Peking curtails foreign contacts

The arrest of a young Chinese woman engaged to a French diplomat seems to be another example of official efforts to severely curtail unauthorized Chinese contacts with foreigners.

Monitor correspondent Takashi Oka reports that Li Shuang, the fiancee of Emmanuel Bellefroid, has been held by the Public Security Bureau ever since her arrest Sept. 9.

The two were to be married here early in October and then leave for Hong Kong , where he is to take up a new diplomatic assignment.

Mr. Bellefroid said that he had received all the necessary official authorizations to marry Mill Li. He is believed to be the first foreign diplomat to have been given such authorizations.

But during his absence in Hong Kong early this month, Mill Li was arrested by security agents at the gateway to the diplomatic compound in which Bellefroid resides.

Mill Li, who had been living in Bellefroid's apartment, had gone to the gate to meet her sister. Security agents pushed her out of the gate and into a waiting jeep, which sped away.

The only official explanation so far is that Miss Li was taken in for questioning because she was illegally living in a compound reserved for foreigners.

She was clearly in violation of the ban on unauthorized entry into foreign compounds, and many observers here believe that one reason for the arrest was to discourage other Chinese from following her example by becoming too intimate with foreigners.