Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!daemon Date: Fri, 27 Oct 89 18:22:36 EDT Sender: From: chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Bo Chi) Message-ID: <8910280322.AA14994@vlsi.waterloo.edu> Original-To: utchinese@csri.utoronto.ca Subject: Oct. 27 (II), News Digest Newsgroups: ut.chinese Distribution: ut Sender: list-admin@csri.toronto.edu Approved: nobody@csri.toronto.edu * C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t * (ND Canada Service) -- Oct. 27 (II), 1989 Table of Contents # of Lines 1) Wang Dan Told His Friend "Keep Up The Effort" ....................... 65 2) Shanghai Mayor Demands Reforms Continue ............................. 50 3) East Bloc Events Alarm Beijing ...................................... 69 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Wang Dan Told His Friend "Keep Up The Effort" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: hkucs!kwchan@uunet.UU.net (Chan Ki Wa) [Source: Associated Press, 10/25/89] ONE of the top Chinese student leaders of the crushed democracy movement, Wang Dan, has sent a friend a postcard from prison saying: "Keep up the effort." Sources from Beijing University where Wang studied, said he asked the friend to bring soap, winter clothes, a quilt, food and plastic utensils to the prison in Chang Ping county, north of Beijing. The sources, who spoke on the condition they not be identified, did not receive the postcard but said they knew the student who did. "They talk to me every day," the sources quoted Wang as writing. They said Wang underlined the word "talk", and interpreted it to mean he was questioned daily by authorities. Wang, a slightly built, 20-year-old history student, with a shock of hair that often fell in his eyes, was one of the best-known figures of the seven- week student-led demonstrations for a freer society. He often could be seen with a megaphone at the head of demonstrations and rallies on Tiananmen Square and was one of a small council of student leaders who discussed protest strategy. After the army crushed the protest on June 4, Wang's name headed a government most-wanted list of 21 students. He was arrested on July 2 after meeting a Taiwanese reporter to ask for help in fleeing from China. The university sources said school officials agreed to allow the friend and three other history students to deliver the items to Wang's prison on October 13. The four were not allowed to see Wang, but were told by prison guards that he shared a cell with at least 20 other prisoners, was given two meals a day and was allowed to walk in the prison yard several times daily. The guards were also quoted as saying that it was likely Wang would be moved soon to another place to await trial. He has been accused of counter- revolutionary activities and could face execution. China has already executed at least 12 protesters since it used the army to crush the demonstrations in Beijing. The 12 were workers and peasants who supported the students' protests. The Government has refused to say how many students have been jailed or comment on their fate. The students who went to Chang Ping reported meeting a second group of students visiting the prison the same day taking supplies for Zheng Xuguang, a student leader from the Beijing College of Aeronautics who was also on the wanted list. People arrested in China do not have the right to communicate with relatives or friends until they have been sentenced and placed in a labour reform program in jail. By allowing Wang and Zheng to ask friends to send supplies, the Government appeared to be trying to show some leniency. Sources say all 21 of the students on the wanted list have been arrested except for two who fled abroad - Wu'erkaixi and Li Lu. However, authorities have confirmed the arrests of only eight. Arrest warrants have also been issued for other students and older intellectuals. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Shanghai Mayor Demands Reforms Continue ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: hkucs!kwchan@uunet.UU.net (Chan Ki Wa) [Source: South China Morning Post, 10/25/89] By Willy Wo-Lap Lam A major regional official has delivered a thinly veiled warning to central planners in Beijing not to roll back reform. Mr Zhu Rongji, mayor of Shanghai, said yesterday: "While there may be short-comings in carrying out some concrete (reform) policies, readjustment should be made (to the policies only) on the basis of detailed studies and investigations." "Otherwise, no changes should be made. "Maintaining the stability and continuity of the current policy is an important guarantee of the healthy development of reform and opening to the outside world in Shanghai." Mr Zhu, also the party boss of China's largest city, made these remarks at a meeting on ideological work in local industrial enterprises held in Shanghai. "The open and reform policies, as well as the related laws and regulations approved by the party Central Committee, the State Council and the National People's Congress should continue to be implemented," he said. According to analysts, Mr Zhu was deliberately casting his vote for the continuation of reform ahead of the fifth plenum of the 13th Central Committee. The plenum, originally scheduled for early October, has been postponed owing to disagreement over the extent to which market-oriented reforms begun by ousted party chief Zhao Ziyang should be replaced by policies stressing re-centralisation and strict governmental control of all economic activities. Mr Zhu's views were seconded by Mr Huang