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(03/19/08 3:51am)
BEIJING – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao accused supporters of the Dalai Lama on Tuesday of organizing violent clashes in Tibet in hopes of sabotaging the Beijing Olympics and bolstering their campaign for independence in the Himalayan territory.\nThe Dalai Lama urged his followers to remain peaceful, saying he would resign as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile if violence got out of control. But he also suggested China may have fomented unrest in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and nearby provinces to discredit him.\nIn striking an uncompromising line, Wen underscored the communist leadership’s determination to restore order in Tibet and Tibetan areas of neighboring provinces.\n“There is ample fact – and we also have plenty of evidence – proving that this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique,” he told reporters at his annual news conference at the end of China’s national legislative session.\n“By staging that incident, they want to undermine the Beijing Olympic Games, and they also try to serve their hidden agenda by inciting such incidents,” Wen said.\nHe said Lhasa was returning to normal and “will be reopened to the rest of the world,” but did not specify when.\nIndependent reporting from the region was impossible because of China’s tight control over information and a ban on trips to the area by foreign reporters.\nJohn Kenwood, a 19-year-old Canadian tourist who left Lhasa on Tuesday, said he saw street cleaners wearing orange vests emblazoned with the Beijing Olympics symbol.\n“When the fighting began, you saw no Chinese,” said Kenwood as he arrived in Nepal. “Now you see no Tibetans on the streets. The young Tibetans are probably hiding.”\nThe Lhasa protests, led by Buddhist monks, began peacefully March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Tibet had been effectively independent for decades before Chinese communist troops imposed Beijing’s control in 1950.\nThe demonstrations took a violent turn Friday, leaving 16 people dead and dozens injured, according to the Chinese government. The Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile in India contends 80 Tibetans died.\nThe protests have focused world attention on China’s human rights record ahead of the Olympics. The government had hoped the Aug. 8-24 games would burnish its image as a modernizing nation.\nThe Dalai Lama, speaking in Dharmsala, India, seat of his government-in-exile, urged nonviolence.\n“I say to China and the Tibetans: Don’t commit violence,” he told reporters. He suggested the Chinese themselves may have had a hand in the upheaval to discredit him.\n“It’s possible some Chinese agents are involved there,” he said. “Sometimes totalitarian regimes are very clever, so it is important to investigate.”\nIf violence spirals out of control, he said his “only option is to completely resign” as head of the government-in-exile. A top aide said later the Dalai Lama would not give up his role as spiritual leader for Tibetan Buddhists.\nU.S. officials urged China to address Tibetans’ grievances and to engage in direct talks with the Dalai Lama.\n“I do think that his statements point out the fact that he is not arguing for independence or separation from China. Quite the opposite, he is arguing for dialogue with the Chinese,” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.\nChinese authorities pressed ahead with efforts to round up protesters in Lhasa. Witnesses said officials had been detaining people since the weekend.\nDuoji Zeren, vice governor of Tibet, was quoted on state television as saying authorities “would take determined methods to capture the primary suspects,” but no details were given.\nProtests spilled over from Tibet into surrounding provinces in recent days, as police and soldiers set up checkpoints across a wide swath of western China. On Tuesday, thousands of Tibetans flooded the streets in Seda, in the southern Chinese province of Sichuan, according to the Tibet Center for Human Rights and Democracy.\nActivist groups also circulated graphic photographs of protesters who they said were massacred Sunday by Chinese police at Kirti monastery in Sichuan province. The images showed several men who were apparently shot and bodies covered in blood. There was no way to verify the authenticity of the photographs.
(01/07/08 3:07am)
BEIJING – Last August, the Chinese government unleashed its most extensive campaign since the 2002-03 outbreak of SARS, the mysterious killer disease. The goal: to shore up China’s battered reputation as a manufacturer of quality goods.\nAs the four-month initiative – part crackdown, part public relations drive – ended in December, experts say China has taken significant steps toward addressing product quality and safety problems. But they also note the risk of backsliding in a country with a convoluted bureaucracy and a well-documented history of local leaders ignoring edicts from the top.\n“The events of the past six or so months do represent a watershed,” said Robert Kapp, a business consultant who headed the U.S. China Business Council from 1994 to 2004. “But watersheds are not always forever.”\n“The problem may be very systematic by now, and I don’t know if the Chinese will overcome it,” he added.\nWhile the high-profile campaign is over, the government is continuing work on several fronts, including developing China’s first-ever food safety law.\nThe country’s reputation as an export power took a beating last year. In March, dog and cat deaths in North America were linked to a Chinese-made pet food ingredient. Then came reports of potentially dangerous frozen fish, juice, tires and toothpaste. Millions of toys were recalled in several countries because of lead paint and other fears.\nThe crisis put China’s position as the world’s factory at risk, threatening the underpinning of its economic success and the jobs that are lifting millions of Chinese out of poverty.\nThe furor also brought China’s long-running domestic food safety problems to light, just as Beijing prepares to host hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors at the Summer Olympics in August.\nThe seriousness with which the government took the issue was underscored by the appointment of its top problem solver, Vice Premier Wu Yi, to head a Cabinet-level panel overseeing \nthe campaign.\nWu, a stern-looking 69-year-old known as the “Iron Lady,” shepherded China’s difficult entry into the World Trade Organization, took over as health minister during the SARS epidemic and has been tasked with handling the vociferous U.S. complaints about China’s exchange rate policy.\nOne month into the product safety campaign, Wu herself set out to randomly inspect shops and restaurants in the eastern province of Zhejiang.\nA senior official who accompanied Wu described the trip to foreign reporters in October as part of the public relations effort.\n“If China’s leaders pay this much attention to the quality of products ... we can achieve the goals we are trying to reach by the end of the year,” told the journalists.\nWu declared the campaign a “special war to uphold the health, life and interests of the people and uphold the reputation of Chinese products and its national image.”\nThousands of unlicensed manufacturers were shut down. Teams of inspectors were dispatched, and labels showing that the quality of export food products had been checked became mandatory.
