COLUMN ONE : China’s Smuggling Heartland : Fujian province is home to many emigrants who try to sneak into America by sea. Despite attempts to stop the ‘snakeheads,’ who organize the illegal passage, the allure of high wages keeps the boats full.

A knowing grin lit up the shopkeeper’s face when he was asked how people from his village emigrate to the United States. “They go through the heavens, and they go underground,” he replied in poetic fashion.

Although his words sounded cryptic, their meaning was clear: Some Chinese go legally on airplanes, many go illegally by boat. The important thing, in this lush but poor countryside near the mouth of the Min River, is that they go.

“My older brother’s gone,” the man’s wife said. “My little brother went too. We have dozens of relatives in the United States. . . . My uncle was the first to go. Over there they work and work. We know that life isn’t easy there. But Chinese are very diligent. It doesn’t matter how hard things are. They can endure it.”

Authorities have sought for years to shut down the illegal flow of people to America from this area along the Fujian province coast. While no one knows the exact number of emigrants who take the smugglers’ ocean route, the majority are believed to come from this region. The center of the smuggling is Changle County, a rural backwater that technically is part of Fuzhou, the Fujian provincial capital.

Why do so many people here want to go to the United States? The region is generally more prosperous than those in the interior of China, but it is among the poorest of areas that have many residents with family ties to America. (About 90% of legal Chinese emigration to the United States comes from the two southeastern coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong.)

People here have also been aware of the reluctance of U.S. authorities, since the 1989 crackdown on China’s pro-democracy movement, to deport Chinese citizens back to their politically repressed homeland. These factors have combined to make Fujian a lucrative environment for “snakeheads”--operatives for organized gangs that smuggle emigrants to America.

The journey is long and dangerous, a patchwork of border crossings and boat rides ending on refitted freighters that drop their passengers at America’s shores. Earlier this month, one such ship was grounded off New York City with nearly 300 people on board, most of them believed to be from Fujian. At least six died.

That incident and others on both the West and East coasts prompted the Clinton Administration to announce a major crackdown on illegal immigration last week. President Clinton on Friday denounced smuggling as “a shameful practice.” He also vowed to toughen interdiction, detention and prosecution of illegal immigrants and the crime syndicates that transport them.

Despite this latest round of tough talk on immigration, America’s allure remains strong in this part of China. “Some people cross the border between Yunnan province and Burma, then get on boats in Thailand,” said Yu Daodang, a spokesman for the Fujian province government. “But most of them get on boats here along our coast. Some leave from Fujian, and some leave from Guangdong. . . . Probably 95% are peasants from the coastal counties of Fujian. . . . They leave the mainland on small boats and go onto bigger ships in international waters.”

Changle County has a seafaring tradition that stretches back for centuries. Ships of the great Ming Dynasty explorer Adm. Zheng He stopped here for supplies and repairs before setting out on journeys to India and beyond.

More recently, this area was one of the main places in China from which poor peasants sought fortunes in Southeast Asia or the United States. American scholars, such as Ling-chi Wang of UC Berkeley, note that Fujian provided thousands of seamen who assisted the U.S. effort in World War II. Many of them resettled--usually illegally--along the Eastern Seaboard.

Changle County, with a population of 650,000, continues to be a major contributor to China’s legal emigration to America. Of the annual quota of 20,000 immigrants permitted under U.S. law--largely structured around the concept of family reunification--about 20% come from Changle County, Yu said.

But not everyone can qualify under the legal quotas, so a big market for smuggling exists.

Organized gangs, headed by Fuzhou people who now live abroad, arrange illegal passage to America for exorbitant sums. “The snakeheads--the people organizing it--are from this area,” Yu explained. “Some of them already are U.S. citizens. They’re more familiar with things if they come back here.”

Fujian authorities call the undocumented crossings not only illegal but stupid. “We need to strengthen our education of the masses,” Yu said. “If you want to leave, you have to respect our country’s laws. If you want to get rich, you should work hard in your own country. Foreign countries don’t have streets paved of gold. Not everyone is a rich capitalist.”

But Yu also sees what encourages people here to leave, even though many other Chinese are poorer. “Why is it easier to trick coastal people into going? It’s a matter of concepts,” he said. “A lot of overseas Chinese have sent back money and built beautiful houses. The people here are influenced by this. In mountainous areas, they don’t know so much. Coastal people’s minds are more open. They have a more open spirit.”

The fever strikes even unlikely candidates. At a pier in Mawei, the main port of Fuzhou, vegetable seller Wu Luanjin, 45, was not the least bashful when an American struck up a conversation about people crossing to the United States.

“I’ll go with you!” he exclaimed, beaming under a woven bamboo hat. “I’ll do any work. I’ll go with you. OK? OK? You can’t earn much selling vegetables--per month it’s only about 400 to 500 yuan,” $40 to $50 at black-market rates.

Wu was joking; he knew the American would never agree to help him leave. He probably also knew that he was too old to embark on such a venture. But his desire seemed sincere.

People here have heard stories of how dangerous the passage to America can be, and how dismal life can become for people paying off debts to smugglers. But these worries do not dim the allure of fabulously high wages.

“If you go out, you can make big money,” said a man from urban Fuzhou. “In China, you can only make small money. In the United States, you can make $10,000 in a year! That’s 100,000 yuan.”

In 1992, the average per-capita annual income in urban areas of Fujian province was 2,087 yuan (about $209 at black-market rates), according to official statistics. Average per-capita annual cash income for peasants was 984 yuan ($98). Anyone who can earn money in America and spend it in Fujian is rich, by local standards.

