CHINA IN TURMOIL : Electronic Network Speeds News Around Globe : Boston Hot Line: Hope From China by Fax, Computer, Word of Mouth

In his modest apartment near Harvard University, Huang Jing could barely contain his relief. There was a telephone pressed to his ear, and students from Tian An Men Square in Beijing were on the other end of the line.

For nearly an hour, his repeated calls to the student demonstrators’ headquarters in the square had inexplicably been cut off. His frustration had mounted steadily.

But at last the connection was made, and an excited Chinese voice crackled by speaker phone into the room. Yes, there was news from the capital! As the voice read out the latest proclamation, Huang recorded every word.

His Beijing-Boston hot line was back in business.

Computer Relays

What Huang learned would be relayed--by computer network, fax machine and word of mouth--from his apartment near Harvard across the country in an effort to spread the news from behind the barricades.

“My friends want their plans and their ideas to be known throughout the world,” said Huang, a 32-year-old political science student. “We hope it will feed back to China so that people who cannot get information from the government can get it from the Voice of America.”

The extraordinary link between protest leaders and their man in Boston, forged after the declaration of martial law last Saturday and consummated in more than a dozen calls each day, represents a notable attempt to circumvent a threatened crackdown.

And with extensive information flowing over unauthorized channels, it illustrates the degree to which technology has made news of a rebellion in a faraway land accessible to a waiting world.

For a time, live network television coverage provided an ever-present eye, allowing China watchers with access to Cable News Network to follow developments in Tian An Men Square. Western newspapers and magazines, whose news-gathering has been largely unfettered, have provided voluminous coverage.

But when satellite links from Beijing were severed by the Chinese authorities last weekend, the students decided to seek an alternate outlet in the hotline to Boston, Huang said.

“What comes out from here is from the heart of the people,” Huang said. “When people talk on the phone, that’s the human spirit talking. And I can relay that to everyone else.”

On this Wednesday afternoon in Boston, it was early Thursday morning in Beijing, and the news from the students was gloomy. Premier Li Peng was about to appear in public for the first time since declaring martial law, they told Huang. Troops were massing outside the city. Restrictions on live broadcasts, lifted for a few days, were back in place.

In response, the students had prepared a new statement, threatening a nationwide hunger strike unless Li Peng stepped down and the troops withdrew. But when Huang hung up the phone, he was shaking his head.

“The troops are going to come in,” he said. “I’m sure of it now.”

Other Cities, Other Contacts

Huang is not the only Chinese student in the United States trying to maintain contact with China. Elsewhere in Boston, students are using telephone lines donated by the Walker Center for Ecumenical Exchange to call their colleagues to discuss where the democracy movement might be heading.

And at UC Berkeley and Stanford, students have undertaken an emergency “news lift,” using fax machines to send summaries to their Chinese colleagues who might be cut off from the news.

But none seem to have Huang’s access to the student leadership, a tie he attributes to longtime friendships and to recent good fortune at finding a telephone operator willing to put calls through to what may be the students’ only working phone.

None of the others has launched an effort like Huang’s sophisticated bid to relay dispatches, in what he calls a “giant U-turn,” from the Beijing students back to the Chinese people.

Relay for VOA

After talking with Beijing, Huang’s first call was to the Voice of America to relay an audio tape of the new statement from the University Students Autonomous Assn. accusing Li of carrying out a “bloody suppression” of the student movement.

Despite efforts by the Chinese government to jam VOA broadcasts, the U.S. government outlet has transmitted 8 1/2 hours of Chinese-langauge coverage over four frequencies each day. Huang hopes that the agency will broadcast his tape to provide hope to the Chinese people.

Later he phoned a Harvard colleague and dictated new developments that should be added to the computer bulletin board, which is updated every four hours in a vast computer room in a university building. Those who have access to the national network need type only “bbh” to read what is being said on the Beijing-Boston hotline.

Finally there were calls to other news outlets, principally Chinese-language newspaper offices in New York, in the hope that the accounts they publish in Hong Kong will show up in China.

After four days of countless such calls and little sleep, Huang was exhausted. A slight, bespectacled man, he appeared to be near collapse. But he refused to move from his place next to the phone, even with a thesis deadline approaching and telephone bills mounting beyond his limited resources.

“Those friends of mine are fighting there,” he said. “They’re risking their lives. The least I can do is to risk my pocketbook.”