(07/30/07 12:58am)
BEIJING – China’s premier ordered increased vigilance over food and drug safety Friday as the Cabinet announced a new regulation that mandates stronger supervision and outlines hefty punishments for makers of dangerous goods.\nThe twin actions highlighted the leadership’s focus on winning back international confidence in its exports, which have been found to contain potentially dangerous levels of chemicals and toxins.\n“Food safety and product quality should be our top priority,” Premier Wen Jiabao was quoted as saying on the government’s Web site. “It is not only an urgent task, but an arduous and long-term task.”\nWen is the highest-ranking leader to address the issue since global alarm was triggered earlier this year, when a pet food ingredient from China was linked to the deaths of cats and dogs in North America.\nSince then, a slew of exports, from toothpaste to tires to seafood, have been recalled or rejected around the world.\nChinese officials, initially reluctant to acknowledge the problem, have vowed more stringent surveillance and a crackdown on the country’s countless small, unregulated producers, the heart of China’s ongoing product safety woes.\nMeanwhile, the State Council, China’s Cabinet, introduced a new regulation that addresses the responsibilities of local governments and lays out fines for producers of dangerous goods.\nA draft of the regulation was passed Wednesday and approved by the council a day later, an unusually swift passage that again underscores Beijing’s concern. On Friday, it was posted on the government Web site.\n“Quality concerns the people,” Wen said at a national conference on product safety. “It also concerns the image of the country.”\nThe regulation, effective immediately, applies to food, agricultural products and pharmaceutical drugs.\nIt said that manufacturers should be responsible and recall potentially dangerous products. It also detailed fines of up to 20 times the value of income made from the goods.\nCooperation between various government agencies should be improved, the regulation said. Currently, the responsibility for product safety is split among at least six agencies, including those that handle health, agriculture and commerce. The lines of authority are ill-defined, and different bodies oversee different laws.\nPolice arrested 15 members of a gang that sold fake rabies vaccine and blood protein in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, the official Xinhua News Agency said in the latest in a string of such announcements.\nThe drugs were counterfeits of 67 types of pharmaceuticals, it said, citing the provincial public security department. Bogus products seized by agents included 10,000 doses of rabies vaccine, 20,250 bottles of a medication used to treat heart disease and 211 bottles of blood protein, Xinhua said.\nThe former head of China’s Food and Drug Administration was executed two weeks ago after he was convicted of taking bribes and gifts in exchange for approving substandard medications for the domestic market, including an antibiotic blamed in the deaths of at least 10 people.\nWen also emphasized the need for stricter export controls by manufacturers and officials to “uphold the good image of Chinese products.”\nAmong the measures he brought up were the need for exporters to meet the standards of importing countries and pass quarantine inspections. He also said there needs to be better record-keeping of good and bad companies, which should be blacklisted for violations.
(02/14/07 3:06am)
BEIJING -- North Korea agreed Tuesday to shut down its main nuclear reactor and eventually dismantle its atomic weapons program in exchange for millions of dollars in aid, just four months after the communist state shocked the world by testing a nuclear bomb.\nThe deal, reached after arduous talks, marks the first concrete plan for disarmament in more than three years of six-nation negotiations. The plan also could potentially herald a new era of cooperation in the region with the North's longtime foes -- the United States and Japan -- also agreeing to discuss normalizing relations.\n"These talks represent the best opportunity to use diplomacy to address North Korea's nuclear programs," President Bush said in a statement read by his spokesman. "They reflect the common commitment of the participants to a Korean Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons."\nMaking sure North Korea declares all its nuclear facilities and shuts them down is likely to prove difficult, nuclear experts have said.\nIn a sign of potential troubles to come, North Korea's state news agency said the country was receiving the 1 million tons in oil for a "temporary suspension" of its nuclear facilities -- but failed to mention the full disarmament the agreement calls for.\nIt was not clear if the report represented a North Korean attempt to backtrack on the deal, or simply a statement of bluster for a deeply impoverished domestic audience that the government has sought to rally around the nuclear program.\nThe country has sidestepped previous agreements, allegedly running a uranium-based weapons program even as it froze a plutonium-based one -- sparking the latest nuclear crisis in late 2002. There are believed to be countless mountainside tunnels in which to hide projects.\n"We don't have an agreement at this point even on the existence of this program but I certainly have made very clear repeatedly that we need to ensure that we know precisely the status of that," said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the American envoy to the talks. "It's a very solid step forward."\nUnder the deal, the North would receive initial aid equal to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil for shutting down and sealing its main nuclear reactor.
