RESTRICTED #
- 5 -
A8.
At a press conference in Peking on 15 October, Minister of Justice Xiao Yang said that China had 1.2m people in prison,
of which only 3,600 were serving sentences for
counter-revolutionary offences. Xiao said that
counter-revolutionary crime meant behaviour aimed at toppling
the State authority and socialist system and threatening
national security. He added that the abolition of the offence
of counter-revolutionary activity was under discussion but
declined to say when a decision would be made about this (HK
Standard 16 Oct).
A9.
Wang Tao, President of the China National Petroleum
Corporation, told a press conference in Peking that his corporation was trying to persuade the government to relax control on the price of oil. He said that despite adjustments already made the official price was still unrealistically low,
the weighted average of the official price and the state set price being equal to one-third of the international level (Beijing Review 27 Sept).
Guangdong
B1.
According to a Hong Kong Commercial Daily report (22
Sept) on Zhu Rongji's visit to Guangdong in mid-September, local officials were told that the Party Centre and State Council had decided that from 1994 onwards Guangdong and other provinces which had hitherto implemented the "financial reponsibility system" (of which there are two kinds, with provinces either paying a fixed amount or a proportion of their annual financial income to the centre) would go over to a tax apportionment system. This would mean that income from various taxes (eg
product tax, value added tax, unified industrial and commercial tax) would be divided between the centre and the localities,
although details remained to be worked out between the centre
G.F. 324
RESTRICTED
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.