Mainland China

Diana Chin Hsu, a journalist, best-selling author and the widow of Chiang Kai-shek's secret police chief, died Wednesday of stomach cancer at her home in New York. She was 77.Ms. Hsu covered Japan's war against China during World War II, then escaped to Taiwan with the youngest three of her eight children shortly after Mao Tse-tung's Communist takeover.Her husband, Mo Tze Shin, was executed by the Communists in 1951, and Ms. Hsu's book, "Mao Tse-tung Killed My Husband," was a best seller in Asia.

Scientists concluding a two-day meeting in Geneva said yesterday that the majority of SARS outbreaks around the world have been contained and that containment measures should prove effective in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. "The message coming out of this meeting is that the measures are working," said Dr. Michael J. Ryan, coordinator of the World Health Organization's Global Alert and Response program. "We have seen the number of secondary cases dropping systematically in all of the countries to a point where we now believe, in the majority of cases, we are now seeing the epidemics coming to an end," Ryan said.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - The World Health Organization extended its warning yesterday against unnecessary travel to Taiwan's beleaguered capital city, along with the mainland Chinese areas of Tianjin and Inner Mongolia as the SARS epidemic continued to inflict economic and social damage across Asia. The new WHO warning expanded the alert beyond the current advisories against travel to the Chinese areas of Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangdong province and Shanxi province, which have been the focus of the outbreak of the pneumonia-like severe acute respiratory syndrome.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Most of Taiwan's SARS cases can be traced to one hospitalized man whose lung ailment was misdiagnosed for five days, the head of Taiwan's Center for Disease Control said yesterday. That patient, a laundry worker, caused the explosive growth in Taiwan's cases that began April 21 and forced the closing of Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital and three other hospitals, said Dr. Tzay-Jinn Chen, the center's director general. Chen said he would fine the hospital about $10,000 for misdiagnosing the patient's disease for five days and for failing to report its error for two days longer.

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The party that has ruled Taiwan for the last 45 years lost an election yesterday for control of Taiwan's capital city to an opposition party advocating that the island declare formal independence from China.But the long-dominant Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, retained the governorship of Taiwan, thereby offering support to Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui and his policy of gradual rapprochement with mainland China.The Kuomintang, whose leaders fled China in 1949 after being defeated by the Communists, also kept control of the country's second city, Kaohsiung.

WASHINGTON -- Chinese leaders have told the United States that they plan to take a "wait-and-see" attitude toward Taiwan's new president and that they are open to resuming dialogue with the estranged island, a senior administration official said yesterday. The Chinese assurances, if borne out, come at a crucial time for the administration, which is scrambling to put relations with China on an even keel before President Clinton leaves office and to persuade Congress to upgrade economic relations with China.

HONG KONG - A dozen former SARS patients here who were thought to have suffered relapses turned out to have other medical problems, health officials said yesterday, as the rate of new cases of the illness being reported around the world slowed. The Hong Kong Hospital Authority caused international alarm Wednesday when it said that 12 patients who seemed to have recovered from severe acute respiratory syndrome had been readmitted to hospitals after apparently relapsing. But Dr. Liu Shao-haei, a senior manager of the authority, said at a news conference yesterday that although some of the patients had developed fevers or other symptoms of the illness after their discharge from a hospital, not one turned out to be sick again with SARS.

THE REST of the world may be comfortable recognizing two Chinas, but both Beijing's communist rulers and their Kuomintang nationalist enemies on Taiwan believe there is only one China. And Taiwan is an integral part of it. The trouble is the once-powerful Kuomintang, which fled the mainland in 1949 when the communists took over, lost power in Taiwan as well two years ago. And the island's increasingly powerful indigenous population doesn't want to be part of China; it is striving for independence.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has decided to grant a visa to the president of Taiwan, senior administration officials said yesterday. The action would break a 16-year-old policy and risk retaliation by China, which vehemently opposes the move on the ground that the United States has no official relations with Taiwan.The officials said Mr. Clinton had decided to risk a run-in with China by admitting President Lee Teng-hui because of intense pressure from the Republican-dominated Congress.

John Service, 89, an expert on China who was forced out of the State Department during the McCarthy era and later cleared, died Wednesday in Oakland, Calif. Mr. Service was the first of the "old China hands" to face accusations that a pro-Soviet conspiracy in the State Department helped lead to the takeover of mainland China by Communists who overthrew the Nationalist government in 1949.Lili St. Cyr, 80, the blond bombshell stripper from the 1940s and 1950s who was credited with inspiring Marilyn Monroe to become a screen sex symbol, died Jan. 29 in Los Angeles, her family announced yesterday.