(08/04/05 12:57am)
BEIJING -- Delegates to North Korean disarmament talks said Wednesday they were approaching the final stages of discussions, but a resolution to the dispute over the communist nation's nuclear weapons program ultimately lay in its own hands.\nAssistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. envoy, called Wednesday's negotiations the "lightest day yet."\n"One does get the sense that we're getting to the endgame here," he said.\nEnvoys from the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia were proposing suggestions on the latest draft of principles crafted by host China meant to move the stalled negotiations forward.\nKenichiro Sasae, Japan's chief negotiator, said delegates were "in the process of finalizing the draft."\nHill did not give any details on the day's talks but said Washington had offered its response to the draft. It was unclear whether North Korea had done the same or whether it had any objections, he said.\nHill held one-on-one talks Wednesday with several delegations but not the North Koreans, and there was no meeting of all six delegation heads.\nLate Wednesday, Hill went to the Chinese government guesthouse that was the main venue for the talks and said the North Koreans would be there, too. But he did not say whether they planned to hold further discussions.\nNegotiators agreed to meet again Thursday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.\nEarlier, Hill said the North Koreans would "decide on their own" whether to agree to the draft.\n"They're not going to listen to pressure from me," he said.\n"In a very real sense, (North Korea) really does stand at a crossroads and they can look forward to a brighter future, a more secure future, a more prosperous future. But they really can't do it with nuclear weapons. They've really got to get off that."\nAlthough Hill previously has raised the possibility the talks could take a recess without an agreement, he said Wednesday evening the Americans hadn't yet proposed that to the other five countries.\n"We came here to try to reach an agreement," he said.\nThe talks now have lasted three times longer than any of the three previous rounds.\nThe North has insisted it does not want to give up its nuclear program without receiving something first, while Washington is wary of Pyongyang's promises and instead wants to see the weapons verifiably eliminated before giving any rewards.\nJapanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura, commenting in Tokyo on the talks to a parliamentary committee Wednesday, said disputes were centered on to what extent the North's nuclear program should be dismantled and whether it should retain the right to peaceful use of nuclear technology.\nHill said the draft is "really designed to narrow the differences and maybe, maybe even get to the point where we can really agree on something."\nSong Min-soon, South Korea's representative, said the text includes a clause about normalizing Pyongyang's relations with Washington and Tokyo.\nThe draft "contains items North Korea wants in return for dismantling its nuclear program ... the part about normalizing relations is certainly included," Song said.\n"I expect positive responses," he said, adding the draft "makes every country a winner."\nIn February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons and has since taken steps that would allow it to harvest more plutonium for possible use in bombs. Many experts believe the North already has enough weapons-grade material for about a half-dozen atomic weapons.\nIn its first public statement since the talks began, Pyongyang said Tuesday it wants to narrow differences with the United States but also will not give up its atomic weapons program until Washington withdraws alleged threats.\nU.S. officials said in late 2002 that the North admitted violating a 1994 deal by embarking on a secret uranium enrichment program, sparking the latest nuclear crisis.
(06/12/05 11:54pm)
Beijing -- Forklifts cleaned up mud and silt as rescuers searched through ruins Sunday for 17 students missing after a flash flood swamped a school in northeast China and swept 92 people to their deaths. The flood hit the same day a fire raced through the top floors of a southern hotel and killed 31.\nAuthorities in Beijing were struggling to handle the twin tragedies thousands of miles apart, trying to overcome faulty communications in the flood zone and vowing to dispatch an emergency team of investigators to the hotel fire.\nFriday's flash flood slammed a school in Shalan, a remote town in China's far northeastern province of Heilongjiang, claiming the lives of 88 students and four villagers, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.\nAnother 25 people were hospitalized, it said.\nSome 352 students -- all between 6 and 14 years old -- and 31 teachers were in the school when it was slammed by a torrent of water gushing down a mountain after heavy rains, the agency said.\nTelephone calls were not answered Sunday at the school or city government offices in Shalan.\nThe death toll is likely to rise as authorities searched for 17 more missing students, Xinhua said. It said forklifts were cleaning out mud and silt while dozens of policemen checked the ruins for bodies.\nState television showed vehicles slowly driving through flooded streets and rescue workers in orange jumpsuits shoveling out debris. Footage also showed medics carrying bodies out of the rubble, while children breathed through respirators in a hospital.\nMeanwhile, in China's far south, a fire engulfed the top three floors of a hotel, killing 31 people, state media said.\nThe fire broke out at noon Friday at the Huanan Hotel in Shantou, a city in Guangdong province, and swept through the top stories of the four-story building, the reports said.\nEarly dispatches said five people had died, but rescuers found more bodies when they entered the hotel after putting out the fire, Xinhua said.\nAnother 15 people were injured, four of them seriously, it said.\nIt was unclear how many people were in the hotel at the time of the blaze, which took three hours to extinguish.\nImages on state television showed the neighborhood shrouded in heavy gray smoke, and still photographs showed firefighters removing tanks of cooking gas from the hotel.
(09/21/04 4:46am)
BEIJING -- Hu Jintao became the undisputed leader of China as the country completed its first orderly transfer of power in the communist era Sunday with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin from his top military post -- giving a new generation a freer hand to run the world's most populous nation.\nJiang, whose term was to have run until 2007, resigned at a meeting of the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee that ended Sunday.\nAnalysts did not expect Jiang's exit to affect Beijing's stance on relations with the United States or Taiwan, economic reform or other key issues. Jiang and Hu are not known to have had any major policy disagreements and both support continued capitalist-style reforms and one-party communist rule.\nBut the consolidation of the top party, government and military posts in Hu's hands will allow him and his premier, Wen Jiabao, to act more decisively as the government copes with challenges such as wrenching economic changes and rural poverty.\nHu, 61, replaced Jiang as party leader in late 2002 and as president early the next year. But the 78-year-old Jiang, who led China for 13 years, retained influence by holding onto his military post even as all his contemporaries retired in a long-planned hand over of power to younger leaders.\n"This is a good, positive step because it finally completes the systemic change," said Sin-ming Shaw, a China specialist at Oxford University's Oriel College. "To have someone as chairman of the party and not control the guns is very awkward. This will definitely make things easier."\nA statement by the 198-member Central Committee said the hand over of power was conducive to upholding "the party's absolute leadership over the military," the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said Jiang's resignation showed "his broad-mindedness as a true communist."\nState television devoted its entire evening newscast to the transfer of power, extending the half-hour program by 15 minutes.\nAn anchor read from Jiang's resignation letter, dated Sept. 1, saying he had "always looked forward to complete retirement from leading positions for the good of the long-term development of the cause of the party and the people."\nThere was no immediate indication why Jiang chose to cut short his term. But it might suggest that he felt he had succeeded in ensuring his political legacy -- especially the addition of the pro-capitalist "Three Represents" ideology that he championed to the party's constitution -- and the interests of his family and allies.\nThe ideology, stripped down, invites entrepreneurs into the party, redefining communism and daring critics to point out ideological contradictions.\nThe party spent nearly a decade preparing for the hand over, hoping to avoid the upheavals that have accompanied earlier transfers of power.