While urban Fuzhou is rapidly moving into the modern era, most of Changle County is still a land of rice fields, onion farms, duck ponds and isolated villages. Mini-tractor-trailers ply dusty streets, providing the main form of heavy transport. Village shops differ little from those in China’s deep interior. Aside from movie theaters in some towns, there is virtually no sign of night life.

A few places have prospered from the fishing industry, or from government investment in new development zones. Some families with overseas relatives or their own successful businesses have built ostentatious homes with traditional roof lines in green or golden tiles that soar above the red-and-gray-brick boxes of their neighbors’. A few homes are even topped by satellite dishes. But the sight of new wealth arouses more dissatisfaction in those who feel left behind.

However determined they may be, the peasants and laborers are too unsophisticated to arrange their own illegal entry to the United States. They rely on the snakeheads who guarantee both passage to America and work on arrival.

Typically, smugglers’ fees include a down payment of 10,000 to 20,000 yuan ($1,000 to $2,000 at black-market rates), followed by payments totaling about $25,000 after reaching America. Sometimes relatives already in the United States pay the gangs; newcomers work to pay relatives. Otherwise, new arrivals must work more or less directly under the gangsters’ watchful eyes.

In recent months, under pressure from the United States and China’s central government, Fujian authorities have further stepped up efforts to crack the human smuggling rings.

In Changle County, where fading slogans on village walls praise socialism or urge adherence to family planning policies, bright new signs have appeared. Red characters freshly painted on white backgrounds carry messages such as: “Severely attack the snakeheads and people who sneak away to foreign countries.”

In the town of Changle, the county seat, new police posters list the names and ages of six fugitive snakeheads accused of organizing illegal boat journeys to the United States or Japan.

“We call on the entire county’s government workers, broad masses and social organizations to actively rise up and cooperate with police agencies to capture these fugitive chief organizers of illegal sneaking away into foreign countries,” the posters declare.

But people gathered near one poster did not seem ready to rise up against smugglers. “It’s hard to say whether they’re bad people or good people,” a young man in a straw hat said. “Anyway, the snakeheads do it for money.”

People come back for visits, a young woman added, “after they get U.S. citizenship.”

Yu said Fujian has adopted a two-track policy to try to control human smuggling rings: tough punishment for the organizers and massive education efforts aimed at the public and those caught trying to leave.

Since 1989, when the problem emerged, police have arrested 214 suspected smugglers, Yu said. Fifty-five were convicted and sentenced to up to five years in labor camps; 58 others received less severe sentences, he said.

Earlier this month, Fuzhou authorities held a two-day meeting in Changle to discuss increased measures against smuggling. One result: More than 400 city workers were sent to the country to carry out propaganda work against the exodus.

While convicted smugglers are imprisoned, Yu said, people caught trying to leave or those sent back from other countries are not punished in labor camps. They are given strict lectures.

But many people throughout Fuzhou believe that thwarted emigrants may now be sent to labor camps or be forced to pay heavy fines. “If you’re caught trying to sneak out, you’re sent to labor camp for a year!” a Fuzhou taxi driver said.

How returnees are really treated remains a mystery. Yu said that up to now, about 3,400 people have been returned. “People have been sent back from Singapore, Mexico, the Marshall Islands and Honduras,” he said. “These are people who wanted to go to the United States. They got that far by boat.” These people have not been punished, Yu said.

Another provincial official said the widespread belief that would-be emigrants are being punished may be a misunderstanding about the difference in how smugglers and emigrants are treated.

In Changle, a young driver of a mini-tractor-trailer said he had slipped out of China and spent 20 days in Russia. “But I couldn’t find a snakehead, so I came back. I wanted to go to America.”

Even with stepped-up efforts, Yu said, with the organizers based overseas it is impossible for China to control the smuggling problem solely on its own.

The roots of the problem can be traced to 1978-79, when relations between China and Vietnam deteriorated, culminating in a brief border war.

More than 100,000 ethnic Chinese refugees who fled Vietnam were resettled in Fujian province. In 1989, a group of them hired boats from coastal residents for illegal passage to Japan. Because they were considered Vietnamese refugees--rather than Chinese--some were allowed to stay. “It became big news here--Vietnamese refugees were allowed to settle in Japan,” Yu said.

With the route and method established, local Chinese began trying to reach Japan, hoping to work illegally for much more than they could earn in China.

This activity roughly coincided with the June 4, 1989, crackdown on the Tian An Men Square pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing. In response to China’s repressive actions, the U.S. government announced that Chinese already in the United States could stay indefinitely.

In immigration terms, that meant that if Chinese citizens managed to sneak into the United States, they could claim to have been there since before the crackdown and stood a good chance of ultimately winning legal residence. They also could claim they had suffered political persecution or that violations of China’s strict family planning requirements had made them liable for punishment.

Further, since the Tian An Men Square crackdown, the idea of deporting Chinese citizens has been so politically explosive in America that, in practice, it generally has not happened.

This point has not been lost on the people of Changle, nor on the smugglers.

“I don’t rule out the possibility that there have been some individual cases where people who went by airplane have been returned,” Yu said. “But there has never been a large group sent back (from the U.S. mainland). I think the people organizing this know what U.S. laws they can make use of so that people can stay. I’m sure they are very clear on this.”

* TIJUANA GATEWAY: Mexico becomes a clandestine corridor used by smugglers. A3