TNAG-1019-FCO40-1269-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China-1981 — Page 64

свии

CONFIDENTIAL

UNITED STATES GOVERNMEN

DATE:

REPLY TO

ATTN OF:

April 17, 1981

POL:

Harold E. Meinheit

SUBJECT:

Bio Note

memorandum

Zhou Yizhi, Chief Correspondent (Hong Kong), People's Daily

TO:

The Files

(The following biographic information was obtained during a luncheon on April 16, 1981, my first meeting with Zhou. Others present were Liang Ping, a correspondent for People's Daily, and Professor Daniel Tretiak of Hong Kong University. Zhou and I spoke in Vietnamese. Zhou and Liang are the first People's Daily correspondents to be assigned, to Hong Kong.)

Zhou said that he was born in Hanoi and that he is 60 years old. (Comment: Zhou had previously indicated to a member of the political section that he considered his ancestral home to be Xiamen in Fujian province.) He attended university first in Guangzhou in the early 1940's and then moved to Kunming where he studied foreign languages and literature at Southwestern Associated Universities in 1945 and 1946. He said he returned to Vietnam for a few months in 1946 and then moved to Beijing where he lived until moving to Hong Kong about a month ago.

In 1950, Zhou returned to Vietnam on assignment for People's Daily. He said he traveled with the Viet Minh for several months and reported on the Viet Minh border campaign, which resulted in the first major Viet Minh victories against the French. In response to my question, he said that he had known Wei Guoqing at that time. (Comment: Wei, a member of the Politburo and now Director of the General Political Depart- ment of the PLA, headed the Chinese military advisory group to the Viet Minh,)

While in Beijing, Zhou said he spent much of his time following Vietnam and that he wrote editorials on Indochina for People's Daily. In response to my question, Zhou said he had not been able to meet and interview Vietnamese Political Bureau defector Hoang Van Hoan in private but had attended Hoan's press conference with other journalists. Zhou claimed that access to Hoan was very restricted for reasons of "security".

In Hong Kong, Zhou said he will devote much of his time to following Indochinese and ASEAN affairs and expressed interest in meeting local Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese who could discuss the Indochina situation. He asked if I had any contacts

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