(03/03/04 4:25am)
BEIJING -- Communist China is changing its constitution to embrace the most basic tenet of capitalism -- protecting private property rights for the first time since the 1949 revolution.\nChina's parliament is meeting in an annual session starting Friday to endorse the change, already approved by Communist Party leaders who tout privatization as a way to continue the country's economic revolution and help tens of millions of poor Chinese.\nIt will bring China's legal framework in line with its market-oriented ambitions by providing a constitutional guarantee for entrepreneurs, once considered the enemy of communism but now pivotal in generating jobs and wealth.\n"Since private businesses have been playing an increasingly important role in China's economy, their demand for legitimate protection has also increased," said Wang Hongling, of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.\n"The amendment," he said, "will offer private businessmen a guarantee to their property safety and make them free of worry."\nThe very notion would be unthinkable to many of the communist revolutionaries who, led by Mao Zedong, waged war against what they branded an unfair system that punished most people and elevated a greedy elite. The Chinese words for communism -- "gongchan zhuyi" -- literally means "ideology of sharing property."\nBut because the legislature, the National People's Congress, exists mainly to carry out the will of the party leadership, its expected move is considered more of the icing on an already-existing cake rather than anything truly new.\n"It signals a kind of a victory for people who believe that the state should give more respect to private property. Legally speaking, I don't think it'll change much," said Donald C. Clarke, a professor at the University of Washington's School of Law in Seattle.\n"All I think it will affect is the tone of policy-making," he said. "It's another piece of rhetorical ammunition for people who think the state should compensate more."\nThe change mandates "private property obtained legally shall not be violated" and will be "on an equal footing with public property."\nWith time, the law will be adapted to business practices such as trading real estate, stocks or bonds and other activities which are already done in China -- often without legal protections.\nOne benefit for entrepreneurs might be an easier time getting loans from state banks, which now lend almost exclusively to state-run companies. With their private property protected, businesses could use it as collateral to get loans.\n"The recognition means that private enterprises will be given a level playing field in competition with state-owned enterprises," said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at City University of Hong Kong. "How well the policy will be implemented, we'll have to wait and see."\nThe change could also satisfy entrepreneurs who complain foreign businesses in China now have regulations in place to protect their investments. For people like Zhou Wei, a manager at the Aokang Group, China's second-largest shoemaking company, the constitutional amendment is imperative.\n"It protects the confidence of the private businessmen so that they can pursue and create wealth," Zhou said. "As private businessmen, we feel it is a natural progression for the government. It is in the interests of most of the people in China."\nAokang employs over 5,000 people and produces 10 million pairs of shoes a year. It owns 2,000 chain stores in China and has set up branches in the United States, Japan, Italy, Spain and Germany.\nBeijing resident Zhan Wenzhao said the amendment would promote investment.\n"For me, a small homeowner, I am not too excited over the news," Zhan said. But, he added, "It is now clear that, as an owner, I have rights and I will use (the) law to protect myself if my rights are infringed in future."\nAfter the communist revolution, China briefly allowed private enterprise, but it was banned again by the late 1950s. In 1999, the constitution was amended to declare private business an "important component" of the economy, not just a "complement" to state industry.\nThe proposed amendment also pays homage to Jiang Zemin, the former president who invited capitalists into the party. Before retiring, Jiang launched a huge campaign for his awkwardly named ideology, the "three represents," which encouraged the party to represent entrepreneurs, as well as the working class.
