China’s Premier Lectures Students, Hints Crackdown : 1 Million March for 2nd Day

Premier Li Peng today angrily rejected the demands of students leading mass pro-democracy demonstrations across China and issued a veiled warning of a crackdown unless they end their peaceful protests.

“I don’t care if you want to listen or not,” Li lectured the students. “Beijing is paralyzed, coming to anarchy, out of control. The entire nation is affected,” he said at the meeting with student leaders shown on state television.

More than 1 million people from a broad cross section of society marched for a second day in Beijing and hundreds of thousands protested peacefully in other provinces and regions.

The pro-democracy demonstrations are the broadest since the 1949 Communist Revolution and the marches have swelled with workers from factories, offices and construction sites and hundreds of truck, taxi and bus drivers.

Chinese sources with access to the military said soldiers were being moved closer to Beijing from outlying regions after generals of the 38th Army, stationed south of the capital, refused orders to move into the city.

Two generals in northern Liaoning province also refused to move their troops and resigned, the sources said.

Large numbers of workers streamed from factories and offices onto streets in Beijing in chaotic motorcades to step up calls for greater political freedom and for the resignations of senior leaders.

Mao Portraits Appear

Some dusted off long-unused portraits of Mao Tse-tung, carrying them through central Tian An Men Square, where at least 500,000 people encircled a group of thousands of students in the sixth day of a hunger strike to press their demands.

Despite earlier signs of government conciliation, Li took an unusually hard line in a dramatic 50-minute meeting called with student protest leaders at the Great Hall of the People, held as the huge crowds demonstrated in the square outside.

The students have demanded televised talks with senior leaders, a retraction of a newspaper editorial that criticized them last month and official recognition of their movement for free speech, an open press and a crackdown on corruption.

But Li, whose resignation protesters have also demanded, lashed out in anger when 21-year-old student leader Wuerkaixi interrupted his opening remarks and emotionally told the premier to begin serious talks.

The delayed national television broadcast showed Li wagging his finger at the youths wearing hunger strike headbands who sat across from him and other senior officials in armchairs.

‘Students Should Leave’

“The students should leave the square without preconditions,” Li said. “Tell them to leave the square.”

“The government is responsible to the people,” he said, hinting a crackdown is possible despite the size of the protests. “It is impossible for us to ignore this.”

Student leader Wuerkaixi retorted, “Whether we leave the square or not is not ours to decide. The responsibility is on the government side.”

The meeting then collapsed when one student leader told Li, “This is not a dialogue.” Students in the square, listening to the meeting over a public address system, reacted with dismay.