Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!daemon From: chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Bo Chi) Newsgroups: ut.chinese Subject: Nov. 19 (II), News Digest Message-ID: <8911191928.AA18453@vlsi.waterloo.edu> Date: 19 Nov 89 14:28:10 GMT Sender: Distribution: ut Lines: 279 Approved: nobody@csri.toronto.edu Original-To: china-distribution@cs.toronto.edu | +---------I __L__ ___/ \ -------I +----+----+ | ___\_\_ | \./ | | -----+- | | | | | __ \/ | --+-- |--- | |---| | I----+----I | I__J/\ | __|__ | | | |---| | | | _____ \ | /| \ | | | L__-| | I I---------J / J \/ | | V | J * C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t * (ND Canada Service) -- Nov. 19 (II), 1989 Table of Contents # of Lines Headline News ........................................................... 21 1. China Is Making "A Great Leap Backward" ............................. 44 2. Golf Course Shooting Were Actually Gun Testing, Japanese Still Nervous ......................................... 54 3. More Than 40 Will Be Tried For Counter-Revolutionary Crimes ......... 87 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Headline News ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Deng Xiaoping, at a high ranking military meeting in September, said that if Taiwan wanted to be independent, we would attack. Source said that Deng's speech can be summarized as: (1) Taiwan should be put on the daily agenda, we can not always give a smiling face; (2) if they make indepedency, we will hit them. It is a matter of principle; (3) there are two possible targets now: Taiwan and Vietnam. [From: simone@nyspi.bitnet (J. Yang)] [Source: World Journal, 11/16/89] (2) Chinese government has been taking a revenge on U.S. and French military diplomats. Those military envoies have been singled out for the activities hosted by Chinese army. The most recent case was on Nov. 13, when all military diplomats were invited to the ceremony of the grand opening of air force museum except U.S., Frence, and Vietnam. The diplomats in Beijing joke them as 'The Gang of Three'. In August 1st, Chinese government did not invite the U.S., Frence, and Vietnam military diplomats to attend a tour to Tianjing, which all other military diplomats were invited. Also, in a recent shooting friendship game which is hosted by Chinese army once a year, 'The Gang of Three' were again not on the guest list. [From: simone@nyspi.bitnet (J. Yang)] [Source: World Journal, 11/16/89] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. China Is Making "A Great Leap Backward" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: IZZYQ00@UCLAMVS.BITNET (J. Ding) [Source: Associated Press, 11/15/89] Winston Lord, a former U.S. ambassador to China, told Congress on Wednesday that China is making "a great leap backward" and said the United States should withhold full cooperation until a new, more democratic regime is in place in Beijing. Lord told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it likely will take several years before China reverses the course it embarked upon when it brutally cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tianamen Square. Until such a reversal, he said, "we must both sustain our condemnation of Beijing's actions and preserve the framework for future cooperation when China's big chill is lifted." "For us to resume full cooperation will require a new regime in Beijing," he said. Lord, who was ambassaddor in Beijing from November 1985 to last April, said he had been reluctant to comment on China's problems until the crackdown in June. "Such inhibitions have been swept away as Beijing's leaders proceded from intransigence to massacre to executions to repression, roundups, purges, disappearances, harassment, surveilance, Orwellian groupthink, rollback of reforms and extreme xenophobia all cloaked in a particularly brazen display of the Big Lie," he said. "Since June the trends have been bleak indeed as China seems to be making a great leap backward to the 1950's and 1960's," Lord said. In this period, he said, the loyalty of the United States "should be to the Chinese people and the Chinese officials some deposed, many still in office who deplore such policies and not to the handful responsible for crushing Chinese spirits." The United States should do nothing, he said, to break the web of relationships that have been built since the United States normalized relations with China. "We cannot rip out all of these roots that we have so carefully nutured," he said. "We must preserve the foundations for the time when a more cooperative relationship with China is once again possible." Above all, he said, the United States must realize that "the Chinese are responsible for the current impasse and it is up to them to break it." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Golf Course Shooting Were Actually Gun Testing, Japanese Still Nervous ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: IZZYQ00@UCLAMVS.BITNET (J. Ding) [Source: Associated Press, 11/15/89] by Terril Jone Chinese authorities admitted Wednesday that soldiers fired their guns near Japanese golfers last weekend but said it was an accident unrelated to a death threat received by Toyota officials. Officials of the Public Security Ministry told Japanese diplomats their investigation showed a few soldiers were "testing" their guns at a shooting range south of the Beijing Golf Club on Sunday, Japanese sources in Beijing said. The security officials said some bullets strayed onto the course near the ninth and 18th holes, according to the sources, who would not be further identified. Several Japanese golfers reported hearing two bursts of machine gun fire and bullets whizzing by shortly before noon Sunday. They included three employees of Toyota Motor Corp., whose Beijing office on Nov. 9 received a letter containing a bullet and note threatening to kill Japanese in China. The security officials were quoted as telling the Japanese diplomats that while the Chinese side took the shooting incident seriously, it was unrelated to the death threat. Chinese authorities instructed related units to take measures "to eliminate the uneasiness," but did not apologize for the incident, the sources said. Toyota, which had considered withdrawing its staff from China following the letter and shooting incident, decided to keep them in place, Toyota spokesman Andy Pfeiffenberger said in Tokyo. "We decided the situation didn't call for them to be taken back to Tokyo," Pfeiffenberger said. "We told