Govt acts to defuse Shanghai unrest

Press, 12 February 1979, Page 8

Govt acts to defuse Shanghai unrest

NZPA-Reuter .’eking Chinese authorities moved at the week-end to defuse potentially explosive unrest among young people which has erupted into violent demonstrations in S nghai, the country’s largest city, in recent days. The official New China News Agency quoted the top Shanghai Communist Party official as having said that since the spring festival (at the end of January) “there has been a small group of . people blocking traffic, damaging public property in the downtown streets, assaulting cadres, and stopping moving trains.”

The demonstrators are believed to have been educated young people demanding the right to return to the city and obtain work legally after having been sent, to rural areas under the Maoist “Youth of the Countryside” programme now being phased out by the Government.

Some sources have estimated that up to 18 million young people had been sent out from the cities and towns over the last 20 years or so, but that only about 800,000 had adapted successfully to the new life. A recent wallposter in Peking complained that young people — presumably those who returned to cities without authorisation — were being forced to crime and prostituion for lack of work.

A group of young people also came to Peking in late December, speaking of a strike among 50,000 educated youths on state farms in the Xishuangbanna region of southern Yunnan province on the border with Laos and Burma. The main Chinese newspapers at the week-end reported an interview the leaders of the group had with a Chinese Vice-Premier, Mr Wang Zhen (Wang Chen), and the Civil Affairs Minister, Mr Cheng Zihua (Cheng Tzu-hua), on January 4. The publication of the interview appeared to be an obvious move to quieten the situation in Shanghai and elsewhere. i