China Orders 2 U.S. Reporters Out of Country

In action that further escalates tension between Washington and Beijing on issues of human rights and national sovereignty, China issued expulsion orders Wednesday for two U.S. correspondents on charges that they violated martial-law restrictions on press coverage.

Alan W. Pessin, Beijing bureau chief of the U.S. government-funded Voice of America, and Associated Press reporter John Pomfret were summoned to a Beijing city office in the afternoon and told they must leave China within 72 hours.

The action came after several days of blistering attacks in the Chinese media against Voice of America, which broadcasts to a huge Chinese audience in both English and Chinese.

In Washington, China’s ambassador, Han Xu, was summoned to the State Department to receive a “vigorous” protest of the expulsions. However, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the Bush Administration had no plans to retaliate against any of the 38 Chinese journalists working in the United States. She said a similar protest would be delivered by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to the Chinese Foreign Ministry this morning.

She emphasized that both Pomfret and Pessin were fully accredited correspondents with Chinese visas authorizing them to work in the country.

The choice of two U.S. reporters as expulsion targets seemed tied to Chinese anger at Washington for granting refuge in the U.S. Embassy to astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, China’s most prominent pro-democracy activist, and his wife, Li Shuxian, a Beijing University physics professor.

In the wake of a bloody June 3-4 crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests, the Chinese government has issued arrest warrants for Fang and Li, and bitterly condemned the U.S. action as interference in China’s internal affairs.

Baker Called ‘Confident’

A senior State Department official in Washington was quoted as saying Wednesday that Secretary of State James A. Baker III believes “there are reasons to be hopeful” that the United States and China can reach an agreement permitting Fang and his wife to leave the embassy without risking arrest. The official, who spoke to news agency correspondents on the understanding he would not be identified by name, did not list the reasons.

He said that, if necessary, the embassy is prepared to shelter Fang and his wife for an extended period. “We went into it with our eyes open,” he said.

Since declaring martial law in Beijing on May 20, Chinese authorities have issued a variety of press restrictions intended to limit coverage of the violent suppression of a pro-democracy student movement that began in mid-April.

The restrictions were widely ignored, however, when the Chinese army swept into central Beijing late on June 3 and early June 4, shooting into crowds of citizens seeking to block its way.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died in the assault. The Chinese Red Cross initially estimated the death toll at 2,600, a figure that is still given considerable credibility in diplomatic circles.

A few days after the incident, a top government spokesman asserted that only about 300 people had died.

Wednesday, Chinese authorities further reduced the official death figure to around 200.

The official New China News Agency carried a news release from the “Propaganda Department” of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party that gave a detailed account of widespread destruction of army vehicles and said that nearly 100 soldiers and policemen were killed by “counterrevolutionary” rioters. “Some 100 civilians” also died, the report added.

The expulsions of Pessin and Pomfret came against this background.

Pessin, 33, was accused of “conducting illegal press coverage after martial law was declared” and “writing news stories to distort facts, spread rumor and incite and stir up turmoil and counterrevolutionary rebellion,” the New China News Agency reported.

Pessin told reporters in Beijing that he had responded to his accusers with this statement: “We report the best, most accurate, the fairest and the best-balanced news that we possibly can. The only motive that we have is to tell the truth as best we can. Governments do not always like that. To say that Voice of America is maliciously creating rumors and has ulterior motives is itself a malicious rumor, apparently with ulterior motives.”

VOA Director Richard Carlson told reporters that the expulsions were “a step backward for the media in China, which over the past couple of years have demonstrated some steps forward.”

He added: “We think it’s very unfortunate and sad, in fact, for the Chinese people, who in the tens of millions depend on the Voice of America and the BBC and some other outside broadcasters for what has been extremely reliable, straightforward, factual, unbiased accounts” of the turmoil in their country.

Pomfret, 30, was accused of “having frequent contacts with illegal organization leaders, passing on information to and providing shelter for them” and “obtaining state secrets through illegal means,” the New China News Agency said.

