TURMOIL IN CHINA: Protests For Democracy : Pro-Regime Slogans Adorn Hotels and Restaurants Serving Foreigners : Red Propaganda Banners Blossom in Beijing

Colonel Sanders is a bourgeois liberal.

That, at least, was the message China sought to convey Friday as red propaganda banners like those that appeared earlier this week to adorn the facades of Beijing hotels were unfurled outside the city’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet.

“Maintain Order in the Capital!” exhorted one banner of Chinese characters done in white-on-red colors that almost matched the hues of the familiar logo of the fast-food chain.

“Maintain Unity and Stability!” urged another, which was hung so that its bottom edge covered a picture of Col. Sanders from his hairline to his nose.

The Colonel had lots of company.

Diners in search of haute cuisine also found political banners Friday hanging high above the front doors of Maxim’s, a pricey Beijing branch of the famous Paris restaurant.

“Firmly Take the Socialist Road!” said one of the banners hanging above the restaurant opened in 1983 by Pierre Cardin, the decidedly unsocialistic French fashion designer and entrepreneur.

In the last few days, most of the hotels in Beijing that cater to a foreign clientele have put up similar banners. These political placards are seldom seen on other buildings here.

It does not seem to make any difference whether the hotels and restaurants are foreign-owned or Chinese.

The Beijing Hotel, which is owned by the Chinese government, has been sporting banners that say, “Oppose Bourgeois Liberalization With a Clear-Cut Stand!” and “Long Live the Great, Glorious, Correct Chinese Communist Party!”

Many Questions

What is the reason for the banners? What do they mean? Why are they being put up primarily on establishments for foreigners?

Such questions cannot be answered with any certainty. Under the terms of the martial-law regulations now in effect, foreign reporters are generally not permitted to interview Chinese officials or scholars who might offer explanations.

At Kentucky Fried Chicken, an official who declined to give his full name told one Western visitor that the banners outside his door were put there because “it was demanded.” Asked why, the official replied nervously, “I can’t tell you, because martial law prevents any interviews.”

According to a witness, when a foreign tourist outside Maxim’s asked a young Chinese man what he thought of the new propaganda banner, the man quickly replied: “I can’t tell you. There are a lot of plainclothes police around here.”

On the surface, the most obvious explanation is that the Chinese regime is tapping the age-old strain of xenophobia, or fear of foreigners, as an explanation for this spring’s student demonstrations and the country’s current political turmoil.

“Among some people in the leadership, there’s a desire to make Western culture, or just the United States, a scapegoat,” one Western diplomat said Friday.

Unlikely Explanation

But this explanation doesn’t seem to fit too well. At least so far, the regime has been extremely reluctant to blame the student demonstrations on foreign influences. When Chinese leaders have attempted to blame someone else besides the students themselves, their targets have been not foreigners but rivals for power within the Chinese Communist Party.

“The students feel they have one man supporting them in the central authorities and therefore, the turmoil is deteriorating,” said President Yang Shangkun in one recent speech. He was referring to Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang.

Another possible explanation is that banners at the hotels and restaurants are an outgrowth of the continuing power struggle and factionalism within the Communist Party leadership.

Beijing insiders note that the director of the Beijing Municipal Tourism Bureau, which has authority over the city’s hotels and restaurants for foreigners, is Bo Xicheng. He is the son of Bo Yibo, one of the elderly Communist Party leaders who are now spearheading a new ideological campaign against “bourgeois liberalization.”

One other interpretation, admittedly a Machiavellian and conspiratorial one, is that the banners are some Beijing officials’ way of covertly undermining the efforts by the regime to impose martial law here.

The red banners flying outside the hotels and restaurants pay lip service to the current ideological campaign. No one in the Chinese leadership could possibly criticize someone who put up placards praising the leadership of the Communist Party.

Undermine Regime

Yet at the same time, the big red banners undermine the regime’s efforts to assure foreign tourists and investors that everything is going smoothly in China. Whoever put up the banners at places like Kentucky Fried Chicken managed, whether intentionally or not, to expose the contradiction between China’s renewed denunciations of “bourgeois liberalization” and its continued efforts to court the West.

Out of apparent concern for the effect of martial law on tourism, the government-run New China News Agency reported Friday night that “China’s travel agencies, hotels and other tourism-related institutions are operating normally.”

According to the Chinese news account, a spokesman for China’s National Tourism Administration said that travel programs for overseas tour groups are being conducted normally.

“Causing slight changes in tour programs is the temporary closure of Beijing’s Forbidden City and a few other places in the center of the capital,” the spokesman said. Nevertheless, he said, local travel services “offer alternative attractions.”