a029  0146  22 Apr 89
PM-China, Bjt,0763
Students End Protest En Masse, Head Home
By JOHN POMFRET
Associated Press Writer
    BEIJING (AP) - About 100,000 students retired en masse today from
Tiananmen Square as peacefully as they had assembled 15 hours earlier
to demand radical changes in China's political system.
    Student leaders, chanting ''arise citizens,'' decided to depart this
afternoon after officials reopened the plaza beside the Great Hall of
the People to ordinary crowds that swelled by the tens of thousands
and became increasingly unruly.
    During demonstrations that began at midnight Friday, the students
waved colored pro-democracy banners, shouted slogans such as ''long
live freedom!'' and eulogized ousted Communist Party leader Hu
Yaobang.
    The students also confronted China's leaders as they filed into a
memorial service for Hu in the Great Hall. Hu died of a heart attack
last Saturday at age 73.
    The demonstration was one of the largest in China since the
Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949, and the biggest in
13 years, when the death of Premier Chou En-lai sparked an outpouring
of grief and anger toward the leftist government and an end to the
1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
    The demonstrations, sparked by the death of the outspoken reformist
Hu, are in their sixth day.
    The government has rejected all the students' demands, including
greater freedom of speech and press, more money for education,
disclosure of the incomes of top officials and reassessment of Hu's
historical role.
    The students departed in groups that represented about 30
universities in Beijing and other cities.
    Traffic was stopped along Changan Boulevard, the capital's main
avenue, and people climbed trees to get a better view of the
procession.
    The students said they would go back to their campuses and boycott
classes.
    About 8,000 soldiers and thousands more police were positioned
around the square, but most kept away from the students.
    The one concession was to let the students stay on the square during
the memorial service at the Great Hall.
    When the 4,000 officials attending the ceremony started to arrive
this morning, the students let out a roar, waved their banners and
raised their fingers in V-for-victory salutes. Some clenched their
fists in defiance.
    ''Down with dictatorship, down with corruption,'' they chanted.
    Some officials, protected by a triple line of military troops,
stopped momentarily to listen.
    During the ceremony, party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang praised his
predecessor, saying ''as a Marxist, Hu Yaobang led a glorious life.''
    Hu was forced to resign in disgrace in January 1987 after being
accused by party conservatives of being soft on student demonstrators
and Western liberal ideas.
    Zhao's 10-minute speech, before a large portrait of Hu draped in
black bunting, made no specific mention of Hu's ouster and did not,
as demanded by the students, attempt to reassess Hu's performance.
    Zhao said only that Hu was a man ''brave enough to admit his
mistakes and to insist upon what he thought was right. He never tried
to hold back his opinions.''
    Some of the aging ideologues who are believed to have engineered
Hu's ouster did not attend the ceremony. Among those absent were
former President Li Xiannian, former Politburo member Bo Yibo and
former party propaganda chief Deng Liqun.
    Senior leader Deng Xiaoping, 84, looking tired and fragile, circled
the glass-encased casket and shook hands with Hu's family and wife,
Li Zhao. Hu's body was clad in a Western suit and draped with a red
Communist Party flag.
    Flags were flown at half-staff on Tiananmen Square and in front of
the Communist Party headquarters, scene of a clash between
demonstrators and police earlier this week.
    The official Xinhua News Agency said 1 million people, some in
crowds five deep, lined the streets to watch the motorcade that
carried Hu's body to the Babaoshan state cemetery in western Beijing
for cremation.
    It said people carried banners reading ''farewell, Comrade Yaobang''
and ''Yaobang, we'll always remember you.''
    Zhao's speech was broadcast over loudspeakers on the square but the
students paid little attention.
    As soon as he finished they resumed their chants of ''long live
democracy.'' As officials descended the steps of the Great Hall, they
shouted: ''we demand dialogue!'' and ''come down Li Peng!''
    Li, China's premier, is a technocrat regarded as lukewarm toward
economic and political reforms. He has said that social stability
must take priority in China, and that ''excessive democracy'' would
harm the nation.
    Unlike the Soviet Union, which has held direct parliamentary
elections and given its press greater freedom, China has taken the
lead in economic reforms. It has taken only small, cautious steps to
make its political system more open.
    
 
AP-NY-04-22-89 0427EDT
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a034  0218  22 Apr 89
PM-Digest Advisory,0073
    Eds: All budgets have cleared. Here is a listing:
    
    BEIJING - China, a029.
    AMMAN, Jordan - Jordan, a023.
    WASH - Defense Cuts, a006.
    WASH - Budget Deficit, a007.
    LOS ANGELES - Hudson Suit, a026.
    SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Winery Slayings, a033. LaserPhoto FX1.
    KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan Relief, a020.
    MILWAUKEE - Right To Die, a027.
    
