500 Chinese Youths Burn Copies of Peking Paper

About 500 Peking University students, upset by official press accounts of their pro-democracy rallies, burned copies of Peking’s main newspaper today and cheered as scraps of flaming paper rose into the air.

In a wallposter entitled an “Open Letter to Deng,” students said they support him and his reforms and were writing to him because the news media are slanted and there are no other avenues left. The poster said that if Deng does not reply in 10 days, the students will decide on further action. (Story on Page 12.)

More than 500 students formed several circles on campus today to burn hundreds of copies of the Peking Daily, which has sharply criticized the demonstrations. Students say the Peking Daily is much less accurate than other official newspapers in reporting on the protests.

Students in nearby dormitories threw copies of the newspaper from windows, some in flames. One released a streamer from a window made of copies of the paper that had written on it in bold characters, “To Hell With the Peking Daily.”

Firecrackers, No Police

Another student poured gasoline out of a wine bottle onto a pile of burning newspapers, making them flare up. Students cheered as flaming scraps rose into the air.

“Where are the Chinese reporters? They don’t dare come,” one student shouted. Other students set off firecrackers.

No uniformed police were on the scene. One official at first tried to keep a student from igniting a newspaper but did not interfere further.

Students began to disperse after about an hour.

A man answering the telephone at the editorial offices of the Peking Daily said the newspaper had no comment because none of the staffers had heard about the protests.

Deng Adherent Speaks Out

In another development, high-ranking officials belonging to the reform-minded circle around Deng spoke out today for the first time against the student protests staged in at least 10 cities in the last month.

“Creating ‘movements’ does nothing to help the construction of a democratic government,” Bao Tong, a senior official in the office of Premier Zhao Ziyang, wrote in a commentary in the People’s Daily.

“Hasn’t China eaten the bitter fruit of enough movements?” he wrote in an obvious reference to the 1966-76 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution during which hordes of student Red Guards tyrannized the nation.

Conservatives in the party and government have harshly criticized the student protests, but Deng, the initiator of China’s push for political and economic reforms, has remained silent.

Students have repeatedly asked that the reformers make their views known because criticism of the students so far has come mostly from conservatives believed to have reservations about Deng’s reforms.