The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MS. WARNER: And I'm Margaret Warner in Washington. After the News Summary, we go first to a debate over the administration's plan to increase the fees paid by gun dealers, then a documentary look at modern China's educational system, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala on the administration's new AIDS prevention ad campaign, and essayist Paul Hoffman on the genetic roots of violence. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Treasury Sec. Bentsen today proposed a new crime prevention package which includes higher licensing fees for gun dealers and stricter controls on who gets the dealer's license. Under the plan, fees would rise from $66 a year to 600. Bentsen said his intent was not to do away with legitimate gun dealers but to discourage those who buy a dealer's license in order to acquire guns at wholesale prices. He talked about the initiative which would be spearheaded by the Department's Bureau of Alcohol & Firearms at a Washington news conference.

LLOYD BENTSEN, Treasury Secretary: We have over 200 million guns in this country. Every 10 seconds a gun rolls off the assembly line, every 11 seconds we import another gun. Last week, a plane landed in Columbus, Ohio, with 19,000 guns from Russia. One of our responsibilities at ATF is to license firearm dealers. Let me explain our problem. We have about 284,000 gun dealers, 284,000 gun dealers. We have more gun dealers than we have McDonald's restaurants in this country. Why so many? It's cheap, the best bargain in town.

MR. MacNeil: A spokesman for the National Rifle Association called the proposed fee increase excessive and certainly unjustified. We'll have more on this story later in the program. The man charged with a shooting rampage aboard a Long Island commuter train in December has been deemed competent to stand trial by two court-appointed doctors. The findings were presented today to a county judge. Thirty-four-year-old Colin Ferguson has been charged with killing six people and wounding fourteen with a semiautomatic gun. The judge held off a final decision about Ferguson's mental competence to allow the defense to present their own psychiatric evaluation. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: The Clinton administration is taking a new, more explicit approach to AIDS prevention. Today it launched a radio and TV advertising campaign to encourage young people to protect themselves against AIDS. Most of the ads promote condom use as the best protection. Others suggest abstaining from sex altogether. The ads were developed by the Centers for Disease Control, and they use far more explicit language and situations that earlier government-sponsored ads. Health & Human Services Sec. Donna Shalala announced the campaign at a Washington news conference.

DONNA SHALALA, Secretary, Health & Human Services: Let me be very clear; every new HIV infection is a needless infection. We have the knowledge and the technology to prevent the sexual spread of HIV. What we have lacked until now is the political will because we have been too timid to talk openly about the prevention tools that are really at our disposal. The new public service announcements that you're going to see this morning are just the most visible part of CDC's transformed and reinvigorated prevention program.

MS. WARNER: Shalala said the four major broadcast networks and many cable outlets and radio stations have agreed to run the commercials. We'll have a Newsmaker interview with Sec. Shalala later in the program.

MR. MacNeil: A widespread winter storm struck the East Coast, the Ohio Valley, and the Appalachian states today. It was the second major storm to hit those areas in a week. It closed schools and disrupted air travel, including some major airports like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Amtrak's Northeast corridor service was suspended when ice pulled down power lines near New York City. Fifteen thousand passengers between Boston and Washington, D.C., were affected. By late morning, ten to twelve inches of snow had fallen in the Pittsburgh area, up to eighteen inches in Southeastern Ohio, and up to sixteen inches in areas of West Virginia, where the governor declared a state of emergency. Winter storm warnings are expected to remain in effect at least until tomorrow.

MS. WARNER: President Clinton today made his first visit to the Central Intelligence Agency. He praised the work the CIA is doing in the Post Cold War era and vowed to stand by the agency despite calls from some in Congress to scale it back. The President spoke to CIA employees in the lobby of the agency's Langley, Virginia, headquarters.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I look to you to warn me and through me our nation of the threats, to spotlight the important trends in the world, to describe dynamics that could affect our interests around the world. Those activities are particularly important now. We need to understand more than e do about the challenges of ethnic conflict, militant nationalism, terrorism, and the proliferation of all kinds of weapons. Accurate, reliable intelligence is the key to understanding each of these challenges, and without it, it is difficult to make good decisions in a crisis or in the long- term.

MS. WARNER: The CIA is the latest government agency to begin to search its files for information on secret government radiation tests on humans. A CIA spokesman said today the agency would look for all relevant information but that it was too soon to know if any files were missing. A special federal commission concluded in 1975 that the CIA had conducted such tests but that many of the files were destroyed.

MR. MacNeil: Rebels who launched an armed uprising in Mexico this weekend fled to the hills today. Many were seen pulling out of towns they had captured in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas. We have a report narrated by Vera Frankl of Worldwide Television News.

