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Governor Wanna-Bes Just : Say No to Crime Question

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Former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp and U. S. Sen. Pete Wilson have three things in common.

All want to be governor.

All are very tough on crime. (If you doubt it, just ask them.)

All are taking a hands-off stance toward the San Diego City Council’s plea to Gov. George Deukmejian for more state money to fight drug-related violence with more cops and more jail cells.

Here’s what spokesmen for the three said after checking with their bosses about the council’s startling decision to declare a state of emergency:

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Wilson: “The senator will be speaking out on broad issues of crime during the campaign, but we don’t want to get involved in every little decision out there. We don’t want to second-guess the governor.”

Van de Kamp: “This is a case of a local jurisdiction asking the governor for grant funds, and we have no role in that.”

Feinstein: “A piecemeal solution is not the answer. What we need is a comprehensive program which, as governor, is what we will propose.”

Feinstein, Van de Kamp and Wilson have a fourth thing in common, too.

All three plan trips here soon to hustle votes by vowing to fight street crime in San Diego if they are elected in November, 1990. That should only be a couple of hundred drive-by shootings from now.

Nice Try Anyway

The cover story in the magazine of the Urban Land Institute, the nation’s premier land-use think tank, is an assessment of San Diego’s attempt to cap runaway growth. The headline tells it all:

“San Diego’s Brand of Growth Management: A for Effort, C for Accomplishment.”

Discovering Her Roots

For the first time in its 27-year history, the Peace Corps is preparing to send volunteers to a communist country.

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For Solo Lin Chung-hui, 26, a graduate of San Diego State University, it’s a chance to see Sichuan province in the People’s Republic of China, where her father’s family lived before fleeing to Taiwan in 1949.

Chung-hui’s grandfather was an army officer under Chiang Kai-shek. In the four decades since the triumph of Mao, none of the family has been allowed back on the mainland.

For Chung-hui, the route was indirect and somewhat involuntary.

After earning a degree in English from the University of Taiwan, she moved to San Diego in 1984. In 1988, she received a master’s degree in public administration from San Diego State University and in January became a naturalized U. S. citizen.

She joined the Peace Corps several months later, hoping for an assignment in Africa. But her fluency in Mandarin Chinese made her a natural to be one of 23 volunteers assigned to teach English in Sichuan for two years.

“At first, I was quite reluctant to go back to my own culture,” said Chung-hui, who began training this week at American University in Washington. “I wanted something more exotic, more challenging.

“But then I realized, with all the changes in China, with the barriers dropping so quickly, nothing could be more challenging than this.”

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Chung-hui would probably not be allowed in China if it weren’t for her U. S. citizenship.

First, all Peace Corps volunteers must be U. S. citizens. Second, Beijing severely restricts visits from citizens of Taiwan, and those restrictions may become even tougher because of the student uprising.

“I’m Chinese, I’m from Taiwan, I’m an American citizen, and someday I want to live in Africa,” Chung-hui said. “I think of myself as a citizen of the world.”

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