BEIJING has allowed former People's Daily chief editor Hu Jiwei, a noted ''bourgeois-liberal'' intellectual, to go to the United States as a visiting scholar.
A rebel Marxist philosopher, Zhang Xianyang, has also been permitted to go to Paris for a research fellowship.
However, several dissidents, including legal expert Yu Haocheng, still have difficulty leaving the country even for short-term scholarly activities.
Mr Hu, who lost his position as a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in 1990, said yesterday he would leave on Sunday for a two-month stint at the University of Minnesota.
This is the first time the 76-year-old journalist has been allowed to go abroad since mid-1989, when he was accused of ''negating party leadership''.
Mr Hu said: ''I have been invited to do research on media theories at Minnesota. My application [for leaving China] took two months.'' The newsman, who had incurred the ire of party hardliners for advocating radical media reforms, said yesterday he was not aware of the fate of the proposed journalism and publishing laws, which had been delayed since the mid-1980s.
Sources in Beijing said Mr Zhang, a member of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), had recently been allowed to take up a six-month fellowship at a leading French institute on international relations.
