China Territories And Possessions

Premier Li Peng said Wednesday that China's Communist leadership is united and capable of defeating any threat to its rule, an apparent allusion to last year's huge pro-democracy protests. "The core of leadership in China, with General Secretary Jiang Zemin as the nucleus, is united, it is strong and I believe that it commands the support of the Chinese people," Li told a press conference at the Great Hall of the People.

Thousands of Tibetans have been beaten, tortured and imprisoned since demonstrations by civilians and monks against Chinese rule were crushed two years ago, according to a report released in Boston by the Physicians for Human Rights. The crackdown has been so widespread that there may be few people in Lhasa, the region's capital, who have not had a relative or friend detained, it said. The report is based on interviews by two Americans with several dozen Tibetan exiles in India.

More than 40% of Macao's 500,000 residents lack confidence in the territory's future after 1999, when China regains control of the enclave from Portugal, a survey showed Friday. In the first such survey in the 6-square-mile Portuguese colony on the South China coast, 507 Macao residents were interviewed in August by the Portuguese news agency LUSA with a Hong Kong research firm.

The young Tibetan, an actor turned street vendor, was not surprised in the least when he heard about the Chinese army's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in June. A year earlier, he said, soldiers of that same army broke his right leg, cracked open his forehead with an electric cattle prod and beat him senseless every day for a month after he was caught taking part in pro-independence demonstrations in Tibet, which Chinese troops occupied in 1950.

For China, last week's pro-independence rioting and imposition of martial law in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa underscored the possibility that a deal with the exiled Dalai Lama may be the only solution to Beijing's intractable Tibet problem. For nearly 40 years, Tibetan resentment has smoldered since the Chinese assumed firm control of the region.

Shining flashlights into the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles and singing the Tibetan national anthem, about 75 Tibetans and supporters joined Friday evening to protest human rights violations in their homeland on the 30th anniversary of an abortive uprising against Communist rule. Even though consular officials had left for the day, "the world people are watching," said Geshe Gyeltsen, a Buddhist teacher who led prayers for world peace.

A massive military and police presence, together with clear warnings that demonstrations would be crushed, brought an enforced calm to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on Friday. A string of 72 vehicles carrying more than 1,200 troops drove through the streets of Lhasa in the morning in a show of force, according to the official China News Service. The report said the convoy included 42 military trucks, 10 vehicles with "automatic rocket guns" and 20 command cars.

Virtually all foreigners were expelled from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on Thursday as about 60,000 troops and police intensified a martial-law crackdown against pro-independence protesters. "Soldiers are all over the place and they're grabbing everyone," said a frightened Tibetan woman who spoke by telephone with an Associated Press reporter in Beijing.