By Michael Laris
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, August 27, 1998; Page A24

BEIJING, Aug. 26—With a propaganda campaign worthy of the Maoist era, the People's Liberation Army is using China's worst floods in 44 years to improve the military's battered image.

The state-run media have blanketed China with disaster coverage focusing on the strenuous efforts of soldiers wearing fatigues and bright-orange life preservers. Troops are frequently shown shoveling dirt and saving children in the floods, which the government said today have killed more than 3,000 people.

Soldiers are videotaped using their bodies as human sandbags when earthen dikes burst. They work until their fingernails literally "lift off" their fingers, the radio reported, and they even vanquish waterborne poisonous snakes.

In a media briefing Tuesday with China's top flood-control officials, Gen. Ma Shukuan said the 276,000 soldiers battling the floods "have displayed a revolutionary spirit of fearing neither hardship nor death. They fight where it is most difficult, and they rush to where it is most dangerous."

The army has been trying to reclaim the moral high ground for years. Its reputation was severely damaged after it fired on democracy demonstrators near Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, killing hundreds. Earlier this year, President Jiang Zemin charged that the military was deeply involved in smuggling.

In a brief interview after his public statement, Ma acknowledged that the military has been criticized for its actions in 1989, but denied that the army is using the floods as a backdrop for a public relations campaign.

"There are some people who do indeed have views about June 4. But they don't represent all the nation's people," said Ma, director of community and government affairs for the army's General Political Department. "It's not that we are putting up appearances this time because people have objections about that time. That's wrong."

Nevertheless, the army's visibility in fighting the floods has been striking. Tuesday's television news opened with the story of a martyred army flood-fighter, one of more than 20 soldiers killed. Jiang praised the troops for protecting the people and "bringing the danger of death onto themselves."

In many quarters, appreciation of the army is heartfelt.

"On TV, I saw the hardships facing the People's Liberation Army," said Suo Xiaoli, 24, a real estate clerk.

The people's survival "really depends on the military now," said a liberal activist based in Beijing.

The quarter-million soldiers, and more than 5 million militiamen and reservists, have made an impact. They flew 10,000 life vests into one of the worst-hit areas in central China and moved 4.2 million people to safety nationwide, officials said. But they are only part of the massive nationwide effort to fight the floods, which have affected more than 200 million people. The problems facing China -- and the efforts to solve them -- are much bigger than the "steel Great Wall," as the army is being called.

In Heilongjiang Province in northeast China, 4,830 villages have been flooded, a quarter of all crops have been destroyed, and more than 750,000 homes have collapsed, according to Vice Governor Ma Shujie. Winter will hit in just over a month.

"Our promise is that we will ensure that no one will be frozen to death," Ma Shujie said. She added that the province is trying to rebuild some houses in time, but that reinforced tents and "half-underground houses" also will be used.

Throughout the country, fears of epidemics are rising as the water levels in some regions begin to fall. "The most difficult time for epidemic prevention -- after the floods -- has yet to come. It will occur when the water recedes and people come home," said Yin Dakui, vice minister of the Health Ministry.

Vice Premier Wen Jiabao said today that 52 million acres of farmland have been flooded and that total economic losses nationwide have reached $20 billion. Independent economists said the floods could cost China as much as $36 billion and pull the country's economic growth rate down to 7.5 percent, below China's target of 8 percent for this year.

The government today raised the flood death toll to 3,004. Officials said on Aug. 6 that "more than 2,000" had died.

One ranking flood official, however, speaking on condition of anonymity, said government statistics are unreliable, suggesting the real figures could be much higher.

"The more local officials tell me no one died, the less I trust them," he said.