Graham Earnshaw was the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1980 to 1984, and he’s been looking through his clippings, which seem to prove both that China has changed completely and also that China has stayed exactly the same. This spring and summer, Danwei will be publishing a series of these reports from the past. This is today’s resurrected item:
Fiancée of Diplomat “Hooligan”
November 26 1981
By Graham Earnshaw in Peking
The Chinese authorities have accused the jailed fiancée of a French diplomat in Peking of being a hooligan, according to the China News Service.
The service said Miss Li Shuang, 25, an artist sentenced recently to two years “re-education through labour”, was “involved in hooligan activities on a big scale and committed crimes against public decency.”
Miss Li lived with M. Emmanuel Bellefroid, the French diplomat, for two months before being arrested. The Chinese authorities have refused to specify the charges against her. M. Bellefroid has since left China.
Editors note: Hooligan crime (流氓罪) was a crime that could be applied to any offense against public morals or political correctness, ranging from sex with a foreigner to homosexuality to any kind of subversive behavior. The crime was taken off the books in 1997.