Economic Reform

BEIJING -- Ask old Qiu Liuren at the market how it's going and you get an unexpected earful."We ordinary people can hardly keep up. Inflation's eating us up at both ends. The customers are cutting back, and we're not able to buy as much either. It's tough right now," said the 62-year-old peanut vendor.Those are words to make a good mandarin cringe. A year since the government clamped economic controls on China's runaway economy, inflation is almost as strong as ever. Add to that gripes about corruption and rising unemployment, and you begin to understand why the government fears that citizens are being pushed too far, too fast by its program of economic reforms.

THE MEETING of the People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia, starting today, is the last chance President Suharto has to commit his nation to reforms to end its economic crisis, meet International Monetary Fund requirements, diminish his family's stranglehold on the national wealth and promise the people a better future. There is scant hope that he will.When the assembly winds up March 11, "electing" the military dictator to a sixth term as president and presumably his anti-reform crony, B. Jusuf Habibie, as vice president, it may be too late.

This month, Brazilian voters re-elected President Fernando Henrique Cardoso despite the certain knowledge that he was determined to make their economic lives tougher. The hemisphere's economic future might be riding on Brazil's short-term misery.Before the voting, public opinion polls revealed the stunning paradox: As expectations about the Brazilian currency's exchange rate worsened, support for Cardoso increased.Voters' deeper fear was of his main opponent, a labor leader universally known as Lula.

MOSCOW - President Vladimir V. Putin named his United Nations envoy as Russia's new foreign minister yesterday in a pre-election Cabinet reorganization that slashed the number of ministries but kept key market-oriented reformers in their posts. U.N. Ambassador Sergei V. Lavrov replaced Igor S. Ivanov, who was named head of Russia's Security Council, seen as a less influential position. The reshuffle signals that economic reforms will probably accelerate, while foreign policy will still be run by Putin and implemented by a seasoned professional diplomat, analysts said.

BEIJING -- A year and a half ago, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping toured southern China to launch his largely successful political drive to accelerate the country's shift to a market economy.Last week, Zhu Rongji, China's chief vice premier, embarked on his own tour of southern China -- a trip aimed at trying to rein in the financial excess, inflation and speculation that have risen along with the economic boom set loose by Mr. Deng.The one-two punch could broadly foreshadow the long-term course of Chinese politics.

BEIJING -- One of the biggest guessing games here ended yesterday when the Chinese Communist Party announced that it would open its most important meeting in years Sept. 12.In most countries, such information would have been a matter of public record months, if not years, ahead of the event. But until yesterday, the timing of China's 15th Party Congress was something of a state secret.The congress -- which is part convention, part national election -- is the first since the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

SOFIA, Bulgaria -- In the hospitals, doctors have stopped performing all but emergency surgery because they don't have anesthesia or the money to buy it." 'Urgency' becomes a very relative term," says Dr. Slavyan Nikolov, a surgeon whose salary at First City Hospital is $10 a month. "There is no medicine. People without money have no options."The same diagnosis applies to all of Bulgaria, where a critical economic situation and political unrest have almost paralyzed the country. There is hyper-inflation, which means that Bulgarians without hard currency can barely afford to eat. The banking system has collapsed.

Talk about a fun-filled two weeks in Martha's Vineyard. I wouldn't want to get the cabin after them; I hope they swept up all the glass.The Russians have only managed one economic reform so far, deciding to perforate the ruble and put it on a roll.First a relaxing two weeks with the wife and now meetings with Boris Yeltsin on the Island of the Damned. What are they going to do, share tips? Biggest meeting of the titans since Brooke Shields and Andre Agassi.Pub Date: 9/03/98@

The wisdom of holding the next superpower summit hostage to completion of a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty might be on the verge of being confirmed. Now that President Bush has asserted explicitly that START "must be finished up" before he makes a long-delayed journey to Moscow, a high-powered Soviet delegation is in Washington ostensibly to do just that.Presumably this delegation, chaired by Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh, has more authority to negotiate than has been the case in recent months.

LONDON -- British officials said yesterday that a response to Soviet interest in having President Mikhail S. Gorbachev invited to July's economic summit here would have to come jointly from the Group of Seven industrial nations.They suggested it was too early for a formal decision on the Soviet leader's attendance at the meeting of the West's richest nations.More time was needed to assess the Kremlin's commitment to economic reforms and their success, said an aide to Prime Minister John Major.