Peking warns correspondents

Press, 3 September 1981, Page 6

Peking warns correspondents

NZPA Peking Foreign journalists in Peking have been warned by a top Chinese official not to publish any more reports on the activities or writings of Chinese dissidents. The Vice-Foreign Minister (Mr Zhong Xidong), who now heads the Ministry’s information department, emphasised (hiring a press conference that the publications of human rights and democracy activists were “illegal".“I advise our friends to be prudent. It is better not to report on such publications," he said. “The views expressed are not those of the Chinese people and the Chinese Government. They cannot have a positive role,” he said. However, Mr Zhong refused to say whether under Chinese law it was“legal” or not to publish news about the activists. “It depends ... if what is

carried in the leaflet or publication harms China’s modernisation effort and if it is not. a. well-meant one,” was all that Mr Zhong would say.'. The leading activists who emerged from’ the 1978-79 “Peking Spring” movement for democracy, are how all in prison. , '■ A few clandestine magazines and pamphlets are still circulating in the provinces, but their numbers have dropped sharply over the last few months. The new head of the in-' formation department on which all foreign journalists accredited in Peking depend nonetheless reassured foreign journalists that their “normal work” would be protected in China. Asked if this would limit the work of foreign journalists to purely official contacts, Mr Zhong said that there was “no rule’ of this nature."