CHINA IN TURMOIL : Speakers Silent, Posters Banned, Activists Pursued : Dissent on Campus Withers Away

Strollers at Beijing University gathered three-deep around a small, pale poster glued on a lamppost late Friday afternoon.

The written message put full responsibility for last weekend’s massacre of students in and near Tian An Men Square on Li Peng, China’s hard-line premier. The writing seemed to take on a slightly satirical tone by repeating formal references to Li as representative of the Communist Party of China.

Curious readers who might have arrived a moment later would get no chance to even see the tract. A man in a gray-green jacket got off his bicycle, walked over to the pole and briskly tore down the poster, crumpling it in his hand.

He looked around as if to invite someone to challenge his single-handed censorship. No one did, and he rode off silently on his bike.

Leaders, Activists Pursued

The clamps have been put on university campuses around Beijing. The government has begun to pursue leaders and activists of the student democracy movement.

Authorities not only urged the students to turn themselves in for crimes against the state, but also called on common citizens to report the whereabouts of the students to police at special telephone numbers.

Wallposters of any sort are banned, as are the blocking of roads and other forms of protest.

The resulting fear and resignation have emptied university campuses. Beijing University, with a normal enrollment of about 12,000, was until three days ago a scene of worry mixed with excited political defiance. Now the campus is all but deserted. Rumors of raids on the school are rife.

With the student exodus, Communist Party officials ordered the stripping of posters from walls. Gone are the elaborate calls for reform and freedom printed up on computer paper. Gone are the hand-written translations of the U.S. Bill of Rights and accounts of the French Revolution.

Gone, too, are the loudspeakers into which students gave emotional accounts of the deaths of friends at Tian An Men, run over by tanks or gunned down by automatic rifle fire. There are no more amplified broadcasts of the Voice of America.

A few students said that university President Ding Shishun announced Thursday that he had been ordered to stop the loudspeaker broadcast. He asked the activists to comply, even though, according to some students, “in his heart he supported the student movement.”

A Beijing University student from Canton said the university administration had provided free train tickets to some out-of-town students. He had not left, he said, because he “wanted to see what happens.” The student, a biology major, spent the past few nights in the home of a friend in Beijing.

“I think the student leaders are in great danger,” he said. “Our country has no future now. I would like to go to a foreign country. I think everybody does. But even if we get a visa, we will not be issued a passport by our government.”

Beijing University students had discussed the possibility of making violent attacks on soldiers and police, but had given up the idea as impractical, the Canton student said.

At Beijing Teacher’s University, which has a total enrollment of about 10,000, all but two foreign students had abandoned the campus, where janitors washed down the campus front gate, the better to peel off the long strips of paper with Chinese characters painted boldly on them.

A lecturer there said that teachers who participated in marches were fearful that they had been identified and would soon be arrested.

“I was in a march and a security agent came right up and snapped my photo,” said the lecturer. “I had my identification tag on.”

Teachers Easier to Find

Most university teachers reside on the campuses where they teach and thus are easier to locate than the students.

At People’s University, where about 8,500 are enrolled, a series of wallposters that gave the views of students had somehow escaped the bristle brushes of the janitors. A big crowd gathered to read the remaining messages, when suddenly a man in a white polo shirt appeared and scoffed out loud: “Read it today, because you won’t be able to read it tomorrow.”

He then walked over to a police gazebo at the other side of the gate and called someone. Bystanders cut short their reading and slowly ambled away.

A student whispered to a visitor at People’s University: “We will have to struggle for the future. We will stay nonviolent, but yes, we will struggle.”

A Few Believed Arrested

Students at some campuses believed that a few student leaders have already been arrested. One student at Beijing University said that activist Guo Haifeng was nabbed Sunday. Guo gained fame by going down to his knees on the steps of the Great Hall of the People on Tian An Men Square to present a petition to the government. He had stayed in the square until the end of Sunday’s violence, the student said.

Other leaders were reported to be in hiding. Wuer Kaixi, who verbally sparred with Li Peng in a tense televised meeting before the massacre, has fled to Inner Mongolia, students said.

The campus evacuations leave a key gap in the school year. Final examinations were scheduled for this month: Without them, the classes cannot graduate and new students cannot enter as freshmen.

Beijing University professors said that graduating students will have to return to class this summer to complete their courses. Others can wait until the fall. But no one knows when enough security might be offered for students to return, and no one is sure who among them will be permitted to come back.