(02/26/04 6:33am)
BEIJING -- U.S. and North Korean top envoys held rare, face-to-face talks Wednesday on the sidelines of six-nation negotiations on the North's nuclear program, in which South Korea offered the North compensation to abandon its atomic weapons ambitions.\nMeetings closed on their first day with an agreement that the Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia would continue talking after the current round is done -- a tacit admission that more work will probably be needed.\nDespite an outwardly amiable atmosphere, the tensions of the moment -- and the 16-month standoff between the United States and the North that led to it -- were clear. While Washington, D.C. insists the communist North dismantle its nuclear program, the North says it first wants economic and humanitarian aid and assurances that America won't attack.\nThe North's chief delegate, Kim Kye Gwan, said Wednesday he would be "maintaining our principles" hours after his country issued a last-minute demand for compensation for shutting down the program.\nDemanding compensation is a common maneuver for the North, which often announces hard-line positions and sometimes uses threats to pressure negotiating partners.\nWashington, D.C.'s delegate said nothing but a wholesale elimination of the nuclear activities would do, while also reiterating that the United States has "no intention" of invading the reclusive, communist North.\n"The United States seeks complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all North Korea's nuclear programs, both plutonium and uranium," Assistant U.S. Secretary of State James Kelly said in opening remarks.\nLater, Kelly spent more than an hour in the Diaoyutai state guesthouse, where the North Korean delegation was located, said China's official Xinhua News Agency, quoting Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.\nNo details from the unusual high-level contact were immediately available from either side. North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations and technically remain in a state of war interrupted by a 51-year armistice. Most of their diplomatic contacts are indirect.\nLiu Jianchao, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said Wednesday's talks were "sincere, frank and pragmatic" but suggested more meetings would be necessary after this round.\n"The six parties affirmed solving the nuclear question through peaceful means. Whatever questions or difficulties arise, the talks process should be continued," Liu said.\nOne option would be "working-level" talks among lower level officials, he said. An ending date for the meeting hasn't been set, though the first round, in August, lasted three days.\nLiu reiterated China's desire for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, but said North Korea's security concerns also need to be addressed -- a reference to Pyongyang's demand for guarantees the United States won't invade.\nAt issue are allegations that Pyongyang has a uranium-based weapons program as well as its known plutonium-based one. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's government has denied having a uranium-based program.\nThe dispute erupted in October 2002 when Washington, D.C. said Pyongyang acknowledged the existence of a nuclear program that violated a 1994 agreement binding the impoverished country to renounce nuclear development in exchange for oil and other aid.\nThe current round of talks convened after months of efforts to get all six countries on board. Both rounds have been brokered by Beijing -- North Korea's last major communist ally and an important economic partner of the United States.\nAfter Wednesday's session, South Korea said it had proposed "countermeasures" if the North froze its nuclear program and showed signs of dismantling it. Seoul's head delegate, Lee Soo-hyuck, said he presented the proposal during the opening session.\n"If it is such a freeze, we can push for countermeasures," Lee told reporters, using a term that is believed to refer to compensation for the North's giving up its nuclear ambitions.\nHe didn't elaborate, and it was unclear whether the United States had directly endorsed the proposal.\nLast week, South Korean officials said Seoul was ready to resume energy aid to its communist neighbor after the dispute is resolved and the North dismantles its nuclear programs.\nLee said he had told North Korea that its freeze must cover all nuclear programs and be followed "in a short period of time" by steps toward a complete and verifiable dismantling of nuclear capabilities.\n"A nuclear freeze should be an inseparable part of nuclear dismantlement. A nuclear freeze itself is not the goal. Dismantlement must be the goal," Lee said. He called on the North to address the uranium allegations.\nThe New York Times reported that the North will be offered fuel oil aid in return for a pledge to freeze and eventually dismantle its program. It said the offer was expected to be made by South Korea, not the United States, at the talks. It was unclear if that was the same as the offer disclosed by Lee.\nA senior administration official in Washington, D.C. refused to tell The Associated Press if an informal agreement had been made but said some U.S. allies have indicated a willingness to offer North Korea incentives.\nThe North also wants a nonaggression treaty with the United States, but Kelly said it had nothing to worry about.\n"The United States has no intention of invading or attacking the DPRK," he said, using the initials for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
(02/06/04 3:34am)
BEIJING -- At least 37 people were killed and 15 others injured Thursday when a crowd stampeded during a holiday gathering outside the Chinese capital on the final day of the country's Lunar New Year celebrations, the government said.\nOfficials, including President Hu Jintao, expressed "deep concern" and ordered an investigation. The mayor of Beijing was on at scene supervising.\n"This is a very serious incident," said Wu Kun, a spokesman for the Beijing city government. "There could even be more people dead. It's still a very confusing scene up there."\nThe official Xinhua News Agency reported the accident happened in Miyun County, an extreme northern suburb of Beijing. Wu said it occurred at 7:45 p.m. in a popular gathering spot called Mihong Park near the town of Miyun when someone tripped in a crowded area, causing a chain reaction.\n"One person fell down on a grate in the park and caused many people to fall down. There was a stampede," Wu said. "It was a lot of people. I'm not sure how many. These things are packed," he told The Associated Press early today.\n"All of the tourists in the lantern exhibition have departed safely," he said.\nBeijing Mayor Liu Qi, a member of the Communist Party's Politburo, went to the scene, and Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao ordered local authorities to find out how the accident happened and "to try their best to save the injured and make suitable arrangement for the families of the dead."\nThe Lantern Festival is a celebration that marks the last night of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration.\nMiyun County is about 45 miles north of central Beijing and is the site of Miyun Reservoir, one of the largest reservoirs in China and a key water supply for the Chinese capital. It is technically within the administrative limits of Beijing, a large district that includes the city and surrounding areas.\nChinese have been celebrating Lunar New Year since Jan. 22, and Thursday night was the final night -- a nationwide celebration of lanterns and lights.\nScores of Chinese have been killed in car accidents across the country during the festivities as hundreds of millions travel to ancestral homes and back to cities.