MS. FRANKL: Army troops are regaining control of San Cristobal De Las Casas, the southern town taken over by briefly by Indian rebels. One of the buildings recaptured was a town hall. The peasants took up arms in protest at the region's poverty and alleged government abuses. A television crew caught in the crossfire just escaped with their lives. Others were less fortunate. The government says more than 85 people have so far died. The actual figure is likely to be much higher. Estimates of the size of the rebel army vary wildly, however. This road leads to Ocosingo, where fighting continues. Government troops are pouring into the region. A fifth of the Mexican army has been mobilized to put down the rebellion. Most areas are back under government control. Security in San Cristobal De Las Casas, itself, is tight. Troops are everywhere to be seen in the city but pockets of resistance remain. Here and elsewhere the fight for control is by no means over. Rebel demands have yet to be met. President Carlos Salinas De Gortari has appealed for a truce but a former governor captured by the rebels has yet to be released.

MR. MacNeil: The death toll from a bloody prison riot and fire in Venezuela was put at 106 today. The violence took place yesterday at the Maracaibo National Jail, and was the worst prison riot in Venezuelan history. Many of the bodies removed from the prison today were mutilated or burned beyond recognition. The riot reportedly began when Indian inmates attacked a group of non- Indians to avenge a murder.

MS. WARNER: The Serb bombardment of Sarajevo continues. Nine more people were killed in today's shelling. The latest deaths come at the end of a twelve-day holiday truce in Bosnia in which more than one hundred people were killed. Meanwhile, there's growing discontent in the peacekeeping ranks. The commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force, Belgian General Francis Briquemont, has asked to be relieved of his command six months ahead of schedule. Briquemont has given interviews highly critical of U.N. diplomatic efforts to end the Bosnian fighting. And Canada's prime minister, Jean Cretiene, said today he might withdraw Canadian peacekeepers when their tour ends in April. A group of Canadian soldiers was recently subjected to a mock execution by Serb fighters.

MR. MacNeil: There was also more fighting in the capital of Afghanistan today. For the fourth straight day rival Islamic factions bombarded Kabul with rockets and long range missiles. At least 80 people have been killed and 1700 wounded since the fighting broke out on New Year's Day. The battles are the heaviest since Islamic groups ousted the Soviet-backed regime in 1992 and then quickly turned their guns on each other.

MS. WARNER: That ends our summary of the day's top stories. Ahead on the NewsHour, higher fees for gun dealers, education changes in modern China, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala on frank new AIDS prevention ads, and look at genes and violence. FOCUS - UPPING THE ANTE

MR. MacNeil: Up first tonight, new gun control proposals from the Clinton administration. Treasury Sec. Lloyd Bentsen today unveiled legislation aimed at driving more than 200,000 gun dealers out of business. The administration would do so by increasing the cost of a gun dealer's license. Presently, the annual fee fora firearms license is $10. Under the recently passed Brady Bill, it would rise to $66. The administration now wants it raised to $600. Will this curb the nearly four million guns that enter the marketplace annually and will it halt the violence in the nation's streets? We join that debate now with Dan Black, deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Richard Gardiner, legislative counsel for the National Rifle Association. Mr. Black, explain the reason behind the $600 fee.

MR. BLACK: Well, the reason behind the $600 fee is the government intent is to try to recoup the costs that we now expend in enforcing the Gun Control Act. And there's approximately 285,000 federally licensed firearms dealers today, and the $10 fee and the soon-to-be-enacted $66 fee doesn't in any way help pay for the cost to control the Gun Control Act.

MR. MacNeil: So by reducing the number of dealers, you'll make it easier to enforce and cheaper, is that the idea?

MR. BLACK: Well, certainly -- it certainly makes good sense to see that 285,000 dealers, if many of them are not actively engaged in the business, pay for the service that the government is providing in enforcing the Gun Control Act.

MR. MacNeil: Do you want to get rid of a lot of dealers because you believe that criminals are getting guns from those dealers?

MR. BLACK: No, that's not the case at all. There's certainly thousands of legitimate gun dealers out there, and our intent is not to get rid of them. The intent is, is that a gun dealer that's licensed by the federal government should be actively engaged in the business. That was the intent of the Gun Control Act. Many of these gun dealers buy and sell no weapons on an annual basis.

MR. MacNeil: So what is the harm in their having licenses?

MR. BLACK: Well, if you have limited resources like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms, and you're faced with 285,000 dealers, that doesn't allow us to focus on those dealers who actively buy and sell weapons in order to help maintain an effective tracing capability.

MR. MacNeil: So, Mr. Gardiner, why is the NRA against that if the reason for raising the fee is to cover the ATF's cost and help regulate dealers?

MR. GARDINER: Well, it shouldn't be up to the, the federal government to determine who can engage in a legitimate business and to say we don't think that people ought to be able to buy guns at lower prices. And the law enforcement cost ought to be borne by the public because, after all, this is supposed to be a public safety measure. And as a public safety measure, the general public ought to bear the cost. It's very unfair that a small group of law abiding citizens should be made to bear the cost of enforcing the entire federal law. And Sec. Bentsen seems to have made it very clear, and now Mr. Black, has made it even clearer, that this is not a crime prevention measure; this is simply a means of the government saying that we think that there ought to be fewer people out there engaging in a legitimate business so that people can't get good deals on purchasing firearms.