them to be careful, to be alert to things there, but things are back to normal and work is going on as usual." Toyota has seven employees in Beijing and six in Canton (Guangzhou), Pfeiffenberger said. He would not say if the note was signed or disclose its contents, but the sources in Beijing said it read, "Now that the martial law troops have gone, our time has come. Go back to Japan. From now, we will kill Japanese." Soldiers called in under martial law were stationed at major intersections and overpasses in Beijing after the June 3-4 military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement of this spring. The last troops were removed Nov. 1, and only a few armed police remain at Tiananmen Square, the focal point of the protests. In July and August, a group calling itself the "Blood-Bright Dare to Die Squad" sent letters to several Japanese firms threatening to kill Japanese in retaliation for Japan's "economic invasion" of China. Japan's trade surplus with China was $3.1 billion last year, according to Chinese figures, but Japanese figures say the surplus was $383 million in China's favor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. More Than 40 Will Be Tried For Counter-Revolutionary Crimes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: IZZYQ00@UCLAMVS.BITNET (J. Ding) [Source: UPI, 11/15/89] by Scott Savitt More than 40 leaders of last spring's democracy movement now detained at a maximum-security prison outside Beijing are to be tried for counter- revolutionary crimes, the most serious political charges in China, Chinese sources said Wednesday. According to the sources, those to stand trial include student leader Wang Dan, former top government policy adviser Cao Siyuan and veteran human rights activist Ren Wanding. Sources said they will be charged under a broadly defined constitutional clause that lists as counterrevolutionary any "act against the state, that seeks to undermine the leadership of the Communist Party and overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat." The statute, which normally carries a sentence of more than 10 years in prison or labor camps, has been invoked in the past to silence dissidents. But at its worst, a charge of counterrevolution can be tantamount to treason and warrant the death penalty. The government has branded the protests last spring as a "counterrevolutionary rebellion." Since the bloody military crackdown on the democracy movement in June, thousands of people have been arrested nationwide. Suspected organizers have been held in the tightly guarded Qincheng Prison in Beijing's northern suburbs. The Chinese sources said more than 1,000 leaders of the movement, including student organizers, intellectuals and democracy activists are held in the prison. But after almost six months of intensive investigations, authorities have decided to release most of them and will try only a few of the top organizers. The sources said the list of those to be tried has yet to be finalized, but will almost certainly include Wang, Cao, the director of a liberal think tank, and Ren, who served four years in prison after the 1978-79 "Democracy Wall" movement. The sources said the trials will most likely not be publicized, and only the sentences will be announced. They also said that prisoners have already begun to be released. Some have been allowed home with the stipulation they do not talk about their cases or treatment. Wang, 20, was a history major at Beijing University and a key protest leader this spring. He was named No. 1 on a government most-wanted list and was captured in July while trying to escape. Cao, 43, is a social scientist who served as a policy adviser to deposed Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang. The former director of the Stone Research and Development Institute, a private think tank, Cao backed crucial reforms such as loosening of the state ownership system and helped draft China's first bankruptcy law. After Premier Li Peng declared martial law in Beijing May 20, Cao circulated a petition calling for an emergency meeting of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, in an unsuccessful bid to use its power to overturn the decision. Ren, 45, the founder of the China Human Rights League, remained silent after his release from prison in 1984 but began to speak out again last year. He argued in an article in The New York Times last December that "the opening trend in China has become irreversible" and criticized the party as corrupt and unresponsive to the people. Ren spoke at Beijing University on several occasions during the movement, and addressed huge crowds on Tiananmen Square. He was arrested at his home June 9. Family members of those detained say they have no contact with prisoners. Prisoners can receive living supplies, but relatives deliver them to a prison in Beijing and authorities distribute them. Qincheng is traditionally the site for detaining political prisoners. Its most prominent inmate is Mao Tse-tung's widow Jiang Qing, leader of the radical "Gang of Four," who was sentenced in 1981 for crimes committed during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Sources familiar with conditions in Qincheng said prisoners were initially given only two meals everyday, and there were beatings during questioning. But conditions have improved as public security personnel have taken over interrogations from the military, and three meals and exercise are now given. Prisoners are kept eight to a cell measuring 9 feet by 15 feet and not allowed reading material. There are daily interrogations. The several thousand people held for other crimes in local police stations for demonstrating and blocking the progress of troops have begun to be dealt with as well. Many have received labor education sentences. Under those, the accused are sent to farms around Beijing for two-year labor stints and will be released without a criminal record, the sources said. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor: Deming Tang E_mail: Tang@ALISUVAX.bitnet | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ============================================================================= News Transmission chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (or) -------------------- --------------------- Local Editor: Bo Chi chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- send out time: Mon Nov 19 14:30:27 EST 1989 Note: This package was bounced back once. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- .