Running the attached test case on Solaris 8 SPARC, jdk 1.1.8_14, showed that the following awt components display Chinese characters with more thickness (some characters display wrong strokes because it's too thick):
awt.Button, awt.Checkbox, awt.Label, awt.Canvas, awt.Choice.
Please see the snapshot attached.

To run the test case, untar it, then execute:
% cd awt/classes
% java awttest -command <some chinese characters>

you can enter the chinese characters by:
- type ctrl+space to switch to chinese input method
- enter xian and select 1