Chinese Press Lambastes Liberals on Youth Protests

China’s official press turned its wrath today on intellectuals who it said have encouraged pro-democracy student agitation and quoted past criticisms by top leader Deng Xiaoping of party members who deviate from the socialist path.

In what may have been a reference to Fang Lizhi, an academic who has made outspoken calls for democracy and who is widely admired by student activists, the Peking Daily said certain people in cultural, art, literary and theoretical circles should be held responsible for influencing protesters.

Chinese sources and foreign press reports have said Fang has come under increasing attack from Peking authorities, including Deng, and has been expelled from the Communist Party.

When asked if Fang had lost his party membership, a foreign affairs official from the Chinese Science and Technology University in Hefei, where Fang is vice president, said “I haven’t seen the official decision yet.”

He said Fang was still vice president of the university but gave no further details.

The Peking Daily quoted well known writer Ruan Zhangjing as saying certain “experts” were peddling capitalism and bourgeois liberalization. He said students who have violated the law should be punished.

Students marched in at least 11 cities in the last month, and two student demonstrations in Peking on New Year’s Day and Jan. 2 were carried out in defiance of a city government ban on marches that did not have prior police approval.