Communist Party Publicizes Crackdown

BEIJING--China's Communist Party sought to restore its tainted image yesterday by publicizing a nationwide crackdown on corruption in its ranks--one of the demands of the student movement crushed by the government last month.

The new party General Secretary Jiang Zemin also met two foreign delegations--from Romania and Ethiopia--in a show of diplomacy as usual despite icy relations with Western governments protesting China's bloody supression of unarmed demonstrators.

Every major daily newspaper carried lengthy articles yesterday on the expulsion and punishment of party members caught embezzling, profiteering and abusing their power.

An end to official corruption was one of the calls of student-led demonstrators. They also demanded freedom of the press and a dialogue with government officials.

The People's Daily, official mouth-piece of the 47.7 million-member party that is the world's biggest political organization, said 452 officials in the southern province of Guizhou were expelled for corruption in the first half of 1989.

On Sunday it was reported that a local party leader in Guizhou was sentenced to death for selling bootleg liquor.

The government, which ordered troops into Beijing on June 3-4 to crush the student movement, now has seized the corruption issue as its own.

"The recent turmoil and rebellion included many people because some party members, cadres and especially a minority of leaders were engaged in corrupt practices which made the people very dissatisfied," the People's Daily said. "Organizers of the rebellion used anti-corruption slogans to incite the uncertain public."

Among other cases reported yesterday, the vice chair of the commodity prices committee in western Gansu province was expelled from the party for making $170,000 by profiteering in sugar.

Another Gansu official was punished for using public funds to buy a private home and a third sold state-supplied medicine and used the money to hold an elaborate funeral for his wife.

Almost all high-level diplomatic contacts between China and the West have been frozen because of the military attack on protesters and arrests of more than 2000 people across the country.

China continued to attack the United States yesterday, with the Beijing Daily saying the United States, with its discrimination against blacks and other minorities, has no right to condemn China's human rights record.

The article criticized President Bush, who visited Beijing in February "in the role of an old friend of China," for inviting dissident Fang Lizhi to a banquet attended by senior Chinese leaders.