In Beijing, the senior Chinese official could not be quoted by name. But in the course of a "briefing" given to American journalists in Beijing, before a sumptuous buffet dinner that could have fed the average Chinese village for a week, the senior official made

 these points:

• The Dalai Lama is a feudalistic tyrant who used to drink wine from goblets made from human skulls;
• The Tiananmen Square democracy leader Wang Dan is a common criminal whose imprisonment inexplicably dominates news broadcasts about what is going on in China;
• President Clinton has finally seen the error of encouraging pro-independence forces in Taiwan and has since repeatedly reassured Beijing that Washington will adhere to a "one China" policy.

The care and feeding of the foreign press here is seldom as lavish. And such encounters are generally rare in China, because senior party officials consider close contact with foreign reporters a risky business.

It was only a few years ago that a Foreign Ministry official was thrown in prison for talking too much to one correspondent. In 1994 United Press International withdrew, under pressure, a correspondent who aggressively covered the persecution of political dissidents. In 1995 a German correspondent was sent home after he called Premier Li Peng a dictator on the eve of Li's state visit to Germany. And the Foreign Ministry had delayed accreditation of correspondents from The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor because some Chinese officials consider them "anti-China."