World

Demonstration.| Summit opens possibilities
throughout Asian continent

at 2 million
in Tiananmen

This report, prepared by People’s Daily World Moscow
correspondent Carl Bloice, was filed during the Sino-
Soviet summit and appeared in the World May 19.

By CARL BLOICE

BEIJ ING — In the beginning, few responded to the
passing parade. But by the time a million people dem-
onstrated on May 19, many onlookers were waving aiid
shaping their outstretched fingers into a victory V. By
the following day, the demonstration had swelled to
two million, and the rain-soaked streets were lined with
cheering adults and children.

At first the students chanted somewhat general
slogans — mostly insisting on talks with government
and Communist Party officials. But as other Beijing
residents began to join the action, attention became
focused on the demand that the political leaders come
to Tiananmen Square and talk directly to the now
thousands of hunger strikers.

The most essential student
complaint appears to be that
political reforms have not kept
pace with the economic reforms
begun 10 years ago, and that the
reform process, known as the
Four Modernizations, is being
stymied. The demonstrators
also demanded more demo-
cracy inside the Communist
Party.

The protesters’ emphasis on
the call for the resignation of
Deng Xiaoping, China’s senior
leader, lent more credence to
reports claiming that behind the
events of the past two months
WEIS Political forces seeking
Deng’s removals as “helms-
man” of the country.

That drama, played at first
Be closed curtains, seems to

ave moved to centre stage. On
Tuesday, it was publicly sled DENG XIAOPING
that Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang
had let visiting Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in
on the fact that Deng is still behind all important deci-
sions, despite the fact that in 1987 Deng had voluntarily
stepped down from all party posts, including member-
ship on the Central Committee.

Why Zhao made this curiously timed revelation is
not clear. The public reaction to it, however, is quite
clear and no doubt accounts at least in part for the
ballooning of the demonstration. People have
expressed anger that Deng’s influential role had been
hidden from them. In addition, the revelation has fueled
the students’ insistence on eliminating what they con-
sider informal undemocratic leadership practices as
part of political reform.

Only five years ago, when economic reforms encoun-
tered bureaucratic resistance, students took to the
streets here hailing Deng as a champion of change.
What happened in the meantime? “He put himself
above the party, as Mao did during his later years,” one
party functionary said.

Inan unusual move, at midnight May 16, Zhao issued

a statement on behalf of the top party leadership, calling .

on the students to end their hunger strike and promising
no reprisals. He praised the students for their patriotism
and appealed to them to “take the interest of the whole
country into account and safeguard stability and
unity.”

On May 17, Prime Minister Li Peng and five members
of the Standing Commission of the Party Politbureau
visited some of the more than 2,000 hunger strikers who
were hospitalized. A student leader told Li that the
students realize reforms will take time and that solving
problems for a country that large is such a tremendous
task that it can only be accomplished under the leader-
ship of the Communist Party, which must mobilize the
people. However, he said, the students insist that some
things can be done immediately, such as ending wides-
pread corruption that extends into high places and
talking directly with the demonstrators.

By VLADIMIR MYASNIKOV

A curious situation evolved on
the eve of Mikhail Gorbachev’s
arrival for the first Sino-Soviet
summit in 30 years. According to
the official schedule, Gorbachev
was to arrive in Shanghai on the
same day that American destroy-
ers were to lower anchor in
Shanghai harbour.

A thousand-plus international
reporters, starving for information
about Beijing, jumped at the
chance of a sensation. According
to some, the USSR-China-USA
“triangle” was embarking on a
new political power game. True,
the reporters disagreed on whether
the Chinese were playing the
“American card” against the Rus-
sians, or the “Russian card”
against the Americans.

But Professor He Fang, deputy
director-general of the China Cen-
tre for International Studies, brush-
ed aside these notions. ‘‘The
destroyer story is sheer coinci-
dence,” he said. “Their schedule
was set a long, long time ago. In my
view, now that Soviet-American
relations are improving, the role of
the ‘big triangle’ is beginning to
decline.”

Normalization of Sino-Soviet
relations will exert a positive influ-
ence on all levels of international
relations. The Soviet Union has
stepped up its political dialogue
with India and China, Japan and
the Philippines, People’s Demo-
cratic Republic of Korea and Indo-
chinese nations, Iran and the
ASEAN countries. The main aim
of this exchange is to create an
atmosphere of confidence and
good neighbourly relations.