    The AP
    
 
AP-NY-04-22-89 0511EDT
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a050  0501  22 Apr 89
PM-China, 1st Ld,a029,0427
150,000 Students End Protest Against Communists
Eds: LEADS with 13 grafs to UPDATE with higher demonstration turnout,
protests in Shanghai, details
By JOHN POMFRET
Associated Press Writer
    BEIJING (AP) - As many as 150,000 students and their supporters,
waving fists and chanting ''Long live freedom,'' demonstrated today
against the communist system as China's leaders watched from behind a
wall of soldiers.
    Facing more than 8,000 troops, students shouted, ''Down with
dictatorship, down with corruption!'' while top members of the
Communist Party hierarchy filed out of a funeral for ousted party
chief Hu Yaobang.
    The protest in Tiananmen Square, the symbolic political center of
China, was one of the clearest rejections ever of the communist
system by China's increasingly disaffected youth. It also marked the
culmination of a week-long commemoration of Hu's death last Saturday.
    During 15 hours of demonstrations that featured no major incidents,
the students waved colored pro-democracy banners and turned the plaza
into a sea of red and white banners.
    The students confronted China's leaders as they filed into a
memorial service for Hu in the Great Hall, chanting anti-government
slogans. Hu, who died of a heart attack, was 73.
    The turnout was one of the largest in China since the communist
victory over the Nationalists in 1949, and the biggest in 13 years,
when the death of Premier Chou En-lai sparked an outpouring of grief
and anger toward the leftist government and an end to the 1966-76
Cultural Revolution.
    But major differences with the bloody, spontaneous 1976 protest
remained. Today's protest left few people injured and was well
organized.
    The government has rejected all the students' demands, including
greater freedom of speech and press, more money for education,
disclosure of the incomes of top officials and reassessment of Hu's
historical role.
    When the students ended their demonstration, they departed
peacefully in groups that represented about 30 universities in
Beijing and other cities.
    In Shanghai, about 1,500 people marched through downtown, also to
commemorate Hu's death. Earlier today, about 2,000 students marched
on the campus of East Normal University.
    In Beijing, the traffic was stopped along Changan Boulevard, the
capital's main avenue, and people climbed trees to get a better view
of the procession.
    The students said they would go back to their campuses and boycott
classes.
    When the 4,000 officials attending the ceremony started to arrive
this morning, the students let out a roar, waved their banners and
raised their fingers in V-for-victory salutes.
    Some officials,: 15th graf
    
 
AP-NY-04-22-89 0747EDT
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a205  1015  22 Apr 89
AM-China, Bjt,0704
Student Protesters Make Unprecedented Challenge To Party
LaserColor NY6, LaserPhotos NY6, TOK3
An AP Extra
By KATHY WILHELM
Associated Press Writer
    BEIJING (AP) - Nothing like it has been seen in 40 years of
communist rule in China.
    The nation's top leaders peered across a protective wall of
thousands of soldiers at 150,000 fist-waving citizens demanding a
''dialogue'' and an end to what they called a dictatorship.
    The officials stood briefly on the steps of the Great Hall of the
People after attending a funeral for a former leader, then walked to
their cars and were whisked away.
    The protesters, mostly college students, did not get their dialogue
Saturday, but they counted themselves victorious.
    ''We have forced the Communist Party to back down,'' crowed a
Beijing University student, referring to authorities' last-minute
reversal of an order banning the students from Tiananmen Square in
front of the Great Hall.
    In a country where the party has absolute power, the Saturday rally
and student attempts last week to storm party headquarters showed
that leaders nonetheless remain accountable to citizens.
    But the daring confrontation also taught a sobering lesson, which
student leaders implictly acknowledged when they voluntarily returned
to campus: that despite their best efforts, democracy is not
something the leaders will hand over simply to end an embarrassing
sit-in.
    Some students expressed willingness to continue their battle by
boycotting classes, and they called on workers to go on strike.
    The unrest appeared likely to continue to some degree through May 4,
the 70th anniversary of China's first student uprising, which also
called for democracy.
    The current protests were inspired by the April 15 death of former
Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang, who was ousted in 1987 for failing
to crack down on a similar wave of student marches that broke out the
previous year.
    By late last week there were no indications any of the current
leaders would similarly be made scapegoats now.
    The students said they wanted to send China's leaders a message that
they cannot ignore demands for democracy forever and that schemes for
modernizing the economy will not work unless the government works
with intellectuals.
    The students' demands are a shopping list of dreamed-of freedoms -
free press, free speech, freedom to march - not a sophisticated
political program.
    ''We don't know what democracy is, but we must fight for it,'' one
young woman said.
    Many students directed their anger at the 84-year-old senior leader,
Deng Xiaoping, who rose to power in 1978 as a reformer but refuses to
compromise the party's hold on power.
    ''We are disappointed in Deng,'' said a Beijing University student.
He noted that a few years ago students were enthusiastic about his
efforts to revitalize the economy, but said, ''Now we think he has
made many mistakes. He is trying to control power to the point of
autocracy, even though he is retired in name.''
    ''A lot of people hope Deng will die,'' said another student. ''(He)
is old, maybe he is crazy.''
    Some smashed soda bottles in an expression of contempt for Deng,
because his name sounds the same as the Chinese word for ''little
bottle.''
    The students are not the only Chinese unhappy with 40 years of
communist rule. From taxi drivers to street peddlers, few people have
a good word to say about the party, and many refer bitterly to the
current leaders as emperors because they live in relative luxury.
    During the rallies, the demand that drew the loudest applause from
protesters and bystanders alike was that leaders reveal their
financial assets.
    ''Our government is corrupt,'' said a taxi driver. ''The leaders
have turned public money into personal funds.''
    ''We have a saying: water that doesn't flow becomes stagnant,'' said
a young man peddling a tricycle cart. ''Leaders are like that.''
    But the students, who in many ways live insulated from the rest of
the population on their walled campuses, made little effort to tap
the discontent of the masses. While thousands of students showed up
daily at Tiananmen Square, most of Beijing's 10 million other
residents remained uninvolved.
    
 
AP-NY-04-22-89 1254EDT
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