with a preference for jeans and flannel shirts, the son was "invited" to talk to the Shanghai police upon his return, but told them nothing at first. He soon discovered that other students had not been so "strong-minded". Eventually, he had no choice but to tell them everything - how he had made fiery speeches on a Shanghai campus during last spring's democracy movement, how he had gone to factories in Shanghai to try to organize stony-faced workers. ON FILE FOR LIFE All of it was typed up and put in his file by police, where he assumes it will stay for the rest of his life. Later in the summer there were more confessions to be made - this time around, during two weeks of mandatory political indoctrination at his university. He and other troublemakers read an "important" speech by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping condemning the student movement over and over and watched videotapes of the "counter-revolutionary rebellion" - scenes of "hooligans" burning tanks and beating up soldiers who were showing "maximum restraint" toward civilians. At one point, the student leader said, he stood up and delivered a ringing denunciation of the movement, only to be told that he had "changed too fast". Now he fully appreciates the awesome hold the state and the party have over his life - and how they are tightening their grip to crush all vestiges of the student democracy movement. "I am not sure what my fortunes will be," said the student leader, now back in school for his senior year. At Fudan University in Shanghai, in a back booth of a dimly lit campus coffeehouse, three undergraduates sit drinking Shanghai Dark beer, chain-smoking American cigarettes and exchanging furtive words about the future. LEFT IN LIMBO They are not sure they have one. They are among several dozen student activists at this prestigious university who have been "registered" by police, a fate somewhere between having a confession put in your police file and being arrested outright. Call it an official state of limbo. Across town, at East China Normal University, a large teachers' college, the president has been sent to Beijing for renewed political studies, the school's chief party official has been replaced, 10 teachers have been suspended pending political re-education, and the vice-chairman of the economics department, two members of the Chinese department, a party official assigned to the history department and a graduate student have all been arrested. One Western diplomat called the arrests "disturbing" and said that the fall registration of students at Fudan was "a form of persecution without even the legal line of trial, rebuttals and sentencing - it's the worst of Chinese justice to have this hanging over these kids' heads". Having said that, the diplomat pointed out that the crackdown was harsher still in Beijing, the centre of the democracy movement. What the party is calling "turmoil" in Shanghai, he said, is officially "counter_revolutionary rebellion" in Beijing - a much higher crime. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed in Beijing last June 3-4 as soldiers shot their way into the capital to clear Tiananmen Square of student demonstrators for the first time since April. An official news broadcast over the summer reported more that 3,500 arrests in June in Beijing alone, and diplomats now say that as many as 10,000 may have been arrested nationwide for their roles in the democracy movement. While most of those arrested have been workers, a significant number of students and intellectuals have been jailed as well - and the arrests continue, along with some releases from jail. Student leader Wang Dan, a key figure in the democracy movement, is from Beijing University, the most prestigious school in the nation. He remains in prison and the university's freshman class of 800 has been sent to a military college outside Beijing for a year of political indoctrination by the People's Liberation Army. START OF CLASSES DELAYED The start of classes at the university has been delayed until today. The first order of business will be a week of political indoctrination- standard fare this fall at universities nationwide. "I'm not looking forward to classes starting," said one graduate student in computer science. "I just want to go to the United States as quickly as possible. I want to study in a safe environment. This is not a safe environment." A first-year grad student in physics said he and his classmates were made to write essays about their roles in the movement during examinations over the summer. The student admits going to Tiananmen Square once and demonstrating. From a bench where the student sits, reading a book in English, he can see a slogan strung across a shady lane on campus. It says,"Stand firm against capitalism." Nearby, at People's University, another hotbed of student activism, a slogan of a different sort went up secretly last month to mark the 100th day since the killing of students on Tiananmen Square. Six students from the school are thought to have been killed. In commemorating the dead, the handwritten poster said that "the second independent student union has been formed to direct the future movement." Authorities ripped the poster down immediately and started an investigation. "You must be very daring to even put up a poster saying something," said one student in Beijing. "Anybody who actually comes up and shows himself demonstrating - that is suicidal". More that a few students at his university remain equally defiant, at least in private. In another dorm room down a bare, dank corridor of unfinished concrete, a student has written the words of poet Allen Ginsburg above his desk:"Because I am open, I am vulnerable; because I am open, I am free." There are other students who took part in the movement and now want nothing more than to forget about