MR. MacNeil: Well, what do you mean by "good deals?" You mean that many people who have these licenses now use the licenses merely to buy firearms at wholesale?

MR. GARDINER: Oh, some people do that, and then they turn around and they sell them to their friends at discount prices, to their neighbors at discount prices. And it's this existence of these smaller dealers who engage in the business part-time, but do engage in a business, that keeps the price of firearms down and keeps the price of firearms down enough that the average citizen in this country can afford to buy firearms. I mean, we don't think that it's appropriate for the government to say, we want to raise the prices of firearms so that people who can't afford them will not be able to buy them. And that's really what this program is all about.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Mr. Black, is that the idea -- that you make firearms so expensive you'll limit the circulation of them?

MR. BLACK: No, that's not the idea at all. From all practical standpoints, there's probably over 200,000 of those federal firearms licensees that do not actively engage in the business. In fact, a recent survey that we did, 60 percent of the 285,000 had no inventory on hand. So these people are not in the business of buying and selling weapons, and the government is effectively -- the taxpayers are effectively subsidizing their hobby or their interest in obtaining a federal firearm.

MR. MacNeil: How are we as taxpayers subsidizing their hobby?

MR. BLACK: Well, if we -- to effectively enforce the Gun Control Act, we need to really focus on those dealers who actively buy and sell weapons. There's probably thirty to thirty-five thousand at the maximum that do so. And that means all the rest of them are on the records, are on the books. We have to do an investigation, and we still don't know which ones are actively dealing in firearms, or we don't know how to focus our enforcement efforts.

MR. MacNeil: So what do you say to that, Mr. Gardiner, that as taxpayers we are subsidizing these people who just want to buy -- who don't want to sell guns, they just want to buy them wholesale?

MR. GARDINER: Well, first of all, that's absurd. The taxpayer isn't subsidizing them in any way. They're not getting any benefits from the government. The government is not giving them any handouts, so to talk about subsidizing is to take a word and make it mean nothing at all. If there are people out there who are not engaging in the business, or conducting business, which is what the statute says, ATF can revoke their licenses. They have that authority right now. And if they believe they need more money to do that, they can go to Congress and get increased revenue. Indeed, the Brady Bill has already raised the fees for dealers. It went into effect last November. The fees are now $200. And ATF in a very short while going to be rolling in more money than they have ever seen. and if they can't enforce the existing law with that amount of money that's coming in, then they're doing something very, very wrong.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Black, why can't you do what he says and simply take -- revoke the licenses of those who aren't real dealers?

MR. BLACK: Well, again, we're talking upwards of 200,000 that may not be actively engaged in the business. It's an extremely expensive process to go through the administration procedure to revoke a license. That would cost far more, I believe, that the Congress or the American taxpayer should have to put up that put these people out of business, when they should not have been in the business in the first place.

MR. MacNeil: Well, I'm not sure I understand why they should be out of business if what they've done is quite legal and, and they're not selling guns to criminal, why should they be put out of business?

MR. BLACK: Well, again, that was Mr. Gardiner's suggestion if they're not actively engaged in the business that we should revoke the license. The Gun Control Act says that the purpose is to engage in the business for profit and livelihood. When an individual comes to ATF and asks for a firearms license, we take 'em on good faith that they intend to engage in the business. We, therefore, issue the license if they're not otherwise prohibited, and then it only comes after the fact that we find out that they have conducted no business.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Gardiner, I saw a comment somewhere today which prompts me to ask you this. Why should a license to sell firearms, and not just hunting weapons but like handguns and things, why should that be cheaper than it is to get a license say to sell alcohol in most states?

MR. GARDINER: There's a big difference. First of all -- and this is not very well known but ought to be -- firearms are the only product in this country where you can only buy them in the state of your residence. Alcohol or cars or gasoline or any of the other products I've heard mentioned you can go anywhere in the country and buy any one of those things, so there is more need to have licenses available to the sellers of firearms than there is for those other products. And, indeed, that was the whole point behind Congress's original effort to make the license readily available because they, they recognized that by making it a federal felony to go into another state and buy a firearm, you were going to create monopolies within the state. They wanted to make the licenses readily available. That's what the distinction is, of course, in addition to the fact that power to regulate alcohol is expressly granted by the Constitution, the right to bear arms is expressly protected by the Constitution, so you've got products that are wholly different in the Constitution's view of them.

MR. MacNeil: Do you, do you see that difference, Mr. Black?

MR. BLACK: No. I think the fact that there -- these licenses are readily available is certainly true. What we're saying is, is that there's at least 200,000 of these readily available licensees that are not engaging in the business. So by raising the fee, we do not see how that's going to limit in any way a legitimate sportsman's opportunity to buy a weapon from a legitimate dealer.

MR. MacNeil: What about Mr. Black's [Mr. Gardiner's] point it'll drive the price up?

MR. BLACK: As far as driving the price up, if you look at the numbers of dealers today, approximately 10 percent of the dealers today engage in sales of more than 50 guns. If you look at $600, we're not talking more than a couple of dollars per weapon, and it certainly is not going to drive the price up to the extent that those people who need weapons for legitimate purposes can't afford 'em.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Black -- what is the basis of your argument that it will, that it will make guns so expensive that ordinary people can't buy them?

MR. GARDINER: Well, obviously any time --

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Gardiner, I beg your pardon, Mr. Gardiner, I'm very sorry.

MR. GARDINER: That's all right. Any time that you reduce the number of sellers in the market and you raise the price for people who remain the market, the price has to go up. I mean, that's such basic economics that it's a shame we even have to talk about it. But -- and I don't know how much the prices will go up, but the point is, if this program is simply being put into place to drive people out of business and there is absolutely no benefit for crime reduction, why are we even talking about doing it? And the really sad part is that now for the next session of Congress, we're going to have this debate about whether we should drive up dealers' licenses and the whole debate on crime control is once again going to get put aside, and we're not going to talk about serious efforts to reduce crime which, after all, is really what the Gun Control Act was supposed to have been about.

MR. MacNeil: Let me go to the real Mr. Black here. Mr. Black, he says there will no effect on violent crime so why do it.

MR. BLACK: Well, I don't, I don't -- I disagree with that to a certain extent. Again, you have limited enforcement resources. You want to focus those resources on where your biggest payback is. Part of the system of effectively regulating gun dealers through the Gun Control Act is, is to inspect dealers to see that they're maintaining their records for trace capabilities. Now we want to focus our efforts on those thirty or thirty thousand dealers that are actually buying and selling weapons and not have to focus on the other two hundred thousand plus that are not in the business. We're expending valuable resources on dealers who are not in the business. We'd rather spend 'em on those dealers that are actively in the business to maintain that trace capability.

MR. MacNeil: Won't that have a practical effect on crime, Mr. Gardiner?

MR. GARDINER: Well, let me just say that's kind of a bizarre argument to say that we need to drive people out of business because they're not in business. I mean, if they're not doing any business, then they're not -- if that is true, they're not selling guns.

MR. MacNeil: No, but --

MR. GARDINER: So you don't have anything to trace anyway.

MR. MacNeil: But Mr. Black's argument that if you get the dealers down to a manageable number who are really in the business, then the ATF will be able to keep tabs on those, make sure that they keep good records, and help them trace weapons that are used by criminals.

MR. GARDINER: Well, first of all, there's no suggestion and there's been no evidence presented that there is a problem with the vast majority of dealers not keeping accurate records. The fact that ATF can't inspect all of them on a weekly or monthly basis or even a yearly basis does not mean that the records are not being kept. I mean, the suggestion that the average American citizen is getting a license and then violating the law is, is reprehensible, and it's -- I'm sorry that an official of our government is making that suggestion about a quarter million of our citizens. It's simply not the case. And ATF could use its resources more wisely not by focusing on gun dealers --

MR. MacNeil: Well --

MR. GARDINER: -- but rather by focusing on getting dangerous, violent felons off the street, as they now have the power to do.

MR. MacNeil: I must end it there. I thank you, gentlemen, both. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: Ahead on the NewsHour, changes in the Chinese educational system, the secretary of HHS talking about the new AIDS prevention advertisements, and the genetic causes of violence. SERIES - CHINA IN TRANSITION - TAKING THE PLUNGE

MS. WARNER: Next, higher education in today's China, another in a series of documentary reports we've aired over the last two weeks. Tonight we learn how the changing economic and political climate affects students and faculty at Beijing University, China's premier academic institution. Our special correspondent is Robert Oxnam, president emeritus of the Asia Society who's now with Columbia University and the Bessemer Group, a New York banking and investment firm.

MR. OXNAM: This is China's silent evolution, evolution in education. It is taking place in classrooms and libraries like this one at Beijing University. Students here once pored over Marxist theory. Now, fortified by jars of tea, they study for final exams in courses like accounting and business management. Although most study diligently, some dream of a day when they'll join their peers in the noisy hustle of China's booming economy. Beijing University or Beida for short is the most prestigious educational institution in China, a country which has revered education for thousands of years. But today, strong outside pressures impact on the Beijing University campus. The strongest pressure is the plunge into the sea, the Chinese expression for going into business. We talked with several English-speaking students selected for us by the university.

ZHANG XIAOQUAN, Beijing University: Well, after graduation, I would like to go to joint venture and then make as money as possible.

UNIDENTIFIED CHINESE STUDENT: I have no special interest in money, but my, my interest is in traveling. And I want to travel all over the country.

MR. OXNAM: Educators use words like "optimistic" and "realistic" to describe the campus climate today. Beijing University Professor Yuan Ming uses the word "pragmatic."

YUAN MING, Professor, Beijing University: It is very challenging job here on the campus how to learn those advanced technology and also very interesting ideas, value systems from the outside in the same time to keep our own traditions. And that's put it in the broadened framework. It's like a global task because we are entering in it's called a pragmatic age or age of pragmatism. So how to, to balance those, it's very a tough job for educators.