(05/21/03 10:18pm)
BEIJING -- Police in Taiwan went house-to-house and enforced SARS quarantines Wednesday, while railway authorities in China installed thermal scanners at some train stations to check passengers for fevers and keep the disease from spreading over their vast rail networks.\n"The infectious outbreak is our call to arms. Time is lives," said a front-page article in the newspaper Beijing Daily.\nThe number of deaths worldwide from the flu-like disease rose Wednesday to at least 588. Eight new SARS deaths were reported in east Asia -- five in Beijing, two in Hong Kong and one in Taiwan.\nThe regions with the worst SARS outbreaks showed signs of optimism. China announced Wednesday its lowest one-day increase in new SARS cases in weeks: 55, raising its total to 5,124. Health officials are trying to prevent a new surge of the disease in China's poor countryside.\nIn Hong Kong -- which reported nine new infections, its 11th straight day of single-digit increases -- scientists credited quarantines for breaking the chain of transmission. University of Hong Kong researchers say the territory's outbreak is losing momentum and should dwindle by June or July and die out by October.\nBut Taiwan faced a worsening outbreak, and Singapore -- which hoped to deem itself SARS-free as early as this week -- may have suffered a setback amid reports of a possible outbreak at its largest mental health facility, officials said. The Institute of Mental Health was sealed off and all 1,800 patients and 1,600 workers quarantined after 37 people there began showing symptoms Friday. Officials hoped to be able to confirm Wednesday whether the new patients had SARS, but the results were "inconclusive," said Esther Wong, a health ministry spokeswoman. The city-state, where 28 have died, last reported a confirmed new case on April 27 -- and it was closing in on reaching the 20-day period with no new infections needed for the World Health Organization to declare its outbreak under control.\nMeanwhile, the United Nations' labor agency gave a sense of some of the likely economic damage from the SARS outbreak. The International Labor Organization predicted that a drop in international travel caused by SARS fears, combined with the economic downturn, could lead to 5 million job losses in the global tourism sector this year.\nHong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam, all sites of SARS outbreaks, are likely to lose more than 30 percent of their travel and tourism jobs, the ILO reported. The predicted losses would bring to 11.5 million the number of tourism jobs cut around the world since the Sept. 11 attacks sent the industry into a downward spiral. "That means a loss of one of every seven jobs in travel and tourism since 2001, with no end in sight," the ILO said.\nIn Beijing, the city government said Wednesday its economic losses were estimated at $54 million in the first four months of this year, with arrivals of foreign visitors down some 60 percent.\nIn North America, actor-comedian Mike Myers, a Canadian, issued a plea for American tourists to visit Toronto. The WHO lifted its travel warning against Toronto on April 30. "You're more than welcome to come, and it's completely safe. I just want us all to support Canada," Myers, star of the "Austin Powers" movies, said Monday night on NBC's Tonight Show.\nMore than 7,500 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome have been reported worldwide.\nTaiwan has had 31 deaths out of 238 cases, suffering the worst outbreak outside of mainland China and Hong Kong. With two hospitals in the capital Taipei already closed because of the virus, a third -- the National Taiwan University Hospital -- announced Wednesday that 250 members of its staff would have to go into quarantine after 16 employees and patients showed symptoms, such as coughing and high fever. "So many nurses are unable to work now that our emergency ward will remain closed until May 26," hospital spokesman Chen Ming-feng said.\nTrain passengers in Taiwan have been ordered to wear masks or else be fined more than $170.\nThe more than 10,000 Taiwanese under quarantine also face fines of up to $8,600 if they leave their homes. Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou said police would conduct house-to-house checks to make sure people obeyed orders to stay put. Authorities will also phone those under quarantine between 8 p.m. and midnight "because we are afraid that some people will go out at night," Ma said.\nBeijing has been reporting a steady decline in new SARS cases, though the WHO says it is too early to say the peak of the Chinese capital's epidemic has passed. Among Beijing's new deaths was Ding Xiulan, the deputy chief of the emergency room at People's Hospital at Peking University, government newspapers said. The government promptly declared her a "warrior in white."\nWHO investigators arrived Wednesday in the central province of Henan to assess the impact of SARS on people with AIDS, said Mangai Balasegaram, a WHO spokeswoman. Thousands of villagers in Henan were infected with HIV through unhygienic blood-selling operations.
(03/27/03 4:18am)
BEIJING -- The World Health Organization for the first time has linked a pneumonia outbreak in China to a mystery flu-like illness that has hit other countries on three continents. The global death toll from the combined outbreaks climbed to 52 on Wednesday.\nChinese authorities said the disease has killed at least 34 people in China since November. Hundreds have been infected. Previously, they said only five had died in southern Guangdong province.\nWorld health officials later said the symptoms of the Chinese illness are consistent with those for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 18 elsewhere.\nA second person suspected of having the disease died in Singapore late Wednesday, officials said, and all schools were ordered to close as a health precaution. More than 700 people in the city-state have been ordered to stay home under quarantine or face fines.\n"Everything we've seen so far indicates it's the same disease," said Dr. Meirion Evans, a member of a WHO team that has studied the cases in southern China, but not yet those in Beijing.\n"We're getting a more complete picture," Evans told The Associated Press. "It's certainly been one of the objectives of the mission to clarify whether the outbreak in China was the same disease as what's been seen outside of China.\n"It's not good news for the patients, but it's helpful in our understanding of the disease."\nThe WHO has called on Beijing to be more cooperative.\nTaiwan also urged China on Wednesday to be more forthcoming.\n"Because the mainland is not sharing information, the source of the contagion has not been clear and the period of risk for the outbreak has been lengthened," said a report from Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, which handles the island's relations with rival China. "This hasn't helped us protect ourselves from an epidemic."\nSingapore's closure of schools, from daycare centers to junior colleges, will keep a half-million students temporarily out of class.\n"On purely medical grounds, there are currently no strong reasons for closing all schools," said Teo Chee Hean, Singapore's education minister.\n"However, principals and general practitioners have reported that parents continue to be concerned about the risk to their children in schools."\nIn Hong Kong, where numerous citizens are going about town in masks, media reported that about 60 schools have been closed as a precaution.\nThe Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau would confirm only five closures but officials acknowledged some schools were closing at their own initiative.\nHealth officials said Tuesday they had quarantined about two dozen possible carriers of SARS in Canada after the number of probable cases in Ontario jumped from 10 to 18.\nThe disease is believed to have spread to Singapore, Vietnam and Canada by people who caught it while spending time last month on the ninth floor of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong, where an infected mainland Chinese medical professor was a guest.\nThe South China Morning Post in Hong Kong reported early Wednesday that the professor had been treating atypical pneumonia patients in the mainland before he came to Hong Kong. The professor died here in early March.\nChinese officials said previously that 305 people were sickened in the atypical pneumonia outbreak.\nA spokeswoman for the Guangzhou city government, who identified herself only by the surname Ye, said Wednesday that 792 cases of atypical pneumonia were reported in the province by the end of February, with 680 in the capital Guangzhou.\nYe said 31 people in Guangdong had died by the end of February. Three others died in Beijing this month, the city said Wednesday.\nHoping to avoid any SARS cases in the Philippines, officials in Manila on Wednesday urged travelers from countries hit by the disease to stay at home for a week in voluntary quarantine. Foreign Secretary Blas Ople also cautioned Filipinos to limit travel to countries with known cases of SARS.\nTens of thousands of Filipinos work in Hong Kong and Singapore, many as domestic helpers.\nPhilippine officials also convinced the parents of a Filipina maid, Adela Dalingay, who is believed to have died of SARS this week in Hong Kong, to have her remains cremated to avoid difficulties of transporting the body home, Ople said. No official cause of her death has been given.
