Student Corrupted by Works of Sartre and Nietzsche, Paper Says : China Blames a Murder-Suicide on Ideas From West

The leading newspaper in Beijing said Wednesday that a Chinese college student committed murder after he was corrupted by reading the works of philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche.

It was the first time in China’s continuing campaign against “bourgeois liberalization” that an official propaganda organ has attempted to make a connection between ideas from the West and violent crime in China.

The article appeared on the front page of the Beijing Daily, which is published by the municipal Communist Party committee and is the capital’s main morning newspaper.

The article chronicled the life and “history of corruption” of Liu Yong, a former student at the Beijing Aviation College. According to the paper, on the night of March 7, Liu stabbed to death a girl in his college and then electrocuted himself to avoid punishment.

The paper said Liu had once been “a model (Communist) Youth League cadre,” but in college he ignored his political instructors and became swept up in Western ideas--at one point even trying to dress like a character from the novel “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

An accompanying commentary said Liu’s crime stemmed from his inflated sense of self. The newspaper said it is opening up a new column in which readers may “comment on the death of Liu Yong,” apparently indicating that Liu is to be made the focal point of a propaganda campaign.

“It will be valuable for the majority of our youth to learn some lessons from (Liu’s) death,” the paper said.

Little information was available about the reported murder. Such prominence is rarely given to violent crimes here. Murder cases are not routinely made public, nor are the results of police investigations.

At Center of Party Debate

According to the Beijing Daily, Liu’s favorite writers were Nietzsche and Sartre. Nietzsche, the 19th-Century German apostle of the power of the individual will, and Sartre, the 20th-Century French existentialist, have been at the center of a prolonged philosophical debate within the Chinese Communist Party.

The issue is whether Marxist thought is compatible with Western concepts of humanism and individualism. Some intellectuals in the liberal wing of the party have supported the development of “Marxist humanism.”

Conservatives in the party, on the other hand, have insisted that scientific socialism and Karl Marx’s world view of dialectical materialism cannot be reconciled with any philosophy that emphasizes the central role of the individual human being.

Last year, amid calls for political change and greater intellectual freedom, the New China News Agency reported that Chinese scholars were beginning to re-examine “foreign philosophers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Sartre.”

But soon after last winter’s student demonstrations on behalf of Western-style democracy, these philosophers were again being officially denounced.

Wednesday’s article in the Beijing Daily portrayed Liu Yong, the alleged murderer, as a man led astray by his belief in his own importance. While studying in high school, the paper said, Liu “gradually developed a superior consciousness, thinking of himself as no ordinary being.”

It said Liu at first aspired to be a factory director, a position of extremely high status in China, and later even told people he wanted to become minister of aviation. In late 1984, when many people in China were setting up private companies, Liu did so, too.

But the company failed, and Liu began facing “ideological problems.” After a while, “Western consciousness of different kinds began pouring into the country, which helped the formation of Liu’s self-consciousness,” the newspaper said.

Backed Demonstrations

By the end of last year, the newspaper said, Liu’s path coincided with “the ideas of bourgeois liberalization.” Last January, he was said to have written a letter to his parents expressing support for the student demonstrations. He was also said to have written, “I do not want to die with my name unknown to the world.”

According to the newspaper, the unidentified murder victim was also a student in the management department of the Beijing Aviation College.

Liu had been dating her roommate for two months, but the roommate told him that she did not want to go out with him any more. Liu originally intended to kill his former girlfriend, but did not have the chance and chose her roommate instead, the newspaper said.

On the night of the slaying, Liu was said to have tricked her into leaving her dormitory. She was later found half-clothed and stabbed 10 times, the paper said.

“Liu Yong, who once advocated self-realization, finally ruined and destroyed himself,” the article concluded.