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Document 2 of 3.


Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company  
The New York Times

July 7, 1997, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 445 words

HEADLINE: A Parade Brings Pride and Protest

BYLINE:  By FRANK BRUNI 

BODY:
   In a procession that was short on visual flourishes but long on ethnic pride, thousands of Chinese-Americans marched through the heart of Manhattan yesterday to celebrate the return of Hong Kong last week to Chinese rule.

Their numbers -- which one senior police officer estimated at 10,000 -- suggested both the degree to which many recent Chinese immigrants feel a close affinity to events in China and their measure of joy in reclaiming Hong Kong.

"Chinese people felt humiliated about Hong Kong," said King Liu, president of the Chinese Student Association at City College. He said the long British rule of Hong Kong was an international insult, and its end was both a restoration of justice and a vote of confidence in a Chinese Government that is more trustworthy than in the past.

That sentiment was not shared by all Chinese-Americans, some of whom joined a group of about 100 protesters on a traffic island in Times Square, two blocks north of the parade's terminus at West 41st Street and Seventh Avenue.

The protesters complained of lingering human-rights abuses in China, cried out for democratic reforms and said that the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule simply meant that more people would come under the control of a corrupt, tyrannical system.

"Six million more people are under bloody Communist rule," said Shengde Lian, an alumnus of the student protests that were violently quashed in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.

Ni Yuxian, the former dissident who is now chairman of an organization called Party for Freedom and Democracy in China, yelled hoarsely at the parade through the makeshift megaphone of a rolled poster.

"We want to show Americans that not all Chinese are happy that Hong Kong is back to China," he said.

Most of the marchers yesterday said they believed that the Chinese Government would honor its pledges to let Hong Kong operate as an autonomous zone within China and to leave Hong Kong's free-market system and way of life largely unaltered.

Most participants belonged to trade associations, student groups or civic organizations. A few groups came from as far away as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

The marchers began at West 58th Street and Broadway and proceeded south. There were more than a dozen floats and a few marching bands, but the two-hour procession was dominated by everyday people in everyday dress.

Some marchers carried bouquets of freshly cut flowers, while others waved the red Chinese flag. But the predominant visual motif, sewn onto white caps and printed on white T-shirts, was a red flower with five spiraling, pinwheel-like petals that is the symbol of the new Hong Kong.


GRAPHIC: Photos: Thousands of Chinese-Americans marched in a parade yesterday celebrating the return of Hong Kong to China. David Peng, 9, watched from the side, draped over a barricade and wearing a souvenir cap. Demonstrators using makeshift megaphones shout out their opposition to the parade's theme, citing civil rights abuses by China. (Photographs by Frances Roberts for The New York Times)      

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: July 7, 1997



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