Leave China, U.S. Tells Envoys’ Kin; Homes Fired On

The U.S. Embassy on Wednesday directed family members of its diplomats to leave Beijing and other cities in China after troops fired into a residential compound for foreigners in the capital and at one point sealed the complex while searching for a suspected sniper.

The evacuation order came from the State Department in Washington, which also urged all non-official Americans to leave.

The moves came on a day of increased tension between Washington and the government in Beijing, whose exact makeup is still at issue, and of troop movements and maneuvers amid speculation about military rivalries.

China harshly criticized a move by President Bush to suspend military contact and sales between the two governments. In a written statement, the Foreign Ministry said this “pressure on the Chinese government . . . is totally unacceptable to us.”

U.S. Rejects Criticism

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler responded: “The Chinese statement is unwarranted. The President announced our actions in response to the brutal acts of elements of the PLA. Human rights violations, such as the ones that occurred in Beijing, are properly the concern of the entire international community, including the United States.”

The Chinese government also protested the U.S. decision to give refuge in its embassy to Fang Lizhi, an astrophysicist who is China’s most famous pro-democracy activist. It issued a statement accusing Fang of attacking the Communist Party, the government and the socialist system, and said that by giving him refuge, the United States is interfering in China’s internal affairs.

Fang entered the embassy grounds Monday.

China also responded sharply to criticism from a host of other countries of its pre-dawn crackdown in Tian An Men Square last Sunday, in which hundreds, and likely thousands, of unarmed student demonstrators were killed.

“No matter what means they use, condemnation or sanction, the Chinese government will never allow them to interfere in China’s internal affairs,” said Yuan Mu, a spokesman for the country’s State Council, or Cabinet.

Yuan has been the only identifiable spokesman to appear for the government in the past five days.

Troops were on the move in and around China’s capital, with hair-trigger violence keeping residents on edge and sending foreigners fleeing from their cloistered compounds.

Foreign Residences Shot At

Foreign residents of apartment complexes just east of the Jianguo-men Bridge, where Changan Avenue meets the remnants of the old city walls, reeled from multiple scares.

First, on Wednesday morning, troops riding in long convoys along Changan Avenue shot at buildings that house foreigners.

Fred Krug, chief of security at the U.S. Embassy, said that his children were at their seventh-floor home in the Jianguomenwai Diplomatic Compound when troops shot up the front buildings. Bullets shattered the windows of the apartment and his Chinese maid threw her body on the children to protect them, he said.

“They shot up every apartment in the building,” Krug said.

Housing Complex Surrounded

There were no reports of injuries in the compound. But in the afternoon, soldiers suddenly surrounded the Jianguomenwai complex and refused to let anyone leave. For nearly two hours, plainclothes agents searched several buildings along Changan Avenue.

The security forces detained a Chinese man who they said had sniped at troops manning the bridge, on which tanks were guarding the eastern entrance to the city. They said one soldier was killed by the sniper.

After the suspect was dragged away, the soldiers reopened the compound’s gates and residents quickly poured out. By nightfall, only a few families, mostly from Third World countries, remained in the residences.

U.S. Lodges Protest

U.S. Ambassador James R. Lilley went to the Foreign Ministry to make an official protest on the incident, but Vice Foreign Minister Zhu Qizhen was the highest-ranking official he could find, Tutwiler said in Washington.

Lilley discovered that “he was the only foreign ambassador there who finally managed to get through” to anyone in the Chinese leadership, Tutwiler said.

Zhu “noted our protest,” she said.

The White House also announced that the Chinese had postponed the planned U.S. visit next week of Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen.

“The Foreign Ministry in Beijing informed Ambassador Lilley on June 7 that the reason for the postponement was simply the situation in China,” the White House said.

In disclosing the evacuation of dependents of U.S. government employees from China, White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said: “We have urged all other Americans in China to leave at once.”

2 U.S. Planes Chartered

He said the government had chartered a jumbo jet from Northwest Airlines and another from United Airlines, which provide regularly scheduled service to Beijing and Shanghai, to conduct evacuation flights today.

“Our embassy estimates there are under 1,000 Americans remaining in Beijing,” Fitzwater said. Almost 300 of those are diplomats, employees and dependents attached to the embassy.

The State Department said there are a total of 59 American diplomats or employees, with 73 dependents, in the four U.S. consulates in Shanghai, Canton, Chengdu and Shenyang.

“The embassy is making every effort to arrange transportation from hotels and other locations to the airport,” he said. “Ambassador Lilley and his staff have been working around the clock to locate and communicate with Americans in Beijing and around the country.”

“I guarantee you we have been doing everything possible to help as many people as we can,” Fitzwater said. “We set up telephone lines, we’re trying to facilitate communications between parents and students, relatives and people there.”

Fitzwater said that in recent days, the embassy had sent vehicles to Beijing campuses to pick up American scholars “who wish to depart” and has been assembling them at the embassy and at hotels near the embassy.

Tutwiler said the Administration decided to order the evacuation of U.S. government dependents throughout China out of “prudence” and because “the situation is deteriorating.”

“There are no specific threats to Americans,” she said. But, she said: “I would hate to think if something really broke loose and we had not been prudent and wise and done everything in our ability to get Americans out.”

Power Struggle Murky

The maneuvers in the country’s power struggle remained veiled today, with little indication of exactly who is in charge. Reports of military rivalries--and clashes--circulated throughout Beijing. Military experts here and in Hong Kong monitored a confusing ebb and flow of military maneuvers that indicated a dangerous game of brinkmanship was under way.

Troop movements suggested an effort to move heavy concentrations of troops and armor from the center of town, although some tanks remained in Tian An Men Square. In the evening, the tanks stationed at the Jianguomen Bridge disappeared to the east, away from the city center.

Later, a convoy of about 50 troop trucks led by three tanks and five armored troop carriers traveled east along Changan Avenue. It was the latest of a series of convoys to pass along the same route, sometimes going east, sometimes heading back into central Beijing, in the past three days.

A convoy of more than 100 army trucks entered the city from the east at about 7 a.m. today, many of them loaded with supplies.

These movements were attributed to the 27th Army, the unit that shot its way through the city late Saturday night and violently cleared Tian An Men Square of student protesters early Sunday morning. The 27th is associated with Yang Shangkun, China’s president, who some experts say is trying to attain supremacy in a coup d’etat. The 27th, from Hebei province, is backed by the 54th Army, based in Jinan, but also now positioned in Beijing, military observers in Hong Kong said.

Loyalties of Troops

There were several reports of a growing number of units stationed in and near the capital that may oppose the 27th Army or whose loyalties are undefined.

“There may be a lot of units in the Beijing area that are fence-sitting, waiting to see what happens before declaring their allegiance,” said a Western defense attache in Hong Kong.

The 38th Army, which is Beijing’s home unit, is said to oppose the 27th. It has been joined by the 16th, 39th and 40th armies, all provincial units, foreign military observers said.

In all, more than 200,000 troops are reported to have massed in and around Beijing in recent weeks.

Disarray in the Chinese Communist Party appeared to remain unresolved. The party broadcast a call for discipline and ordered its 47 million members not to spread rumors.

Rumors on Leaders Circulate

Among stories circulating widely is that top leader Deng Xiaoping is gravely ill, if not dead. Another is that conservative hard-liner Li Peng, the country’s premier, was wounded in an assassination attempt last Sunday.

The party edict also pledged a “purification of the party organization,” a phrase that may mean a major purge is in store.

The Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Bao reported that China’s national police, the Public Security Bureau, like the army, may be riddled with disagreement over harsh measures to put down pro-democracy unrest. The bureau published a directive telling its agents in the provinces that “they are not obliged to follow Beijing’s example” in putting down unrest. The comment was viewed as perhaps a disguised slap at the imposition of martial law in the capital.

In Beijing, martial-law authorities made efforts to stabilize control over at least central Beijing, bounded by the limits of what was once the old city wall of the capital.

Enforcement of martial law became more formal. Soldiers wearing red armbands with the words “On Duty” sewed on, stood with rifles held across their chests at intersections along Changan Avenue near Tian An Men Square, watching impassively as cyclists streamed by.

Twelve-man sections occasionally marched in single file along Changan, sending bystanders with memories of the week’s brutal killings scattering for cover.

At Tian An Men itself, about 2,000 soldiers manned entrances to the square while an occasional green military helicopter landed and took off.

Scattershot violence that took at least four civilian lives on Changan Avenue in the morning gave way to relative quiet by the afternoon. Shooting could be heard on the western outskirts of the city, but it was not clear if the fire was between army units or directed at civilians.

Despite the Tian An Men massacre, dissident students, uncowed, vied with the unseen government to make propaganda points with the general public. They darted along Beijing streets to paste posters on walls and traffic-police observation gazebos giving an account of the massacre. Some of the photo-copied posters bore grisly pictures of the dead and outraged calls that they should not have died in vain.

‘Evil Doers’ Blamed

Government television, meanwhile, continued to blame the incident on “evil doers.” During one news show, injured soldiers, most with head wounds, were interviewed in hospitals. They said that they were going to restore order peacefully, but that “scoundrels” had attacked them without cause.

Government television also broadcast a visit by Chinese journalists around Tian An Men Square. The tour had the air of a trip to some remote and dangerous outpost. The camera panned slowly across the plaza to show soldiers with rifles at the ready, on the lookout for intruders. Debris from Sunday’s violence still cluttered the vast landscape between Mao Tse-tung’s tomb, towards the square’s southern end, and the old imperial buildings of the Forbidden City forming its northern boundary.

A general gave canned rations to the reporters, who took them rather hesitantly. They were, after all, only blocks from several small snack shops and hotel restaurants.

During the tour, one speaker, identified as a member of the martial-law committee of the city, asserted that “not one person” had died in the square during last Sunday’s military assault on student protesters there.

However, in random conversation on the street, just about everyone was accepting the students’ account of a brutal attack by the army. The Voice of America is also considered a credible source of news not available through government outlets.

“We just do not believe our government,” said a schoolteacher out shopping for vegetables. “We have seen with our own eyes the cruelty they are denying.”

Times staff writers Jim Mann, in Hong Kong, and James Gerstenzang and Doyle McManus, in Washington, contributed to this article.