Sweeping Purge Expected as China’s Leaders Gather

Senior Communist Party officials are gathering in the capital from around China for a special party meeting, which is expected to authorize a purge of General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and some other leaders who have supported him, diplomatic sources said Friday.

Zhao, who infuriated party hard-liners by advocating conciliation in dealing with student protests, apparently came out on the losing end of a power struggle against Premier Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader. Reports that Zhao has been stripped of his post and put under house arrest--or that he and several of his liberal allies face charges of forming an “anti-party clique”--could not be immediately confirmed.

On Friday, however, China’s government-run news media issued what appeared to be the first official signal that a major political purge is in the works. Chen Yun, 84, chairman of the Standing Committee of the party’s Central Advisory Commission, declared that party cadres “must resolutely expose schemes and intrigues of the very, very few people who intend to create turmoil.”

State television interrupted regularly scheduled programming to broadcast Chen’s remarks, which were also carried on the official New China News Agency.

“This chaos has not come by any chance,” Chen said, in a reference to an outpouring of public support for the students’ demands for greater democratic freedoms. “One of the reasons is that we have relaxed Marxist-Leninist education for a period and weakened the party’s ideological work.”

It was unclear whether Chen was alluding only to Zhao and other party members or whether his warning also applied to protesting students and dissident intellectuals.

A crackdown on intellectuals at this time would send a chilling message to Chinese who recall several other purges by the Communist Party and the persecution of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.

There was particular concern about the welfare of Fang Lizhi, a prominent astrophysicist and one of the country’s most outspoken advocates of democratic reform who was ousted from the party after being accused of inciting student unrest in 1986. Fang has kept out of sight during the most recent protests, but he is widely rumored to be marked for retaliation now.

A Western European diplomat, who is ordinarily a reliable source, said he learned that Fang had been arrested Thursday. This could not be corroborated, however. Fang’s son told The Times by telephone early today that he had been out of contact with his father since Thursday but that he had no information about any arrest.

Fang, 53, gained international attention earlier this year when plainclothes police barred him from attending a dinner at a Beijing hotel hosted by President Bush, who stopped briefly in China on his way home from the funeral of Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo. Chinese authorities were reportedly embarrassed that U.S. officials invited Fang to the Feb. 26 dinner during what was scripted to be an upbeat, sentimental visit by Bush, posted here as head of the first U.S. diplomatic mission after normalization.

The government has made it clear it will not tolerate foreign meddling or expressions of concern over suspected human rights abuses as the crackdown and purge takes its course. News reporting was restricted under the vague terms of a martial-law decree that Li issued one week ago, ostensibly to quell student protests. Authorities have since pulled the plug on satellite transmissions by foreign television networks, only to let the transmissions resume, then pull the plug again.

Meeting with newly arrived ambassadors in his first public appearance since he declared martial law, Li said his government is “capable and stable,” and added: “What is happening now is China’s internal affair. Foreign countries, especially those that are willing to maintain good relations with China, must not interfere in current events.”

Meanwhile, several conflicting rumors are circulating in Beijing’s diplomatic community about the list of party leaders who would be purged or arrested because of their association with Zhao, who favors a degree of political reform in tandem with the market-oriented economic reforms that have been embraced under the Deng regime.

Among those frequently mentioned are Defense Minister Qin Jiwei, who is believed to have opposed Li’s martial-law declaration last Saturday and the decision to use People’s Liberation Army troops to clear Tian An Min Square of student protesters; Hu Qili, the member of the five-man Politburo Standing Committee in charge of propaganda, and Vice Premier Tian Jiyun.

Another Chinese leader reported to be in trouble is Wan Li, head of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the country’s Parliament. Just after meeting with President Bush last Tuesday, Wan cut short a trip to the United States and rushed back to China. But he never reached Beijing. When his plane stopped in Shanghai, Wan got off and remained there, ostensibly for health reasons.

Western diplomats here said they believe party leaders are assembling for a special plenary session of the Central Committee--the 175-seat governing body of the party. The approval of the Central Committee will allow Li and Deng to further consolidate their control over the party and confer an aura of legal form and legitimacy on the internecine maneuvers now under way, diplomats say.

“The paramount leader (Deng) would like to strike while the iron is hot,” said a U.S. diplomat. “If he can get the approval of a plenum (of the Central Committee), so much the better.”

The Associated Press, quoting Chinese and diplomatic sources, said in a dispatch Friday that Zhao had already been placed under house arrest and stripped of his post. A document is being circulated among local party officials advising them that Zhao is no longer party chief, the news agency said.

Zhao was last seen publicly last Friday making a tearful apology to young protesters at Tian An Men Square, where tens of thousands of students had been staging a sit-in--and thousands a hunger strike--to press their demands for democratic reforms. Zhao sympathetically characterized their actions as “patriotic.”

About 10,000 die-hard protesters were still camped out Friday in a rubbish-strewn tent city in the square, defying government admonitions that they leave before People’s Liberation Army troops come in to clear them out. Military action had proved to be a hollow threat, however, when barricades manned by students and sympathetic citizens turned the soldiers away at the city’s outskirts in a stunning display of bravado earlier this week.

While the option of using military force has not been entirely ruled out, the stragglers in Tian An Men Square seemed unconcerned about the danger. Student leaders voted early Friday to remain dug in there. Exhaustion and low spirits prevailed later in the day, when news of Li’s victory over Zhao gradually sank in, but many students said they would still refuse to budge until they extract some kind of concession from the government.

Asked about the impact of Li’s appearance on television Thursday evening, seemingly in solid control of the government, Zheng Jian, one of the student leaders, had a nonchalant reply: “We don’t watch TV here.”

Zheng, a 19-year-old physical education major, was wearing a People’s Liberation Army cap festooned with dirty red and blue cloth streamers, and on his T-shirt a friend had scrawled in Chinese, “I wish you the heart of a general.”

“We’re really not worried,” said Zheng, who is in command of student security on the square and carries a walkie-talkie. “We’re not afraid because the army will never fire on the students. The PLA loves the people.”