MR. OXNAM: The atmosphere at Beida and other universities is, indeed, rarified. Only a tiny fraction, less than 3 percent of Chinese middle or high school students will ever make it into college. In countries like the United States, more than 30 percent of high school graduates go on to college. Fewer than 5 million Chinese are enrolled in universities and advanced technical institutes. They are the chosen few who have excelled in the elite track of China's secondary education system. In some ways, the students at Beida seem typical of students anywhere. They like rock'n roll. They listen to the radio when they study and only sometimes listen to their parents.

GUO ZHONG, Beijing University: The main topic we young people talk about is love and marriage, and I think there's a radical difference between our parents and the young students maybe.

UNIDENTIFIED CHINESE STUDENT: I'm married. And I think there is no great gap between my parents and I. My parents think I was a good boy from my childhood, and my parents never criticize me. So my parents think every choice -- every choice I make is mine.

WANG DAOYU, Beijing University: Since I get into college, my parents began to respect me more and more. [laughter among students] So I really can't get any advice from them. I can decide on everything.

MR. OXNAM: University students are well aware that higher education conveys a precarious sense of privilege. Twenty years ago, Chinese universities were totally shut down by Mao Zedong's cultural revolution which especially targeted individuals.

[STUDENT DEMONSTRATION]

MR. OXNAM: Four years ago, university students were in the vanguard of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Some were killed; many were injured. Our team was the first American television crew allowed access to Beijing University since the 1989 tragedy. We found the students circumspect on the subject.

WANG DAOYU: We still talk about 1989 accident, but we look at it from a more spiritual way. We think that, that is a demonstration of some kind of exploration for not rational -- it's not purely political. We just want to find something to rely on, find something to believe in. It is not just political demonstration.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I seldom here someone talking about events of 1989 now on our campus. Except when every June 4th comes, many reporters come here -- reminders for 1989.

BEIJING UNIVERSITY STUDENT: I think there is something that the students who participated didn't know, I think something what we call secret, only the upper class, only the leaders know what really happened, and the newspaper says that we were exploited or taken advantage of by some political parties or something like that. So I think there must be something we don't know. So it's a great -- a cause of great difficulty for us to think about this question.

MR. OXNAM: The professors too express a somewhat revisionist view of the 1989 demonstration.

WANG CHENGUANG, Professor, Beijing University: You cannot just explain it from a single reason, a demand for democracy, or just demand for anti-corruption. And I think that's too simple. If you make a deep analysis of the event, you can find different groups of the people who participated had different opinions and demands, and some of the opinions really correct and should be valued. But some of opinions really cannot see in this way. For example, many people want to, well, make the iron bowl more stable. If you want to break it --

MR. OXNAM: Iron bowl being a regular, guaranteed salary?

WANG CHENGUANG: Yeah, regular guarantee of salary or welfare and health insurance. And if you want to change that, there might be some sufferings, some losses of the guaranteed interest. But not everybody is fully prepared for that.

YUAN MING: My young students, my students, some of them spend time in the square during that period and got very emotional at that point, got very miserable, but one later or two years later, they approach me, they talk with me very, very sincerely, said, "Professor, we might be too naive." And I was very, very impressed by their words because I knew how hard for young people to say some negative words for what they had done.

MR. OXNAM: But human rights activist Robin Munro of Asia Watch says the pro-democracy movement quietly survives at Chinese universities.

ROBIN MUNRO, Human Rights Activist: Students are still prepared as soon as they sense that the political climate is more favorable, they're still prepared to go out there and promote democracy, possibly start a new movement. There have bene signs in the last few months of campus, informal campus study groups starting up, so called democracy salons such as we saw in the run up to the '89 movement. The authorities try and stop these when they can but they appear not to be resorting to immediate arrest to deal with it. They're taking a slightly low key attitude to it.

MR. OXNAM: After the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, campus activities were closely monitored. We asked how restrictive Beijing University is today. A senior history professor says it's relatively open, especially compared to the repressive days of the cultural revolution.

UNIDENTIFIED SENIOR HISTORY PROFESSOR: [Beijing University] Beijing University, I think now if you compare with 1950s or 1960s, is more open than before. So everybody, they can do what they wanted to do; they can read what they wanted to read. Before the Cultural Revolution I will say that some books were just restricted for some people, and not open to everybody. But now if you want to read, you have time, you have interest, you can go there.

MR. OXNAM: Communist ideology is still officially espoused at Beijing University, and a course in Marxism is required of all students.

WANG DAOYU: Ideology is everywhere. You cannot escape from ideology. So no matter you believe in Communism or not, you have to -- you are involved in it. You can't escape from it.

MR. OXNAM: Even at Beida, once a citadel for Communist education, scholars are occasionally forced to take the capitalist road. Professors say their relatively low salaries of sixty to eighty dollars a month prompt them to consider second jobs.