(02/27/03 4:30am)
KASHGAR, China -- Hundreds of aftershocks rocked western China Tuesday, claiming more lives a day after a major earthquake crumpled thousands of homes and schools. The death toll rose to at least 266 people, with another 2,000 injured, state media reported.\nThe latest deaths included rescue workers who were struck by debris as they pulled victims from the rubble during aftershocks, and residents who succumbed to their injuries from Monday's powerful earthquake, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.\nChinese officials put the magnitude of Monday's quake at 6.8, while the U.S. Geological Survey recorded it at 6.3.\nMore than 500 aftershocks jolted the area overnight, including one before dawn that registered magnitude 5, Xinhua said. Aftershocks could be felt as far away as Kashgar, about 180 miles from the hardest-hit part of the remote region.\n"I felt about three and they lasted for a minute each. Everything was shaking," said Kashgar resident Ani Abdul.\nThe disaster zone stretched through an isolated western section of the Xinjiang region near China's mountainous border with Kyrgyzstan. Xinhua said nearly 9,000 houses and hundreds of other buildings were destroyed.\nAbout 600 of the injured were hospitalized in serious condition, officials said.\nRescuers dug through debris by hand on Tuesday, fearing that heavy equipment could further injure survivors, said a volunteer in the hardest-hit village, Chongku Qiake. Officials said 90 percent of that town's 30,000 people were forced to leave damaged homes.\nThe government sent 9,000 tents to the disaster zone, but there was no immediate figure on how many people were left homeless in the subfreezing temperatures.\nAlmost all the dead were in Bachu County, where flimsy building construction seemed to have contributed to the death toll, officials said. The neighboring county of Jiashi was closer to the epicenter but suffered little damage; its homes have been reinforced following severe quakes in recent years.\nRelief supplies and rescue teams with search dogs began arriving early Tuesday from Beijing, about 1,750 miles to the east. People in the regional capital of Urumqi donated clothing and supplies. Businesses in Xinjiang collected $300,000 for relief.\nSome of those killed were children whose schools collapsed in the tremors. Xinhua said 900 classrooms were wrecked. Officials said at least 12 students died.\nPhotos in state newspapers Tuesday showed residents bundled against the winter cold standing in the street alongside salvaged belongings. A wrecked schoolhouse was shown with one cracked brick wall left standing, displaying tattered posters of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong.\nEarthquakes are common in Xinjiang, especially its far west, which includes the foothills of the Pamir and Tianshan mountains.\nXu Jing, who moved to Kashgar from Jiashi in 1997, said aftershocks woke him twice overnight. "I'm used to it," he said.\nThe Communist Party leader for Xinjiang, the deputy secretary of China's Cabinet and the deputy minister of civil affairs were at the scene supervising rescue work, state television said.\nThe Greek government announced it would send $215,000 in emergency aid. The China Daily newspaper said the Chinese and Xinjiang Red Cross societies sent winter clothes, quilts and other aid worth $55,000.\nForeign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said China was "very grateful," for humanitarian aid and expressions of condolence from foreign governments.\nChina's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan July 28, 1976, killing some 240,000 people. Its magnitude was measured at 7.8 to 8.2.
