Word: premier
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Advice for NATO-and a warning to Hua's critics back home On a dingy street in a working-class arrondissement of Paris, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Mayor Jacques Chirac and China's Chairman and Premier Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng) climbed to the second floor of the newly repainted Hotel de Godefroy. There they peered briefly into Room 16, where nearly 60 years ago the late Chou En-lai met with fellow Chinese students to thrash out many of the ideas that led eventually to the Communist takeover of the world's most...
...minute flight to the Esplanade des Invalides, where 150 mounted members of the elite Republican Guard were drawn up in splendid array. There was an obligatory wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe, a succulent lunch of salmon and duckling hosted by Premier Raymond Barre (Hua demonstrated his mastery of Western cutlery) and a surprise meeting with Henry Kissinger, who was in town publicizing his memoirs. At week's end, Hua visited the Breton cities of Rennes and Brest to inspect a naval base, an electronics factory and farms, and then departed...
Another purpose of Hua's call was to rebuild the trade links with industrial nations that have weakened since the Peking Politburo concluded that the rapid "four modernizations" program of Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping exceeded China's capacity to pay for it. In the past eight months, Peking has canceled or postponed billions of dollars worth of orders from Japanese, American and European companies. The retrenchment has proved particularly disturbing to France, which ranked as China's fourth largest trading partner in 1976. By last year it had slipped to eighth place and prospects for improvement diminished...
...stability can be traced to lurching shifts in leadership that involve the country's two top politicians, Bülent Ecevit, head of the Republican People's Party, and Suleyman Demirel, leader of the Justice Party. Last week, in a routine that has now become alarmingly familiar, Premier Ecevit's government was forced to step down after losing its majority in a by-election for five seats in the lower house of parliament. Demirel, his arch rival, will now attempt to try to form a new government...
Since January 1974, Ecevit and Demirel have alternated as Premier half a dozen times. The two-man game of musical chairs has done nothing to resolve the country's protracted economic woes, which include a 70% inflation rate, 20% unemployment and shortages of everything from coffee (Turkish coffee is available only on the black market) to diesel oil. Moreover, religious and ethnic feuds have led to a frightening increase in violence. In the past 21 months, 2,100 people have been killed, most of them in confrontations between left-and right-wing extremists...