WANG CHENGUANG: Actually, that's a kind of new challenge to high education, generally speaking, because of the transfer to the market economy. And people can have more opportunities, and that's the same for faculty members, especially for young faculty members, if comparing the different payments, the gap is very large.

YUAN MING: Some young, especially young faculty, their living standards, their salary, everything, rooms, not that good. So it's up to the government, to the university leadership to try their best to help them to improve those kind of things, because Beijing University is such a wonderful place to be the center of education, to create a lot of intellectual -- realize a lot of intellectual dreams. So it's not our job to do that convert commerce.

MR. OXNAM: Only a small percentage of China's 1.2 billion people ever come close to realizing dreams of higher education. While basic literacy today is estimated at more than 80 percent, it still means that 180 million Chinese are illiterate or semi-literate. Most of them live in the countryside. On the average, Chinese age 12 and over have received only five and a half years of education, and rural women who are sent into the fields to work have the highest dropout rates in school. Currently, China spends about 3 percent of its gross national product on education. That pays for 150 million students in primary schools and 50 million in middle schools. Of those, fewer than 5 million finally make it to university level where most have their expenses paid by the government. However, China's new affluence now permits one out of every seven college student to pay his own way. But no matter who pays, the Chinese government still finds education a risky business. The Communist regime wants to foster new generations of talented people to prime the economy and run the country, but they worry about unleashing new rounds of student demonstrations which might threaten their hold on power. So campus security remains tight at Beijing University, just in case academic freedom goes too far.

MR. MacNeil: Tomorrow's report will look at China's military. NEWSMAKER

MS. WARNER: We turn now to a Newsmaker interview with the Secretary of Health & Human Services, Donna Shalala. She's here tonight to discuss a new government-sponsored advertising campaign designed to help prevent the spread of AIDS. The frank new television and radio ads recommend both condom use and abstinence. Here are some examples:

TV COMMERCIAL SPOKESMAN: It would be nice if latex condoms were automatic, but since they're not, using them should be, simply because a latex condom used consistently and correctly will prevent the spread of HIV.

MAN IN SECOND TV COMMERCIAL: I want you. I want to hold you for hours at a time. I want to talk to you until I don't have a voice. Introduce me to everyone who's important to you, your friends, your family. Look at me. I want to spend my life with you. I'll never hurt you. I'll never lie to you. I'll never put you in danger. There's a time for us to be lovers. We will wait until that time comes.

WOMAN IN THIRD TV COMMERCIAL: Did you bring it?

MAN IN THIRD TV COMMERCIAL: Uh uh, I forgot it.

WOMAN IN THIRD TV COMMERCIAL: Forget it.

SPOKESPERSON IN THIRD TV COMMERCIAL: Next time, don't forget it, and every time make it part of the relationship.

SPOKESMAN IN THIRD TV COMMERCIAL: A latex condom used consistently and correctly prevents the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and may save your life.

MS. WARNER: Now, Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who's overseeing the new ad campaign. Welcome, Madame Secretary.

SEC. SHALALA: Thank you.

MS. WARNER: Thank you for joining us. Who are you trying to reach with these ads?

SEC. SHALALA: Young adults between the ages of 18 and 25, and obviously trying to make two points. One is abstinence is the best way to prevent AIDS or any other sexually transmitted disease, but if you are sexually active, as most young people are between those ages, then you must use a latex condom and you must use it consistently and correctly.

MS. WARNER: Give us some idea of the scope of the problem. How many young people say between 18 and 25 are infected with HIV or have AIDS?

SEC. SHALALA: Well, most of those young people -- first of all, we know that one in four young people between those ages will get some kind of sexually transmitted disease, and we're in the middle of a major epidemic. Most of those young people are not using condoms. Less than 20 percent are using latex condoms, and certainly anyone that's using a condom is not necessarily using it effectively consistently or even correctly, so that we're very concerned about a major epidemic which continues to grow particularly in this age group.

MS. WARNER: I've read I think that between the ages of 13 and 24, the number diagnosed with AIDS has tripled in the last three years, something like that.

SEC. SHALALA: Our young people are too sexually active, particularly the younger ones, obviously, and if we cannot stop this sexual activity, we have to make sure that we give them a very clear message about the use of condoms.

MS. WARNER: Why don't they use condoms?

SEC. SHALALA: Well, some of it is the feeling of invincibility. As someone who's been running a university most of her life, working with young adults, they feel that they're invincible. Second, there's no tradition in this country, no cultural tradition of, to use condoms, particularly to use them consistently and correctly. And so it's not been part of our culture. Third, we haven't done very much on health education or sex education. Fourth, for a long time people felt that AIDS was not their disease. It is a heterosexual disease, increasingly. It is a disease among young people of every, of every age group, particularly young adults that are sexually active. It's a disease that affects you no matter what your race or sexual orientation, whatever your religion is, and so we have to get everyone convinced that this is an epidemic of major proportions that affects everyone.

MS. WARNER: Are you trying to educate young people with these ads about how to use condoms, or that they should use condoms, or are you trying to affect their attitude about premarital sex?