Ju, deputy mayor and deputy secretary of the Shanghai party committee. In a report on the city's economic development this year, Mr Huang said: "The practice of the shareholding system and other economic reform experiments will be continued in Shanghai." "Further development of the reform and open policies is the key to promoting our economy," he added. A diplomatic analyst said: "Shanghai fears that, if the central planners have their way, local government departments and corporations will lose their autonomy in doing business with the outside world, thus further affecting their foreign-trade earnings." Mr Zhu, who was promoted Shanghai party boss in the summer, is generally thought to be more reformist-minded than predecessor Jiang Zemin, who became party General-Secretary last June. Observers in Beijing say that if the plenum decides to replenish the two Politburo seats left vacant by the ousting of Mr Zhao and liberal ideologue Mr Hu Qili, Mr Zhu has a high chance of being inducted to the supreme body. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. East Bloc Events Alarm Beijing ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: hkucs!kwchan@uunet.UU.net (Chan Ki Wa) [Source: South China Morning Post, 10/25/89] China is deeply concerned about events in Eastern Europe, Prime Minister Li Peng was quoted as saying yesterday, expressing for the first time in public Beijing's misgivings over reforms and unrest threatening communism there. Mr Li, a hard-liner instrumental in crushing China's democracy movement in June, told a visiting Yugoslav official that reforms meant "perfecting the socialist system", implying they should not be used to dump communism -as Poland and Hungary have done in recent weeks. "As a socialist country, China is of course deeply concerned about events in some East European countries," he said, quoted by the communist partly newspaper People's Daily. But he added, in meeting Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Zivko Pregl, each country should decide for itself "how to proceed along the socialist path". He did not name any country and Mr Pregl's reply was not published. China's state-run media has devoted little space and time to events sweeping Eastern Europe, with coverage limited to brief reports and no direct comments. Foreign diplomats in Beijing said Mr Li's remarks revealed concern that while China was reverting to orthodox communist policies after a save of unrest swept the country last spring, Poland and Hungary had moved in the opposite direction with East Germany under popular pressure to follow. Diplomats said Beijing feared that events in Eastern Europe, perhaps partly influenced by China's own democracy movement, could rekindle unrest among the 1.1 billion Chinese. "The Chinese authorities are worried, and so they should be," one Western diplomat commented. East European sources said the Chinese Communist Party was circulating internal documents saying Hungary-once a model of reform for china - was no longer a socialist country. Instead the documents denounced stead the documents denounced Budapest as "bourgeois liberal". Since student protests were crushed by the army in Beijing in June, an unmarked police car has been parked close to the Hungarian embassy, apparently to stop any would-be defectors, an East European diplomat said. Developments in Eastern Europe have captured the imagination of many young Chinese whose own hopes of political change have been dashed by the current crackdown. Even in remote Tibet, nationalists who took part in pro-independence protests n the regional capital Lhasa in March were asking recent foreign visitors for the latest news about East Germany and its mass exodus of citizens to the West. East European sources said that despite its concerns, China had turned down a recent proposal by Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu that a summit of communist leaders be help to sort out problems in East Europe and chart a communist future. The sources said they believed Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had also opposed the idea. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman denied that Rumania had proposed such a summit. With his own brand of orthodox communism, Mr Ceausescu is one of the few East European leaders China can still count on for support in its hardening ideological battle against what Beijing denounces as Western subversion. The People's Daily also published attacks by the Bulgarian and North Korean communist party newspapers on what they called attempts by the West to subvert communism. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor: Deming Tang E_mail: Tang@ALISUVAX.bitnet | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor's Note: -------------- Hi, Dear Friend: Thank you for your concern and reading News Digest. To keep more of our Chinese friends informed, you are kindly asked to help introduce the News Digest to more of your close friends. Your great help would benefit many Chinese now and the future of China. You will be certainly remembered then. Have a very good weekend! (nice weather with you) Best regards -- Bo Chi =========================================================================== News Transmission chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (or) -------------------- --------------------- Local Editor: Bo Chi chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu . ..:, `` .,; `` :: .,; :: .; ..ii..;; `` ..ii..ii.;; `` .: ;; ; :; ;; , .: .....,, ' : ;, , .: \ ; '' +.......++ ..' : .;\. ''' .., .; ..; `\\:. ,