ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 20, 1997 TAG: 9702200030
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: DAVID L. MARCUS\THE BOSTON GLOBE
While US officials predicted the death of China's elder statesman Deng Xiaoping will not change China's policies at home or abroad, dissidents Wednesday said they fear a crackdown by hard-liners.
Clinton administration officials said Communist Party Chief and state president Jiang Zemin will likely continue the country's tough stance against Taiwan and Hong Kong, which China will take over in five months. But the officials stressed that they don't expect an end to China's economic opening.
``There will be no immediate impact,'' said a Clinton official who watches China closely. ``I don't think you can underestimate the Chinese army's investment in keeping the status quo. The army owns hundreds of factories there, and they have a huge stake in making sure that those keep running.''
Deng's death did not come as a surprise to Clinton's foreign policy advisers, who have been following his reports of his failing health for years. In recent weeks, they have even joked quietly about the possibility the Chinese government knew Deng was dead but pretended he was alive.
Academics who study China said they have focused on China's newer generation of leaders since 1991, when Deng gave up power and stayed primarily out of the public eye.
``Deng Xiaoping has been out of the picture for three years, giving everybody else a chance to put down roots,'' said Edward Steinfeld, an associate professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who has been studying enterprise reforms in China. ``There's actually considerable consensus in Chinese circles. Nobody is interested in rolling back reforms.''
In the coming months, ``there will be sweet words and everybody will purr about continuity'' in China, said Ross Terrill, a research associate at Harvard University's John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.
Behind the scenes, though, he predicted an argument in China's Communist Party, which must decide how to balance the country's economic dramatic opening with a political system that has resisted change. That could take years to work out.
Deng ``preserved communism with one hand and buried it with the other,'' Terrill said.
On Wednesday, President Clinton called Deng an ``extraordinary figure on the world stage,'' but limited his praise to Deng's role in reforming China's economy and expanding relations with the United States.
Clinton has said he is eager to make his first visit to Beijing, but an administration official who asked not to be named said some advisers want Clinton to wait for at least a year. The advisers have long feared that China will curtail freedom of speech in Hong Kong after it takes control from Britain on June 30. They don't want Clinton criticized for being too close to Beijing's leaders.
Chinese dissidents in the United States warned that hard-liners in China's Communist Party and the military might crack down on those trying to revive a democracy movement. Such crackdowns have taken place during previous political transitions in China, the dissidents said.
``The regime is nervous about the opportunities for the non-communist forces in China, so my immediate fear is that they will just round up everybody,'' said Shen Tong, an activist who was jailed in 1992 and is now a graduate student at Boston University.
After exchanging electronic mail with dissidents in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities Wednesday, Shen said that labor leaders, publishers, environmentalists and others working to build a civil society are wary of a short-lived, but forceful, crackdown.
``The high-ranking leaders want to stop any opposition movements in order to stabilize the political situation,'' said Juntao Wang, who was jailed in China from 1989 to 1994 and is working on his master's degree at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. ``They probably will sentence dissidents as a threat to other people.''
Human Rights in China, a nonprofit group in New York founded by exiles in 1989, called on the Chinese government to release political prisoners and declare amnesty for those charged with being ``counter-revolutionaries.''
Chinese jails hold at least 6,000 political prisoners and perhaps many more, said Xiao Qiang, executive director of the group. ``We certainly hope Mr. Deng is the last emperor for China,'' he said. ``Mr. Deng's death will be a catalyst for changes, but it's uncertain whether we will see more freedom or more severe crackdown on dissidents and the media.''
LENGTH: Medium: 81 linesby CNB