SEC. SHALALA: Well, we're trying to do -- we're trying to do all of those things. We do know that young adults now know something about AIDS and how it's transmitted. Now we have to convince them to protect themselves. There are two ways they can protect themselves; abstinence or using a latex condom correctly and consistently.

MS. WARNER: Now, let me ask you a little about the effectiveness of education like this. New York State, I think, has had HIV or AIDS instruction as part of their sex education in the public schools for six or seven years. New York City hands out free condoms, and yet, they have one of the highest rates of HIV infection among young people. How do you explain that?

SEC. SHALALA: But you can't just depend on advertising or on sex education. You have to do all of the above. Communities have to organize and it has to be a comprehensive effort. And, in fact, today we announced, we showed the ads, but we announced more than the ads. We announced a big community campaign, religious organizations, educational organizations, civic organizations coming together in every community in this country. These ads will reinforce their efforts along with everything else that's being done in the community, but this is a national effort.

MS. WARNER: Now what kind of assurance do you have from the networks that are going to show these ads? They'll be shown at times when young people are watching TV as opposed to 4 AM or --

SEC. SHALALA: No.

MS. WARNER: No.

SEC. SHALALA: They're a lot of young adults that will watch. I mean, it's not you and me.

MS. WARNER: I'm just reminding them.

SEC. SHALALA: People in this age group watch very late at night, and I think the attempt by the networks is going to be to target them particularly to that age group, and they know a lot about who's watching at what hours, so they'll be after 9 o'clock or after 10 o'clock. But, again, you can't be totally dependent on advertising. You have to do all the other things at the same time.

MS. WARNER: Now, are these ads also going to be shown on black educational television or Uni Vision, the Spanish network?

SEC. SHALALA: I expect them to be widely used. They are clever, as you saw, and they grab your attention but in addition to the television efforts, we have wonderful radio ads.

MS. WARNER: Let me ask you about a couple of the criticisms of these ads. One from, you might say the more liberal side of the spectrum, say, well, they aren't explicit enough. You never even see a condom in one of these ads.

SEC. SHALALA: Well, if American advertising took that as a recommendation, we'd have very different ads on television. I would argue they're much more sophisticated than hitting someone over the head. And, in fact, if you know anything about people between 18 and 25, if you want to get the message to them, the last thing you do is hit them over the head and run a fear campaign. What you do do is grab their attention and get them to listen to the message, and, and the people that communicate with them must be peers, people that they identify with.

MS. WARNER: Now, another criticism one might make of the ad is that even though you're trying to aim at very high risk teen-age groups, which I think a lot are white but also black and Hispanic, and yet, most of the kids or young people in these ads are very middle class, well-educated, whether they're white or black. It doesn't -- there's not much hip, sort of street language in any of these ads.

SEC. SHALALA: Well, I think you'd have to look at the combination of the radio ads as well as the television ads. I think they really are, are hip, the people that young adults identify with. We tested these ads on people in these age groups of different races, of different sexes. We tested them, for example, on gay men. We did focus groups, and found that they were quite effective.

MS. WARNER: Even though, of course, some gay groups are criticizing it, saying, well, there are no explicitly homosexual ads, there are no ads about gay men.

SEC. SHALALA: Well, my response to that is: How do you know? I mean, unless you have some stereotype of gay people, but I also would say that it is important to target audiences. In this case the audience selected is 18 to 25 year old young people, whether they're gay or straight. We believe they will effective, and we did test them, again, on every group.

MS. WARNER: Of course, if you're having this explosion in AIDS between 18 and 25, that means a lot of these kids got it, 14, 13, 15. Do -- are these ads aimed at those kids? Not really.

SEC. SHALALA: Not really.

MS. WARNER: And why not?

SEC. SHALALA: But I should say that because this is part of an overall campaign. What the community organizing will do is allow communities to determine what their strategies are going to be for younger people. As an administration, we've taken the position on sex education but the details of those campaigns for younger children ought to be organized by communities, themselves, based on their own values. For young adults, we've designed a national ad campaign. We are being supportive of local communities, and total campaigns are very important, but local communities need to design them. We'll have a national effort and provide leadership and provide some resources but, but you really can't use a cookie cutter approach if you really want to run a public health effort of enormous depth and sophistication.

MS. WARNER: By that you mean that politically it would have been much more controversial if ads aimed at younger children.

SEC. SHALALA: No. I think that it's more than justpolitically. It's what's the role of federal government and to what extent can you reach families and their children and who ought to design those programs, and the President's own experience in Arkansas, and I think many of us believe that we ought to think about what the role is of the federal government and leave other things to local governments but do it in tandem so it really is an overall, national effort.

MS. WARNER: Now from the conservative side, of course, one might say that though there are a couple of ads that emphasize abstinence, that there aren't any ads that try to tap into this new movement that I think is happening in some high schools, especially among young women to remain virgins till they get out of high school. Do you have any plans to address that or to work with that?