(02/11/03 4:49am)
BEIJING -- A U.S.-based Chinese dissident was convicted Monday and sentenced to life in prison on charges of spying and terrorism, ending a bizarre saga that involved allegations of cross-border kidnapping and hostages found tied up in a temple.\nOutraged activists rejected the charges against Wang Bingzhang as false and politically motivated.\nWang, 55, was arrested after police said they found him July 3 bound in a temple in a southern province while investigating a kidnapping case. Pro-democracy activists suggest he was abducted in Vietnam by Chinese agents after meeting with Chinese labor activists in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.\nWang, who has permanent residency status in the United States, was convicted of spying for Taiwan between 1982 and 1990 and of setting up a terrorist group, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It said he ordered an unspecified assassination in 1999 and plotted to blow up China's embassy in Thailand.\nThe report was the first time the communist government publicly accused Wang of links to specific terrorist acts, but gave no evidence to support the charges and didn't indicate whether any attacks were carried out.\nWang's parents faxed a statement to The Associated Press in Beijing accusing Chinese authorities of "illegal abduction and illegal interrogation."\n"All people of conscience will feel furious," said the statement, signed by his father and mother, Wang Junzhen and Wang Guifang. "The world is fighting terrorism, but the Chinese government is making terrorism."\nWang, a Chinese citizen, has lived abroad since 1979, first in Canada and then the United States. In the 1980s, while living in New York, he published a pro-democracy journal, China Spring. He slipped back into China without permission in 1998 in hopes of organizing an opposition party, but was caught and deported.\nXinhua said Wang was accused of using his 1998 visit to set up a terrorist group. It said he told one man to carry out explosions and an assassination in 1999 on China's National Day holiday, which is Oct. 1. The report said he told Taiwanese authorities that he had stockpiled explosives on the mainland to blow up roads and bridges.\n"The charges that have been leveled against him ... are trumped up and have no relation to reality," said Timothy Cooper, international director for the Free China Movement, an activist group in Washington. The group appealed to the U.S. government to "exert all its influence" to win Wang's release.\nChina's Foreign Ministry said Wang's case was "tried according to the law."\n"Any person who commits crimes will be punished by the law," the ministry said.\nThe U.S. Embassy in Beijing and Taiwanese authorities said they had no immediate comment.\nAsked about the alleged plot to blow up China's embassy in Thailand, a Thai anti-terrorism official, police Maj. Gen. Tritos Ronnaritwichai, said police there were never asked for information about Wang.\nHe added Wang had visited Thailand as a tourist, and police had monitored him as a "high-profile person."\nTaiwan and China have been ruled separately since separating amid civil war in 1949, though the Beijing government claims the island as its territory.\nBoth sides are believed to spy actively on each other. Several Chinese-born academics with ties to the United States were arrested in 2001-02 on charges of spying for Taiwan. They were convicted and expelled from China.\nIn Hong Kong, activists tried to leave a letter protesting Wang's conviction at the central Chinese government's liaison office but were blocked by about 50 police who surrounded the building, according to a member of the group. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but is still governed separately.\nThe group of about 10 activists scuffled briefly with police, said activist Lau San-ching. He said they burned the protest letter after being blocked from delivering it.\nWang was visiting Hanoi with two other dissidents when they were reported missing in June. It was not immediately clear where he was living in the United States at the time of the trip.\nChinese authorities said they found all three in southern China's Guangxi region, which borders Vietnam, while they were investigating a kidnapping case. Wang was apparently taken to Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, where he was formally charged on Dec. 5.\nThe Chinese government has said the other two dissidents -- Yue Wu and Zhang Qi -- were cleared of involvement in Wang's activities. Xinhua had earlier said that Wang's trial was closed because it involved state secrets.\nWang was a medical student in China when he started speaking out against the communist government and was jailed twice.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
BEIJING -- Roll away, "Sorcerer's Stone''! Step aside, "Prisoner of Azkaban''! Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon are here! \nChinese fans of the British boy wizard with the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead are snapping up the fifth book in the wildly popular series. \nThere's just one problem. It's fake -- written by a Chinese author for a Chinese audience. \nThe 198-page book -- titled "Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon" after its mysterious villain -- has the name and bio of British author J.K. Rowling on its cover. But the tale in which Harry turns into a hairy dwarf after a "sour-sweet rain" is the unauthorized work of an anonymous author. \n"We have not found who wrote the book or where they come from," said Zhang Deguang of the People's Literature Publishing House, which has the series' publishing rights in China. "It's made a negative impact on our book sales."\nRowling is at work on the real fifth installment, which is not expected to be finished this year.\nRowling's agent, the Christopher Little Literary Agency in London, said it was aware of the fake Chinese Harry. A spokeswoman who asked not to be identified refused to comment by telephone, but sent The Associated Press an e-mail saying, "We are taking this issue extremely seriously." \nIt was unclear what punishment the fake author could face, given the uniqueness of the situation. However, China's government has promised repeatedly to crack down on counterfeiters and intellectual property theft. Still, flocks of hawkers selling fake DVDs were plying their trade unpunished Friday in central Beijing, in full view of police. \nHarry Potter -- "Ha-li Bo-te" in Mandarin -- has had authorized translations into 18 languages. \nA movie made from the first book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," ranked No. 7 on the all-time box office list in the United States, taking in $317 million. In China, unauthorized copies were being sold by DVD peddlers on the street four days after it opened in the United States and Britain. \nPublication in 2000 of the genuine Harry Potter -- a boxed set of the four books to date -- was a major literary event in China. \nA team of four translators, veterans who had rendered "Alice in Wonderland" and "Tom Sawyer" into Chinese, drew on China's own tales of ghosts, magic and kung fu for language to portray Harry's world of sorcery. \nThe first printing was 600,000 copies, which the publisher said was the biggest of its kind ever in China for a commercial work. \nZhang said the People's Literature Publishing House has found copies of the unauthorized Harry in wholesale markets and private bookstores throughout Beijing. \nMost booksellers visited by reporters on Friday denied having copies. They said police threatened to fine them 10 times the $2.80 price if any copies were found. \n"The fifth one hasn't been published!" yelled one merchant at a wholesale warehouse. \nA shopkeeper in western Beijing sold a copy for $1.20, pulling it from a hiding place behind a stack of books. \nThe cover of "Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon" shows a dark-haired, bespectacled boy in black robes riding a satyr battling a dragon.\nThe story centers around a struggle between Harry and his classmates at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and a mysterious wizard. \nCharacters well-known to fans of Rowling's series make an appearance -- the Dursleys, Harry's friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasely and his archrival, Draco Malfoy. \nA cartoon sketch begins each chapter, as in the original. Among their quirky names is, "The Dance of the Spider and the Fly." \nFor all that, true Harry Potter fans won't be fooled for long. Rowling's imitator just doesn't have her touch. Consider the opening paragraph: \n"Harry is wondering in his bath how long it will take to wash away the creamy cake from his face. To a grown-up, handsome young man, it is disgusting to have filthy dirt on his body. Lying in a luxurious bathtub and rubbing his face with his hands, he thinks about Dudley's face, which is as fat as Aunt Petunia's bottom"
