There are now more than 370 diplomatic and journalistic families on the waiting list for the compounds

There are now more than 370 diplomatic and journalistic families on the waiting list for the compounds. Regardless of regulations, the Foreign Ministry has been forced to tell some arriving journalists that they must find their own housing.It is a glorious new freedom - albeit an expensive one. Such is the pressure that rents on ex-pat apartment developments have risen to pounds 3,850 a month. And in the dark period after the June 1989 crackdown, businessmen with good connections also started renting within the compounds. This is convenient for the Chinese government, it being that much easier to centralise the telephone tapping system, install bugs in the apartments and follow foreigners leaving on suspicious assignations.The system worked in the Eighties.

Under the regulations, we potential spies have to live and work in the four so-called Diplomatic Compounds in Peking. In reality it marks a marriage between market forces and Communist monopolies.In an era of Chinese reform and opening up, the opening up has never extended to living and working accommodation for diplomats and foreign journalists. Now the way is blocked by an 8ft barrier of large red water pipes. The middle section of Qijiayuan - once a garden and garages - is now a construction site. All this, according to the Notice to Tenants, is "to improve the general environment" in Qijiayuan. Travelling from the Independent's modest flat at one end of the compound to the office on the opposite corner used to be a pleasant five-minute walk. Entire blocks of flats regularly disappear in a matter of days as developers move in.

The occasional clear, unpolluted dawn usually reveals a forest of new skyscrapers. But, throughout this breakneck property revolution, Qijiayuan Diplomatic Compound has remained a haven of peace and tranquillity Alas, no longer. I have just returned to Peking after a month's holiday and things are not what they were at Qijiayuan. Living in the capital of the world's fastest-growing economy, one can become a trifle blase about the changing skyline.

Li Guopin, wife of Shanghai's leading dissident, Yang Zhou, said her husband needed urgent medical care for a growth near his stomach.Mr Yang was released on medical parole on Saturday after serving one year of a three-year "re-education through labour" sentence.. So far, more than 2,000 NGOs - the largest ever at a UN conference - have been awarded this status, including several hundred that were originally turned down.Some 185 nations will be represented at the official UN conference and about 35,000 NGOs have applied to go to the forum.One Chinese woman yesterday made her own plea for help. Six countries, including China and Iran, are opposing observer status for a number of organisations, including human rights groups, exiled Tibetan organisations, a US-based Iranian women's group and a Bhutanese group.Observer status allows an NGO to attend the official UN conference site in Peking, where it can directly lobby government delegations. Asked to give the number of NGOs which have been refused observer status at the official UN conference, Mrs Mongella said: "The process of accreditation is still going on, so we can't know which ones have been turned down until the process has been completed."The UN's Economic and Social Council in Geneva is currently hearing appeals from those rejected. "I am very satisfied there are enough facilities, not only for the UN conference but also for the NGO Forum."When China in April abruptly changed the NGO Forum site from central Peking to Huairou it was widely interpreted by Westerners as an attempt to prevent 35,000 unpredictable women activists being too visible to the Chinese people. Many of the NGO concerns focus on issues not freely discussed in China.With China intransigent over Huairou, attention has now moved to whether some NGOs will have particular difficulties.