Date: August 18,1995

By CHARLES HUTZLER

Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) -- It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Chinese leaders, their international image bloodied by the military assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in 1989, lobbied hard to hold 1995's U.N.-backed international conference on women.

What they didn't bargain on was a meeting of private advocacy groups. In June 1992, three months after Beijing was awarded the conference, the groups achieved such prominence at the environmental summit in Rio De Janeiro their presence was assured at all future U.N. policy-making conferences.

The Non-governmental Organizations Forum, an often boisterous and chaotic event held concurrently with the conferences, seemed destined to run afoul of authoritarian China.

True to form, Beijing has responded by trying to impose order on the forum, which opens Aug. 30, five days before the U.N. conference.

The strategy has spoiled a time China's leaders hoped they would be picking up international accolades and turning the acclaim into greater popularity at home. "If the conference is well-conducted, then the whole world will see the superiority of our country's form of openness and reform and of socialism," Beijing Daily quoted Mayor Li Qiyan as telling city government officials last month.

The government reworked its plans for the forum after witnessing the U.N. Poverty Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark in March, a Chinese source at a U.N. office in Beijing said. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she said delegates were appalled at forum protests, some by naked protesters, and at the overall chaos.

"We heard the delegation was somewhat shocked by the ability to hold demonstrations and there were a number of demonstrations," said John Ackerly, a lobbyist for the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet who attended the forum.

Li and other members of the poverty summit delegation did not reply to written and telephone inquiries seeking comment.

A few weeks after Copenhagen, the Chinese committee handling conference preparations moved the forum from an arena conveniently located in eastern Beijing to a half-finished site in suburban Huairou, an hour's drive from the U.N. conference.

Although Beijing blamed the change on "structural problems" at the Workers' Gymnasium -- and the arena is closed -- groups advocating Tibetan independence, human and gay rights and other causes the Chinese government dislikes believe the intent was to isolate them.

Reinforcing those suspicions, China, Iran and other countries around the same time attempted to deny accreditation to dozens of groups. In the end, China kept out Tibetan and Taiwanese groups. One organization highly critical of Chinese rule, New York-based Human Rights in China, slipped through.

Some 35,000 people have applied to attend the forum. Chinese officials expect about 22,000 -- all Huairou's meeting facilities can accommodate.

No one knows how many will actually make it. Activist organizations in the United States have complained that Chinese consulates have been slow to issue visas.

Those who do come have been issued a warning.

"Actions that violate Chinese law certainly will not be tolerated," Huairou county chief Zhao Yuhe told foreign reporters last week. Those include demonstrations, which are not allowed without permits that are nearly impossible to obtain.

Chinese leaders are also making sure Beijing residents help the forum and conference go smoothly.

Offices and factories have called meetings to tell employees about the conference. City residents are being told, in the words of a Beijing Daily article, to "be well-prepared, warmly, politely treat the guests, do business in a civilized way and consciously protect traffic order and safety."

Police have pushed prostitutes, peddlers and migrants, mostly poor peasants, off the streets. More than 10 convicted criminals were executed specifically, Beijing Daily said, to preserve order during the conference. China is less worried about the performance of its own supposed activist organizations.

One of them, the Chinese People's Association Striving for Peace and Disarmament, is arranging several forum discussion groups. An association official noted that the group is under the supervision of the Communist Party's Central Committee.

Chinese delegates to a forum discussion group on forced prostitution during World War II have been instructed not to say anything, said the official, who declined to be identified. If they must, she said, they are to repeat the Foreign Ministry's position.