It should be recalled that the
USSR and China are the only two
nuclear powers to have taken a
nuclear no-first-use pledge, advo-
cating complete destruction of
these weapons. Both states support
the Treaty on a Nuclear-Free Zone
in the South Pacific, and proposals
for such zones in South East Asia
and the Korean Peninsula.

The anti-nuclear potential of the
Sino-Soviet summit is stronger
because both countries oppose an
arms race in space and foreign mil-
itary bases in Asia. These positions
are welcomed by many Asian
countries, especially socialist and
non-aligned nations, including such
a great power as India. But we
must remember that Japan does
not back the idea of denuclearized
zones and has joined the U.S. Stra-
tegic Defence Initiative program.

Regional conflict is a central
problem in Asia and the Pacific, as
in world politics as a whole. China
described such conflicts as “‘obsta-
cles” in the way of improving Sino-
Soviet relations, and expressed its
intention to discuss them. Soviet
troops have already been with-
drawn from Afghanistan, and
Vietnamese troops will have been
pulled out of Kampuchea by Sep-
tember. Sino-Soviet relations have
already amassed useful experience
in this field with the Kampuchean
problem.

This experience may be useful
also in the international search for
a peaceful settlement on the
Korean peninsula. Both the Soviet
Union and China support the

Mikhail, Raisa Gorbachev with Deng Xaioping at Sino-Soviet summit

meeting in Beijing.
proposals of the People’s Demo-
cratic Republic of Korea for peace-
ful unification of Korea.

Reduction in the level of conven-
tional arms, particularly naval
weapons is an important problem
for Asia and the Pacific. The Soviet
Union has advanced a package of
initiatives in the naval sphere, and
also taken concrete steps, some of
them unilaterally.

Important elements are cuts by
China of its armed forces, an
agreement by the two states on

_confidence measures in the military

sphere, and steps to ease military
‘The epoch of
triangles and
political power
games is over. A
polygon with an
infinite number of
sides is likely to
become the fashion
in political relations.’

confrontation along the Sino-
Soviet frontier — all achieved dur-
ing preparations for Mikhail Gor-
bachev’s visit to Beijing. The
reduction by the USSR of its
troops in the eastern and southern -
parts of the country by 200,000 and
60,000 respectively, the withdrawal
of Soviet troops from Mongolia,
which is already underway, and a
new defensive structure of Soviet
military units deployed along the
Sino-Soviet frontier are also part of
this reduction. The Peoples’ Demo-
cratic Republic of Korea has fol-
lowed suit and, probably, other
Asian and Pacific nations will con-
sider it timely to do the same.
Finally, talking about security in
Asia and the Pacific, we should not
forget the enormous package of
economic problems. The Beijing

summit shows that the period of
military-political power politics in
Asia has come to an end, that it is

‘time to proceed to economic, cul-

tural, ecological, and demographic
categories in working out foreign
policy programs. This in turn sug-
gests the need to ensure the eco-
nomic security of the region’s
countries.

What does economic security
imply? It means the development
of a whole package of economic,
scientific, technical, and business
ties between the East and the West,
the North and the South on the
basis of equality and justice, the
development of a careful attitude
to tradition, and — simultaneously
— the advance of integration.

Today the economic situation in
Asia and the Pacific is undergoing
great change. Japan has become
the world’s second economic
power. Rapid industrialization is
going on in other countries, and
their example has a great appeal
for their neighbours. The old mod-
els of economic relations must be
replaced with new ones. The world
can no longer be divided into
industrialized countries and those
from which they get raw materials,
and to which they take ecologically
harmful businesses.

A Gorbachev advisor in Beijing
agreed that the epoch of “trian-
gles” and political power games is
over. “A polygon with an unlim-
ited number of sides is likely to
become the latest fashion soon,”
he told me. This expert favours
pooling the research capabilities of
the whole region, to find solutions
to its common problems — the
dying environment, natural cala-
mities, piracy, terrorism, drug
abuse and AIDS. Prosperity and
security need the internationaliza-
tion of efforts.

And reporters also learned that
the arrival of the American des-
troyers in Shanghai was postponed
until May 19, after Gorbachev had
left China.

Vladimir Myasnikov is deputy
director of the Institute of the Far
East, USSR Academy of Sciences.

Pacific Tribune, June 5, 1989 « 9