Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!daemon Date: Sat, 2 Dec 89 13:38:09 EST Sender: From: chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Bo Chi) Message-ID: <8912022338.AA07366@vlsi.waterloo.edu> Original-To: china-distribution@cs.toronto.edu Subject: Dec. 2 (III), News Digest Newsgroups: ut.chinese Distribution: ut Sender: list-admin@csri.toronto.edu Approved: nobody@csri.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) -- Dec. 2 (III), 1989 Table of Contents # of Lines Headline News ................................................... 8 1) "The Six Evils" .............................................. 32 2) China Considers Passport Fee As Way To Stop 'Brain Drain' .. 61 3) First Election With Legal Opposition Parties In Taiwan ...... 20 4) China Faces Increasing Isolation ............................ 92 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Headline News --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) A court in Tibet has sentenced 11 Tibetans, including Buddhist monks, to prison terms of up to 19 years for dissident activities and working for independence from China, the official Chinese press said Friday. From: "J. Ding" SOURCE: BEIJING (UPI) 12/01, 1989 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. "The Six Evils" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "J. Ding" SOURCE: BEIJING (UPI) December 01, 1989 Authorities Friday ordered the city's prostitutes, gamblers, swindlers, drug traffickers and pornographers to surrender and inform on others or face jail. The order, announced by the municipal government in the Beijing Daily, an official newspaper, was the latest salvo in a campaign against what officials have branded "the six evils." The "evils" include gambling, prostitution, drug trafficking, pornography, selling women and children, and swindling through games employing superstition. Authorities demanded anyone involved in the activities "stop right away" and surrender within a month. Those who turn themselves in and confess or report on other offenders "will be given lenient treatment or not investigated," the statement said. However, the announcement warned, anyone who refuses to surrender and continues the activities "will be punished severely," along with "those who wink at or shield such activities." It called on Beijing citizens to inform on anyone suspected of the "six evils," saying the government would "speak highly of them and give them awards" for aiding in the capture of suspects. "The six evils severely poison the general social mood, disturb public order and endanger the construction of cultural civilization, and must be firmly checked, forbidden and banned," the statement said. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. China Considers Passport Fee As Way To Stop 'Brain Drain' --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: wang@pennmess.physics.upenn.edu ( Huangxin Wang) Source: The Chronical of Higher Education, A49, 11/29, 1989 [by Louise Branson] Imposition of a passport fee that would all but eliminate the opportunity for privately financed university students to go abroad is under consideration by Chinese authorities, according to usually well-informed university source here. Details of the new requirement, which reportedly would take effect in February, could not be officially confirmed. But the university sources said Chinese students seeking to use private funds, including scholarships from American universities, to finance their education abroad could face passport fees as much as 20,000 Chinese yuan, or nearly $5,400 -- a prohibitive sum in a country where wages typically come to about 1,200 yuan a year. Rumors about official plans to halt China's "Brain drain" to the West have sent thousands of young people scrambling to Western embassies in a desperate effort to obtain visas before the new regulations go into effect. Several Chinese students said another barrier to overseas study had appeared at colleges and universities here as campus registrars refused to honor requests for official copies of transcripts, which students need for admission to foreign institutions. A spokesman for China's State Education Commission said he could neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of those reports. Meanwhile, the rumor mill here has been generating concern that the authorities plan to put captured leaders of last spring's "counter- revolutionary rebellion," including the student leader Wang Dan, on trial. "Politically Mature" -------------------- The indications that passport fees may be imposed on privately financed students were the latest in a series of developments that pointed to a major attempt by the authorities to choke off the flow of young Chinese out of the country. One pending regulation would require students to work in China for up to seven years after graduation before they could travel abroad. Another rule, already in effect, fires those interested in taking English-Language profi- ciency test required by many foreign institutions to obtain written permission in advance from their college departments, work units, or neighborhood committees. Prime Minister Li Peng said recently that China should send only 'politically mature' scholars and researcher abroad. In the background is a strong new anti-intellectual climate in China. Last week the newspaper Guangming Daily, which is widely read by intellectuals, published a letter arguing that university students should do manual labor to learn traditional Communist values. "If people trained at universities neglect manual labor and look down on workers and peasants, seeking only pleasure, can they become part of the working class?" the letter asked. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. First Election With Legal Opposition Parties In Taiwan --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "J. Ding" SOURCE: TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) December 01, 1989 [BY: HUANG, ANNIE ; Associated Press Writer] Tens of thousands of police guarded polling stations Saturday as voters cast ballots in Taiwan's first election with legal opposition parties. There were long lines of voters at polling booths and state radio predicted a heavy turnout. Results were not expected until sometime Sunday. ............. Many Taiwanese remain skeptical of the movement because of Communist China's threat to invade the island if it declares independence. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. China Faces Increasing Isolation --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "J. Ding" SOURCE: BEIJING (UPI) December 01, 1989 [BY: SCHWEISBERG, DAVID R.] Troubled by the changes sweeping Eastern Europe, China's leaders are eyeing the superpower summit with suspicion and have recently expressed sharp private criticism of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Chinese and foreign sources say. The meeting between President Bush and Gorbachev comes as China faces increasing isolation, its relations with the West damaged by its own crackdown on dissent and its ties with Europe's communist nations confused by their refusal to do the same. Foreign diplomats in Beijing said Chinese leaders are deeply troubled by the liberalization in Eastern Europe, just six months after they ordered the violent suppression of China's pro-democracy movement and launched a rollback of political and economic reforms. Along with restricting coverage of Eastern Europe in its state press, China has shown its concern by increasingly careful contacts with the nations undergoing upheaval, East bloc diplomats said. Diplomatic and academic exchanges with China have slowed somewhat, they said. "It hasn't stopped, but they are being cautious," said a senior Eastern European diplomat. "They are afraid of infestation. And they are asking us how we could consider abandoning the leadership of the Communist Party." China has kept a tight public lip about the seagoing summit off Malta, saying only it "welcomes" the meeting. But Chinese leaders are clearly suspicious, Chinese and foreign sources said. "They are worried about the United States and the Soviet Union moving closer, maybe leaving them out," another East bloc diplomat said. According to diplomats and Chinese sources, hard-line Premier Li Peng and senior leader Deng Xiaoping have in recent weeks assailed Gorbachev in unreported talks with visiting foreign dignitaries. In one such discussion last month, Li called Gorbachev "weak" and "vacillating" for failing to crack down on protests in Europe and in the Soviet republics, a diplomat briefed on the meeting said. Deng has been less strident, but has privately characterized as potentially destabilizing the liberalization supported or tolerated by Gorbachev, Chinese and foreign sources said. Apparently hoping to stay in the superpower politics game, China is nonetheless maintaining the expansion of ties with the Soviet Union begun after the two nations normalized relations last year, diplomats said. Discussions are under way for a visit to Moscow by Premier Li, tentatively next April, East bloc diplomats said. It would be a reciprocal visit for Gorbachev's landmark trip to Beijing last May when he was hailed as a reformist by protesting Chinese students. But the rapid pace of change in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and even Bulgaria, including the prospect of multi-party politics, has overtaken China's ability to respond, Western diplomats said. The sources said Chinese leaders approved an internal document at a party meeting last month expressing "concern" over Eastern Europe. "The Foreign Ministry people seem scared to say anything when we talk to them," a Beijing-based Western diplomat said. Chinese academic experts, although generally refusing to grant press interviews, appear somewhat less anxious. "Those we talked to said they are not as concerned with Eastern Europe because the countries are small and communism was forced onto them, not in an indigenous uprising as in China or the Soviet Union," the diplomat said. "They're watching the Soviets." Chinese officials have in public largely shrugged off comment, saying the changes in Eastern European nations are internal affairs. Last month, Premier Li, in one of the few public reactions by a Chinese leader, warned, "China will not change its system just because of the changes taking place in Eastern Europe." Senior Chinese officials are reading detailed accounts on Eastern Europe in internal reference documents, Chinese sources said. But coverage has been limited in the general press and even in an internal newspaper, Reference News, available to many Chinese. State-run media have sharply played down the drama of mass rallies and the opening of the Berlin Wall, instead focusing on Eastern European leaders' calls for maintaining socialism. +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor: Yaxiong Lin E_mail: aoyxl@asuacvax.bitnet | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ========================================================================== News Transmission chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (or) -------------------- --------------------- Local Editor: Bo Chi chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sat Dec 2 18:36:44 EST 1989 Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com