Week of June 14, 2002

After another disappointing loss to Turkey, 3-0, China's World Cup soccer coach Bora Milutinovic stepped down, but vowed to continue on with his coaching career after leading his fifth team to the World Cup finals.

Before returning home to a scoreless World Cup debut, the China Sports Daily said Milutinovic had lost his immortal status in China after the team's poor performance record. However, many fans still praised his effort to introduce young blood into the team despite resistance from conservative soccer officials. Milutinovic took over the team in January 2000 from a British coach and found a team suffering from low morale, who regarded playing soccer as a political duty. He thus introduced the new policy of 'happy soccer,' which was quite different to the authoritarian and strict training style previously practiced. "Our team is very young and I am sure they have a future," Milutinovic said. "It was good to make the first step to the finals. It would have been nice to have gotten a second step."

 

As incidents of North Koreans entering foreign missions increase, China has issued a notice to all foreign embassies requesting they hand over any further North Korean seeking refuge, a foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jiancho said. "Once they find people illegally breaking into the embassy and consulates, staff members at the missions should notify the foreign ministry's consular affairs department and also hand over the trespassers to China's police."

Currently China is negotiating with Canadian and South Korea officials who have a total of 20 North Koreans seeking asylum holed up in their embassies. Though China has so far allowed 45 such asylum seekers to leave China for South Korea, via a third country, Beijing has recently taken a hard line against future episodes. Barbed wire barricades and access to roads alongside most diplomatic mission compounds have been set up to prevent further attempts to enter illegally.

On Thursday, South Korean consulate staff fought with Chinese security forces outside a Beijing security post after Chinese forces entered the consulate in order to seize two North Korean, a father and son, asylum seekers. The father was taken, but the son was not, making the total number of North Koreans in the South Korean embassy to 18.

 

Provinces along the Yangtze river basin suffered heavy blows after torrential rains caused flooding that has killed some 205 people and affected more than 36 million others in Shaanxi, Sichuan, Hubei and Guizhou provinces. Some 20 inches of rain fell over a two day period triggering mud and landslides that covered roads and railway and damaged thousands of homes.

Premier Zhu Rongji has urged rural areas to stay on alert for additional severe flooding later this summer that could be worse than the disastrous 1998 floods, which killed more than 4,000 people. Zhu also called on officials to step up reinforcement projects and storing sufficient flood control equipment.