Word: xu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Social observers believe a daughter's lot will improve as women become more valuable to China's growing economy and as the one-child policy eventually makes every scion -- male and female -- precious to parents. Chen's own daughter Jiang Xu, 19, reflects changing attitudes when she expresses her preference for a daughter: "To have a boy means happiness for a moment. To have a girl means a lifetime of good fortune...
...never had to contemplate. That was true for student leaders like Wuer Kaixi, who headed Beijing's banned independent union of students. It was also true for intellectuals like Zhou Duo, who spent more than ten months in jail before being released three weeks ago, and for officials like Xu Jiatun, who supported conciliation with the protesters and mysteriously turned up in California this month for an extended stay in the U.S. Their stories...
Everyone insists that Xu Jiatun has not defected. Beijing says so. Washington says so. And Xu himself says so through intermediaries. But it is clear that Xu had more on his mind than the inviting sands of Malibu when he and three relatives flew from Hong Kong to California four weeks ago. It isn't every day, after all, that a member of the Communist Party's Central Advisory Commission takes off for the hotbed of bourgeois liberalism without permission...
...head of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong from 1983 until last February, Xu was Beijing's de facto ambassador to the British colony, which is to revert to Chinese rule in 1997. Though the 74-year-old Xu's Old Guard credentials are impeccable -- he was among China's early revolutionaries -- he advocated free-market reforms and was a close ally of Zhao Ziyang's. Last year, when the demonstrations in Beijing sparked sympathy protests in Hong Kong, Xu shook hands with some of the hunger strikers who gathered outside his office building...
...Xu, who is reportedly living in Southern California, has said through third parties that he is in the U.S. to vacation and conduct "a broad survey of American society." So far, he has visited the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. His friend Lu Keng, a Hong Kong journalist, says this "research" will keep Xu in America "for quite some time." Says Lu: "My feeling is that he won't go back to China until Li Peng is no longer in power. He may want to avoid retaliation." Xu's old associates in Beijing may be cursing him, but Lu says...