From Peking to Paris

Advice for NATO--and a warning to Hua's critics back home On a dingy street in a working-class arrondissement of Paris, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Mayor Jacques Chirac and China's Chairman and Premier Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng) climbed to the second floor of the newly repainted Hotel de Godefroy. There they peered briefly into Room 16, where nearly 60 years ago the late Chou En-lai met with fellow Chinese students to thrash out many of the ideas that led eventually to the Communist takeover of the world's most populous nation. Hua's pilgrimage to Chou's onetime cubicle may have been the sentimental high point of his seven-day visit to France, his starting point for a three-week, four-nation tour of Western Europe.

Hua's arrival in Paris was marked by pageantry appropriate for the first trip to Western Europe by the top leader of the Chinese people. After Hua's American-built 707 jet rolled up at Orly Airport, he stepped onto an "extralong" red carpet for a brief walk to an Alouette helicopter and a 15-minute flight to the Esplanade des Invalides, where 150 mounted members of the elite Republican Guard were drawn up in splendid array. There was an obligatory wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe, a succulent lunch of salmon and duckling hosted by Premier Raymond Barre (Hua demonstrated his mastery of Western cutlery) and a surprise meeting with Henry Kissinger, who was in town publicizing his memoirs. At week's end, Hua visited the Breton cities of Rennes and Brest to inspect a naval base, an electronics factory and farms, and then departed for tours of West Germany, Britain and Italy.

The basic purpose of Hua's visit was to reiterate China's desire to open up to the West. The Chairman also expressed his support for both the European Community and NATO in the common struggle against "hegemonism," Peking's code word for Moscow's expansionist ambitions. In a long-winded toast delivered at Giscard's welcoming dinner, Hua reeled off a list of Soviet sins, without once mentioning China's Communist archrival by name. He declared: "In Europe a serious state of military confrontation continues. In the Middle East, in Africa, in the Red Sea area, in southern Asia and in Indochina, ever more perfidious means of aggression and expansion are being used, namely by sowing discord, meddling in the internal affairs of others, fomenting coups and even by using intermediaries to practice armed aggression and military occupation." Accompanying Hua, Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua offered some lukewarm support for SALT II. Claiming that China is "not opposed to detente," Huang said: "We are not opposed to such discussions or agreements. They could possibly make sense."

Another purpose of Hua's call was to rebuild the trade links with industrial nations that have weakened since the Peking Politburo concluded that the rapid "four modernizations" program of Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping exceeded China's capacity to pay for it. In the past eight months, Peking has canceled or postponed billions of dollars worth of orders from Japanese, American and European companies. The retrenchment has proved particularly disturbing to France, which ranked as China's fourth largest trading partner in 1976. By last year it had slipped to eighth place and prospects for improvement diminished even more with the cancellation this year of contracts for two nuclear reactors worth $2 billion. The ebbing commercial ties reflect not only France's inability to compete successfully with such industrial rivals as West Germany and Japan, but perhaps also Peking's displeasure with French reluctance to supply China with modern weaponry, including Mirage fighter planes. Giscard has pointedly rejected Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev's plea for a total ban on weapons sales to China, but so far no deals have been made.

Hua embarked on his voyage to the West amid signs of unrest at home that included criticism of his performance as party leader. Students and faculty members at People's University in Peking staged a near riot to demand the expulsion of Chinese troops who have been bivouacked in the school's dormitories since 1968. Last week peasants complaining that they had been maltreated during the Cultural Revolution took part in sit-ins outside government offices in the capital. A poster signed by Qiu Shui, a writer for the radical underground journal Tansuo (Exploration), appeared on Peking's "Democracy Wall," denouncing Hua for "interference" with China's judicial procedures. The poster attacked Hua's statement that Mao Tse-tung's widow Jiang Qing (Chiang Ch'ing) and the other members of the Gang of Four would not be sentenced to death when they go on trial, possibly next year. Wrote Qiu: "The sentencing of the Gang of Four should be based on the court's decision alone."

There are limits to liberalization in post-Mao China. In a pair of public show trials, portions of which were broadcast on China's scanty television network, two of the country's most prominent dissidents were served up as examples for Chinese citizens who take constitutional guarantees of free speech too literally. First to enter the dock was former Red Guard Wei Jingsheng, 29, who last year tacked up a famous wall poster calling for "the fifth modernization -- democracy." As editor of Tansuo, he published an article detailing the harsh treatment of political detainees at Qincheng prison, outside Peking. After a 5 1/2-hr. trial, Wei was sentenced to 15 years in prison for "counter revolutionary agitation" and divulging "military secrets" to foreigners.

The other victim was Fu Yuehua, 34, a female activist who was tried for "libeling" a party leader by falsely accusing him of rape. She had helped organize mass demonstrations in the Chinese capital on the third anniversary of Chou's death last January. The crackdown on dissidents was castigated by State Department Spokesman Hodding Carter III, who for the first time since Washington established relations with Peking openly criticized China's human rights practices. It remains to be seen whether tough penal ties will squelch the reforming zeal of Chi na's small but active democratic move ment. Predicted one of Wei's colleagues at Tansuo last week: "The longer the sentence they give him, the more unseen trou ble there will be in the future."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.