SEC. SHALALA: We certainly are going to be supportive of whatever local communities decide their approach is going to be to AIDS prevention and to preventing any kind of sexual transmission, but a sophisticated public health approach is to leave it to local communities for their high school students, for their elementary school students, and it's not inappropriate for us to target our own resources, limited resources, towards young adults.

MS. WARNER: And finally, very briefly, do you expect any real political opposition to this from the Congress?

SEC. SHALALA: Well, I, I'm sure that there will be people that are griping that argue the national government shouldn't be involved. But this is a public health crisis of enormous proportions, and the major public health agencies of our nation are at the national level. It's very important that we jump in with growth both feet in as sophisticated and targeted way as we possibly can, working with local communities. If there was a cholera epidemic, they would expect us to go out and tell people to boil water. If there was a plague, we'd be out destroying rats. This is a public health crisis.

MS. WARNER: Thank you, Sec. Shalala, very much. ESSAY - ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM?

MR. MacNeil: We close tonight with an essay. Paul Hoffman, director of Discover Magazine, has some thoughts about the effect of genes on behavior.

PAUL HOFFMAN: The modern genetics revolution began in 1994 in this lab at Rockefeller University in New York. So it's here that scientists discover that genes are made of DNA. Now, half a century later, hardly a month passes in which scientists do not identify another gene that causes hereditary disease. In 1993, specific genes were linked to Huntington's and Lou Gehrig's Disease, and to certain forms of Alzheimer's, colon cancer, and hyperactivity. But the hunt for pernicious genes has only just begun. As of December 15th, scientists had identified a mere 4,325 of the some hundred thousand genes in our bodies. The hotly contested question is whether any of these genes will be found to govern behavior, behaviors as diverse as alcoholism, mental illness, creativity, and homosexuality. And if such genes do exist, to what extent do they determine our behavior? How much of what we do is really our choice? In October, researchers came a small step closer to answering these thorny questions by reporting the first example of the gene associated with behavior -- violence. This particular research started in 1978, when a Dutch woman sought medical advice for a big problem; the men in her family. One brother tried to rape his sister; another repeatedly forced his sisters to undress at knifepoint; another tried to run his boss down with a car; two other relatives were arsonists. In fact, the violent streak among the males could be traced back five generations. It took Dutch researchers 15 years to link the aggressiveness to a single defective gene on the X chromosome. The search for a biological root of violence has a long, dubious history. 19th century phrenologists believed that certain facial characteristics, like eyebrows that grew together, were signs of a criminal personality. A similar idea was revived in the 1950s by the American Psychologist W. H. Sheldon, who maintained that mesomorphs -- people with large, muscular builds -- were prone to violence. In the 1960s, the idea of hyper-males as criminals was in vogue. Men normally have a single Y chromosome that makes them male. A few men, however, have an extra Y chromosome. In the 1960s, a small study of inmates in Norway turned up a disproportionate number of extra Y men. The thinking was that extra Y men, with their extra dose of male aggression, would be predisposed to violence. Subsequently, much larger studies thoroughly acquitted extra Y men of criminal proclivities. But news of their innocence didn't make the tabloids. A few months ago, a particularly distasteful episode of the Donahue Show called "How to Tell if Your Child is a Serial Killer," featured an uninformed psychiatrist who trotted out the discredited extra Y theory. All this doesn't mean that the recent finding of the gene for violence should be dismissed, but it should certainly be looked at critically. Some of the men in the study possessed the aberrant gene, but were not violent. So even in this dysfunctional Dutch family, violence was not their genetic destiny. But the most important disclaimer is that this aberrant gene is not a general gene for aggression. It is exceedingly rare, so it can only possibly account for a small fraction of criminal behavior. And how is the search going for genes that might cause other kinds of behavior? In a nutshell, not well. One research team reported a genetic link to alcoholism. It was front-page news. But other researchers subsequently failed to substantiate it. A gene for manic depression was also announced with much fanfare and, later, retracted. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute think they're closing in on a gene for male homosexuality which is passed from mother to son. Studies have shown that in the case of identical twins, if one is gay, the other has roughly a 50/50 chance of also being gay. Even if this correlation can be attributed entirely to the twins' identical genetic make-up rather than to their parents raising them similarly, it must be kept in mind that half the twins turned out heterosexual. So, unlike genes that completely define eye color or hair color, a gay gene, if one exists, will not be the sole determinant of sexual preference. Aberrant genes certainly cause hereditary disease, but human behavior, from homosexuality, to creativity, to violence, to depression, is apparently too marvelously complex to be reduced to the action of individual genes. That's good news for those of us who like to think we have some control over our behavior. I'm Paul Hoffman. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, Treasury Sec. Bentsen proposed a crime prevention package which includes higher licensing fees for gun dealers, and a widespread winter storm struck the East Coast, the Ohio Valley, and the Appalachian states. Some areas reported up to two feet of snow. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Margaret. That's the NewsHour for tonight, and we'll see you again tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.