YAO SAYS CHINA TO RESHUFFLE LEADERSHIP BY OCTOBER
A top level political reshuffle
following the January removal of Communist Party chief Hu
Yaobang will take place at a party conference later this year,
Vice-Premier Yao Yilin said Saturday.
    Yao told a news conference Zhao Ziyang would go on holding
the jobs of Premier and acting Communist Party chief until the
13th party congress, due to be held by October.
    Yao gave the news conference in the Great Hall of the
People along with Vice-Premiers Li Peng and Tian Jiyun, the two
main contenders to succeed Zhao as Premier.
    Western diplomats say Li, a technocrat who studied in the
Soviet Union, is the most likely successor.
    Li appeared to go out of his way to deny any special
sympathy with Moscow. In answer to questions, he said he had
never met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev when both studied in
the Soviet Union in the 1950s and had since met him on only two
occasions, both of which had been reported in the news media.
    Asked what China could learn fromn the Soviet economic
system, Li said the main lesson was to avoid excessive
centralism and rigid control over economic activities.
    "We do not totally reject the planned economy, but we are
opposed to rigid control in the planned economy which hampers
initiative and enthusiasm of the grassroots enterprise," Li
said.
    On Taiwan, Yao repeated Chinese policy of not ruling out
force to regain the nationalist-ruled island, but did not
repeat an official statement earlier this week that the goal
was to achieve reunification by the year 2000. "As for
reunification, it is our hope that it will be achieved through
peaceful means, but we have not eliminated the possibility of
taking non-peaceful means to achieve that process," he said.
 REUTER