it. "I've had graduate students say to me, 'That was my first involvement with politics, and I never want anything to do with it again,'" said a professor at East China Normal. "'I just want to lead my life and be done with it.'" TEARS WELLED UP The student leader whose father is in the party was in his dorm room in Shanghai recently when a friend from Beijing gave him a spent shell casing picked up from the streets on June 4. Holding the shell between his thumb and index finger a few inches from his face, the student leader was stunned. Tears welled up in his eyes. When he regained his composure a few minutes later, he said his friend would never know how much that shell meant to him. "I imagine I'll have to spend the rest of my life trying to make myself worthy of the students who were killed," he said, "But I have no regrets - none. "As Hemingway once said, a man can be destroyed, but never defeated." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. China CCP Step Up "Purifying Party Organization" BY: WILHELM, KATHY ; Associated Press Writer DATELINE: BEIJING (AP) October 15, 1989 -- From: "Jian Ding" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leaders in the Beijing Communist Party voted Sunday to purge the party of "hostile and anti-party elements' and wealthy private businessmen, whom they called exploiters. The decision, reported by the official Xinhua News Agency, indicated that the harsh crackdown triggered by student protests in June is not winding down after nearly five months, but rather will be intensified. Also Sunday, an official report said lawmakers have proposed banning Hong Kong residents from anti-government activities after the colony reverts to Chinese rule in 1997. Xinhua said the Beijing party committee, which has led the nation in hard-line rhetoric, approved a resolution to "purify the party organizations" by requiring all members in the city to reregister during the coming year. Only those who meet party qualifications will be retained, it said. "A drive will be conducted to examine and investigate how party members, especially officials with a party membership, behaved in ending the national turmoil and quelling the anti-government rioting," it said, referring to pro-democracy protests that the army crushed in June. "The overwhelming majority of the party members will be united and educated and a very small number of hostile and anti-party elements will be resolutely purged from the party," it said. It did not say how many of Beijing's 10 million residents are party members or how many are expected to survive the examination. So far, only a few expulsions from the party have been announced, including that of Yan Jiaqi, a political scientist who fled to the West in June and is working to organize an opposition from overseas. Former party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, ousted for allegedly supporting the student protests, has been allowed to keep his party membership, but some top officials are believed to be pressing for his expulsion. He already has lost all his party posts. Leading targets of the party purge include private businessmen, whom the resolution referred to as "exploiters." "The resolution stipulated that exploiters cannot be admitted into the party, and those who have already been party members must adhere to the party's ideals," it said. "Besides getting their own due pay, they should spend their post-tax profits on production and public welfare and should not use them for their own private needs. If they fail to do so, they can no longer be party members," it said. Private businessmen were commonly described as "exploiters" during the first three decades of Communist rule, but after senior leader Deng Xiaoping began reforming the centralized economy a decade ago, they were embraced as partners in China's modernization. At least one millionaire has been admitted to the party. Since the June crackdown on the student movement, however, hard-line policies have made a comeback in all areas. The slogan of Deng's early reforms, "To get rich is glorious," has been dropped, and party leaders have begun criticizing private businessmen for becoming wealthy. Some cities have put limits on how much self-employed businessmen can pay themselves, and tax officials have been ordered to make sure private businessmen pay what they owe. Many private clothing sellers and bar owners in Beijing have said they want to sell their businesses. The resolution also said the party will examine officials at all levels and make any changes it considers necessary. "Political integrity will be emphasized in choosing and appointing officials in the future," it said. The Beijing party committee has heard a series of hard-line speeches in the past few days from its head, Li Ximing, including a call Thursday for direct party decision-making in universities and at the most local level of government. The Hong Kong proposal, the latest in a series of statements by the government about its future rule there, was likely to add to fears that have caused tens of thousands of residents to flee the British colony. The legislators, members of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, also reiterated the government position that China will have the right to station troops in Hong Kong and declare a state of emergency there. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Note: Dear friend, if you feel like to recommend articles that carry China current situations, you are more than welcome to send the News to this account. I sincerely thank you for for your great effort helping China. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- News Transmission chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (or) -------------------- --------------------- Local Editor: Bo Chi chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu .