News Media China

China's Communist Party responded quickly Wednesday to radical changes in the Soviet Union by warning its opponents that taking a similar path in China would set off civil war. "In China, without the strong leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, new turmoil and wars would surely arise, the nation would be split and the people, not to mention state construction, would suffer," the party said in an editorial in the party newspaper People's Daily.

China's state-controlled media must show more openness and air public discontent over official corruption and incompetence, the People's Daily on Saturday quoted leading officials as saying. The Chinese press reflects the views of the Communist Party and government too much and public opinion too little, the newspaper quoted Wang Houde, deputy general secretary of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, as saying.

Hoping to deliver forbidden news to a China muted by censorship, the L.A. Weekly has joined in an international press campaign that is trying to break through government restrictions by sending bogus copies of the official Communist newspaper via the fax machine to support the pro-democracy movement. A spokeswoman for the L.A. Weekly said the Nov. 9 issue will contain excerpts from what appears to be the Communist newspaper People's Daily, the Chinese government's official publication.

Mindful that millions of Chinese protested for democratic reform only five months ago, the Chinese media have been careful in reporting the dramatic political changes in East Germany. The media have reported some of the developments in East Germany without suggesting the reasons behind them. They have not reported on the mass exodus of East Germans to the West, or on crowds chipping away at the Berlin Wall with hand tools.

China's Communist Party, amid signs that reformist leaders are winning a struggle with hard-liners, has asked the press to devote more space to reform and less to attacks on capitalist trends, an official news report said Saturday. The dispatch by the China News Service was the first official comment on what foreign and Chinese observers have seen as a recent change in the tone of newspaper editorials following five months of bitter criticism of Western trends.

A group of more than 400 Chinese students burned copies of Peking's main local Communist Party newspaper Monday to display their unhappiness with the press coverage given to their recent demonstrations for democracy. In a midday protest on the campus of Peking University, students put the torch to scores of copies of the Peking Daily, which is put out by the municipal party committee.

China's official media Friday published calls for punishment of "enemies" who led a New Year's Day pro-democracy demonstration, and accused the Voice of America of countering government efforts to end student unrest. But students at Peking University, the main participants in illegal, daylong protests that ended before dawn Friday, put up a wallposter accusing China's leaders of failing to understand the nation's youth.

China imposed strict new curbs on the press Wednesday, creating a high-level organization to control all aspects of news and publishing operations throughout the country. The official New China News Agency said that an office to be known as the Media and Publications Office is being set up directly under the State Council, China's version of a presidential cabinet. This office will have responsibility for approving all new newspapers, magazines and publishing houses in China.

State security officials arrested a university student for "providing intelligence" to a foreign correspondent based in Peking, China said Sunday. The student, Lin Jie of Tianjin University, was accused of "secret collusion" with Lawrence MacDonald, an American reporter working for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency. MacDonald, 32, of San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Illegal wallposters reappeared Sunday at Peking University urging Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to respond to appeals for democracy and asking students to burn the Peking Daily newspaper for inaccurate reporting. Witnesses said there were at least three posters at the elite college, including a four-page open letter to Deng. Officials had ripped down all but one poster Saturday. "We have to write to you (Deng) because there are no other channels of expression left.