Beijing Women Speak Their Minds : Conference: Despite censorship, U.N. forum has an impact, inspiring hope, envy and anger.

When First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a major speech at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women here last week, it rated only one line at the bottom of an inside-page story in the People’s Daily.

“The wife of the American President also spoke,” the official Communist Party newspaper reported.

Although China is hosting the world’s largest gathering of women, authorities have severely limited news coverage and restricted access to the conference for most of the civilian population.

The effect has been to create an isolated island of democratic debate and feminist ideology in the heart of the world’s last great Communist country.

Critics charge that China wanted the international prestige of holding the once-a-decade women’s conference but did not want the dangerous virus of free speech and debate that comes with it to seep out into the population.

Despite the restrictions, however, woman-on-the-street interviews conducted by The Times over the past week reveal that many women are watching the conference quietly and hopefully from the sidelines, gleaning what they can from the scant coverage in the official press.

“China is a fairly isolated country,” said 18-year-old Liu Jingzhi, who sells fruit juice from a stand on busy Wangfujing Street, the capital’s trendiest shopping strip. “But just holding the conference here is good and helps to improve women’s condition.”

Liu, who is unmarried, said she wants to see equality in marriages so that “women will not be ruled by their husbands.”

Meanwhile, legions of security forces form a tight seal around the conference meeting site. Neighborhood watch committees have been put on special alert to monitor and report any contacts with foreigners. Reporters and delegates are often tailed by security agents when they leave the Asian Games Village site of the conference.

“I think many Beijingers are afraid to go out during the conference,” said 29-year-old Yan Shouchui, a Beijing teacher and martial arts performer. “Many folks have been told to stay at home, and all the neighborhood-watch grannies on the street make everyone nervous.”

Men in the capital complain mainly that the conference has clogged traffic. Beijing women, however, often see the conference in a more positive light.

Wang Yunzhi, 56, and Jiao Qiaolian, 41, sell ice cream from a sidewalk booth near the sprawling Beijing Hotel.

Every day they watch as foreign women wearing delegate badges from the women’s conference walk past, stopping occasionally to buy an ice cream bar.

“They all look so strong and successful in their lives,” Jiao said enviously. Jiao, a native of Inner Mongolia who met her husband during China’s turbulent Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and moved with him to the capital, said she makes 400 yuan (about $50) a month from her part-time job in the ice cream booth.

“I would love to go to the conference, but it’s just not possible,” she said. “The key thing is that women have more opportunity to be educated. Women need to be better than men in order to get ahead.”

Wang, her partner in the ice cream booth and the mother of two teen-age sons, said she hopes that, “after the conference, the situation for women will improve.”

Echoing the call for economic empowerment of women that is a major theme of the conference, Wang said she resents inequities in pay between men and women.

“I earn less than my husband. If I have a fight with my husband, I have nowhere to go because I have no resources.”

Not everyone interviewed agreed that the conference has been a good thing for Beijing.

“You really want to know?” asked Hu Qing, 26, a college-educated homemaker. “I hate the conference. It’s brought lots of trouble to ordinary people’s lives.

“The traffic is worse. Many roads are blocked, and all the restaurants, bars, karaokes and discos close before midnight. The streets are full of police who think everybody on the street is a troublemaker. I don’t know what’s wrong with this country. If it can’t handle such an event, why did it ask to host it?”

But most of those interviewed agreed with Yan Shouchui, the teacher and martial arts expert.

“Any event that helps foreigners to understand China, and vice versa, is fine by me,” Yan said.