Soviet Communists Reportedly Cross Into China, Ask Asylum

Several thousand Soviet Communist Party and KGB members have crossed the Soviet border into northern China asking for political asylum, two Japanese newspapers reported Wednesday.

China’s Communist Party leaders have decided to accept the defectors and provide them with support but not to publicize the matter, according to the reports in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun, two national dailies.

The papers, quoting “informed sources in Tokyo familiar with China,” said the exodus began after the Soviet coup attempt failed. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun printed its story in a small box on page eight, indicating some lack of confidence in its source.

A Western diplomat in Beijing, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed strong skepticism about the Japanese media reports on large-scale defections.

“The Chinese have very, very rarely taken any political refugees, because it’s just not their style to do it,” the diplomat said. “They tend to think more about long-term interests. They probably detest the people in charge in Moscow now . . . but they’ve got quite a long border with them. They’re not going to do anything to irritate the new government.”

Although there have been some reports of Soviet officials defecting in Brazil and Cuba, this is the first report of widespread defections since the coup fell apart. The Soviet news agency Tass picked up the Japanese news reports without elaboration.

In Beijing, the Chinese government has been rounding up Russian-speaking Chinese and offering them special bonuses to travel to three northern Chinese provinces and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region to help interpret for the Russian defectors, according to the Japanese reports.

It is known in Beijing that special efforts have been made over the past year to provide additional training to Russian-speaking Chinese, who are then provided with bonuses to work in border regions near the Soviet Union. This has been almost entirely linked, however, with expanding cross-border trade after the 1989 normalization of Sino-Soviet relations.

Certain diplomats at the Soviet Embassy in Beijing have also sought asylum in China, but Chinese officials are hesitant to accept them, worried that such a move would hurt relations with the West, the Japanese newspapers said.

The Western diplomat said he believes that Chinese reluctance to provide political asylum to diplomats would also apply to people crossing the border, unless they were already Chinese spies who might be unmasked if not provided refuge here.

This diplomat said that when East Germany ceased to exist as a separate political entity, its last ambassador, who was a Sinologist and a committed Marxist, asked Beijing for permission to remain here as a German language teacher, but was refused. The Chinese then informed the West German Embassy of their decision, he said.

“It indicates national interests are more important than ideological interests,” he said.

Helm reported from Tokyo and Holley reported from Beijing.