Pomfret said he also was accused of giving protection to Wuer Kaixi, a key leader of the seven-week-long pro-democracy student protests. Chinese authorities have charged Wuer with counterrevolutionary activities and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Pomfret, who speaks fluent Chinese, wrote a profile of Wuer before the martial-law crackdown and interviewed him several times during the demonstrations.

“I did my job as a journalist and I worked hard,” Pomfret said. “It’s a shame that these are the results I get.”

Louis D. Boccardi, president and general manager of the Associated Press, said in New York: “We deplore and have protested in the strongest terms to the Chinese government this unwarranted assault on fair and factual reporting.”

At the White House, press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said: “We believe these journalists were trying to print the truth of the situation in China. Actions such as this, the harassment of journalists trying to do their jobs and attempts to jam VOA broadcasts, will not succeed in keeping the truth about what is going on in China from being heard in that troubled land or throughout the world.”

Vernon Mann, a reporter for London-based Independent Television News, was restricted to his hotel Wednesday in the central city of Chengdu after being detained Tuesday for recording scenes of burned out buildings and buses, an ITN spokesman said. “His passport and papers have been confiscated and he has been ordered to stay in his hotel and ‘await punishment,’ ” the spokesman added.

Last week in Shanghai, another reporter for ITN was expelled from China for covering demonstrations in Shanghai while on a tourist visa.

In Beijing on Wednesday, soldiers detained Denis Hiault, Beijing bureau chief of Agence-France Press, for an hour and confiscated his residence card. Hiault was accused of photographing troops.

The Chinese media, meanwhile, reverted further Wednesday to the use of harsh jargon reminiscent of Mao Tse-tung’s chaotic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.

A front-page commentary in the official Communist Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, said that the recent disturbances show that “in our country, class struggle still exists within certain limits--a small number of reactionary elements who hate the Communist Party and hate the socialist system have never given up their political goals.”

Another People’s Daily commentary, also published on the front page, sharply attacked Fang, his wife and the United States.

“Some people overseas who are hostile to China have tried hard to flatter such people and label them ‘democratic fighters,’ ” the commentary said. “Their aim . . . is . . . to plunge China into chaos, to eliminate rule by the Communist Party and to overthrow China’s socialist system. . . . “

The commentary noted that “some people in the United States always hate communism. They try hard to find ways to use their bourgeois ideology and bourgeois political system to influence some Chinese people, with the goal of establishing a bourgeois republic in China. . . .

“We hope that the American side . . . will stop its interference in China’s internal affairs.”

Beijing’s relations with other industrial democracies have also suffered sharp deterioration as a result of the June 3-4 carnage.

Tension is building between China and Australia in the wake of press reports that an unidentified Chinese dissident has been granted refuge in the Australian Embassy in Beijing. An Australian Embassy spokesman declined to make a substantive comment on the reports, but added: “Were the situation to arise, we would handle it with the utmost sensitivity. Were such a case to arise, it would be considered on its merits.”

The recent violence and ideological rigidity in Beijing have also severely damaged public confidence in the British colony of Hong Kong, scheduled to revert to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

David Wilson, the British-appointed governor of Hong Kong, dispatched two personal representatives to London on Wednesday to try to persuade Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s administration to promise ethnic Chinese born in Hong Kong--who number about 3.25 million out of the colony’s total population of 5.5 million--the right to move to Britain before 1997.

Visa Sections Reopen

The United States on Wednesday reopened the visa-issuing sections of its Beijing embassy and its consulates in other parts of China, which had been closed for several days.

A U.S. State Department spokesman announced Tuesday that it will begin granting larger numbers of visas to Chinese citizens for temporary visits to the United States.

In both Beijing and Shanghai, fairly typical crowds of about 200 people gathered in the morning hoping to submit visa applications. Most were students who had received acceptances from American universities and obtained Chinese passports before the current crisis.

Applicants appeared unwilling to discuss politics.

“All I really care about is studying and getting exposure to the latest technology,” said Cai Baoxuan, 30, a pharmacist who wants to study at the University of Hawaii. “I don’t know anything about politics.”

Times staff writers Karl Schoenberger, in Shanghai, and Norman Kempster, in Washington, contributed to this article.

STUDENTS ON THE RUN--Once-confident protesters are now fugitives. Page 11