Students Refuse to Leave Troops Enter Shanghai to Quell Demonstrators

About 500 Chinese troops moved into the center of Shanghai early today to try to remove students demonstrating for democracy outside city government offices on the waterfront.

The troops, who were unarmed, tried to usher the students into buses and a few were driven away. But most of the 6,000 students refused to go and thousands more demonstrators poured into the center of the city, China’s biggest, to show their support.

The troops acted shortly after Chinese President Yang Shangkun announced the army was being called in to end mass demonstrations in Beijing.

Student-led protests that erupted in Shanghai on Tuesday and Thursday forced Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to abandon plans to visit the center of the historic city, a section largely built by European traders in the 19th Century.

The troops formed a thin line between the students outside the city government offices and thousands of fresh demonstrators arriving in the center.

A public address system broadcast a statement by Shanghai Mayor Zhu Rongji saying: “You should all leave in an orderly manner. We can still conduct dialogue.”

Defiant students yelled back at the loudspeakers: “Get out! Get out!”

The loudspeakers then played a recording of a meeting of party, government and army representatives in Beijing at which President Yang announced that troops would be used and Premier Li Peng attacked “a tiny minority of agitators” who he said want to overthrow the government.