Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 4, 1995                   TAG: 9509060113
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BEIJING

Not necessarily at the conference itself, where there's a fair amount of preaching to the choir. But probably in the stores, the restaurants and on the streets of Beijing.

China, it seems, has a worldwide reputation for impoliteness. Service with a smile is not the prevailing motto.

It is even common for those seeking assistance in, say, a department store to be glared at by clerks and told: ``Can't you see I'm busy? What do you have eyes for?''

China's infamously bad-tempered clerks, waiters, etc., are said to make a New York City taxi driver seem like Miss Manners.

This would be a gross overgeneralization and stereotype, of course. We have no more grounds to believe such aspersions than we would have to draw broad conclusions from a visitor's anecdotes about friendly natives.

Chinese authorities themselves, however, have shown concern.

In anticipation of the women's conference, which is expected to draw some 30,000 visitors to Beijing, Chinese officials reportedly ordered workers in state-run stores and other facilities to show more civility when dealing with customers. Something along the lines of: "You will be pleasant!"

Authorities were also cracking down on cab drivers who routinely overcharge visitors - if the drivers deign to take them where they want to go.

Of course, with China moving to a more market-oriented economy, customers eventually will come somewhere closer to first than they have in the past. Economic interest tends to drive behavior where official fiats can't.

This takes time, however. Anything approaching Southern hospitality will have to wait. Maybe a decade or two. This week, the Virginians and others will have to make do.

Which is OK. Enhanced politeness, after all, is not the purpose of the conference. Nor is the purpose improved Sino-Western relations.

The gathering needs to impress on China and other countries that the world demands an end to human-rights abuses - so many of them sanctioned by governments, so many of them directed at women.

These are the so-called cultural practices that can no longer be tolerated. It is not ill-mannered or insulting to condemn them - including the hosts' practices - loudly and in public.