China Fires 2 Top Officials at Science Academy

China on Thursday fired two of the nation’s most prominent scientists from their jobs at the head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in what diplomats termed an outgrowth of the continuing Communist Party campaign against “bourgeois liberalization.”

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, said that both Lu Jiaxi, the president of the academy, and Yan Dongsheng, who has been both a vice president and the academy’s Communist Party boss, have been removed from their government posts.

Unanswered Questions

At the same time, the Standing Committee concluded a 10-day session without settling any of the unanswered questions about China’s future political leadership. It did not choose any successor for Premier Zhao Ziyang, who became acting general secretary of the Communist Party when Hu Yaobang resigned as party chief last week.

Instead, Zhao was left as premier and is thus, for now, in charge of day-to-day affairs of both the government and Communist Party under Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. “You can’t do both those jobs,” one Asian diplomat here said last week.

Lu and Yan are the highest ranking in a series of scientists and other intellectuals who have been removed from their jobs or purged from the Communist Party in recent weeks. There were indications that the two men may have been ousted for refusing to go along with the party’s earlier firing and expulsion of Fang Lizhi, a physicist who supported student demonstrations for democracy.

The Academy of Sciences is China’s most prestigious academic organization. In 1981, Lu, a Taiwan-born physical chemist, was chosen president by the academy’s 29-member presidium in what was hailed as the first election of officers in the institution’s history.

Authorities said at the time that the election of officers was “intended to bring the scientists themselves into leadership over science” and was “designed to give their enthusiasm full play.”

On Thursday, there was no mention of the academy’s presidium, of democratic procedures or of scientists choosing their own leaders. The government-run New China News Agency announced without explanation that the National People’s Congress’ Standing Committee, the highest level of China’s legislature, has removed Lu and Yan from their jobs as president and vice president of the academy.

Another scientist, Zhou Guangzhao, was named to replace Lu as president of the academy. Zhou, 57, a theoretical physicist, is a member of the Communist Party Central Committee, the party’s 209-member ruling body.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences is responsible for approximately 100 scientific schools and institutions--including the Chinese University of Science and Technology in the city of Hefei, one of China’s leading universities for scientific training.

It was at this university that a series of student demonstrations for democracy began last month. At the time, Fang, a member of the general assembly of the Academy of Sciences, was the university’s vice president. He told students in Hefei that their complaints about undemocratic election procedures in China were valid.

Both Fired

On Jan. 12, both Fang and his boss, Guan Weiyuan, the president of the Chinese University of Science and Technology, were fired from their jobs.

Those dismissals were announced by Zhou Guangzhao, identified then as a vice president of the Academy of Sciences. Diplomats said Thursday it appears that Lu and Yan may have opposed or refused to put their names on the firings in Hefei, and thus lost their own jobs at the academy.

Lu, a white-haired, bespectacled man, is a specialist in structural chemistry who himself once served as dean of the University of Science and Technology in Hefei. He is not a Communist Party member but rather is affiliated with the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, one of the small political parties tolerated on condition that they accept the Communists as China’s ruling party.

Four years ago, after Deng said China’s goal was to quadruple its output by the year 2000, Lu said in a published interview, “Half of the success would depend on science.”

Yan, 68, has been China’s outstanding scientist in inorganic materials research. He received his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Illinois in 1949 and returned to China to serve in the Kailuan Mining Administration in Tangshan.

He was one of three vice presidents of the Academy of Sciences. In addition, as Communist Party secretary for the Academy of Sciences, he was in many ways more powerful than the president. Yan has also been a member of the Communist Party Central Committee. Thursday’s announcement did not say whether he will be displaced from his party posts.

To emphasize the Communist Party’s control over science, the NPC Standing Committee on Thursday appointed Teng Teng, 56, a chemist who has been the deputy head of the party propaganda department, as a new vice president of the academy. Last week, Teng was named president of the University of Science and Technology in Hefei.

Teng is an engineering chemist. The official Chinese announcement of his promotion specifically noted that Teng “once studied in the Soviet Union.”

Several analysts here said the failure to name a new premier during the current session of the Standing Committee suggests strongly that the Communist Party is unable to reach consensus on a new leadership lineup.

It remains unclear whether Zhao will eventually give up his job as premier or whether the party will eventually appoint someone else to take over as party secretary.

The full National People’s Congress is scheduled to convene in late March, and it is possible that the Communist Party Central Committee will meet within the next three months.