Chinese Issue Stern Warnings Against New Student Protests

Chinese officials banned unauthorized gatherings in Shanghai and issued stern warnings to student demonstrators whose massive marches for a more democratic society waned Monday.

Hundreds of students gathered again in People’s Square and thousands of onlookers thronged the city’s main shopping area, but the huge crowds and emotional outpouring of the three previous days were mostly gone.

City authorities, through posters on streets and campuses and loudspeakers at the square, warned that further public disruptions will not be tolerated and that police approval will be needed for future gatherings.

One poster along the riverfront Bund, where tens of thousands of demonstrators and spectators have choked traffic since Friday, said people are prohibited from “insulting government cadres, policemen and other state functionaries.”

The poster said people are “strictly forbidden from barging into factories, schools and scientific institutes to agitate people into making trouble and disrupting order in production, classes and scientific research.”

The president of Jiaotong University, where the Shanghai protests began, said in a notice posted on campus that “serious unlawful acts took place, including the overturning of vehicles and molesting of female students” during the street campaign.

It said that “although we understand the sentiments of the students that they want to speed up the reforms and the process of democracy, we think demonstrations only provide a chance for bad elements to fish in troubled waters.”

In the only street action Monday, about 300 students pushed through police and spectators at People’s Square and marched, apparently without authorization, the one mile along the Bund to City Hall and then back.

Students said their numbers waned because some leaders pulled out, feeling it was time to regroup. They also voiced concern that the issue of democratic reform was being replaced by other grievances such as high prices. The beginning of the school week and the start of exams also was thought to have slowed the demonstrations.

Workers Joined Students

Some workers joined the students over the weekend, but their numbers were believed to be fairly small. Students said factories were told by the city to urge their employees not to join the demonstrations.

Some people said they do not expect the marches to end. “These students will keep on demonstrating, and if the government cracks down, they will push even harder,” said one student, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Shanghai press denounced the marchers again Monday for allegedly breaking into the People’s Congress building on the square and assaulting 31 policemen. Students have denied attacking police or breaking into the building.

They also insist that 200 people were detained Friday and still were being held and that 40 sit-in students were beaten Saturday. Authorities deny any arrests were made.

Generally, the marches, the largest spontaneous demonstrations in China in a decade, have been peaceful.

Student protests this month in several cities have created a dilemma for the government of China’s top leader Deng Xiaoping, which has called for political reforms including greater democracy and has urged more freedom of expression.

Official Warnings

But officials have warned that democracy is not to be won by impetuous actions.

“Demonstrations are useless,” Peking Mayor Chen Xitong told reporters. “Workers do not support them. Peasants do not support them.”

Chen and other officials raised the specter of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao Tse-tung mobilized millions of student Red Guards who rampaged through cities, destroying property and ruining untold numbers of lives.