Deng Chides U.S., Says It Used Troops on Protesters

Senior leader Deng Xiaoping of China said the United States used troops to quell student demonstrations during the 1960s and should not criticize China for its crackdown on dissidents, a Hong Kong newspaper reported.

The English-language South China Morning Post on Tuesday published the full speech Deng delivered to senior military officials June 9, five days after the army entered Beijing to put down the pro-democracy movement.

Deng noted that Washington has criticized China for suppressing students but said the United States also mobilized troops against student rioters in the 1960s and 1970s.

“They were suppressing students and the people, but we are quelling counterrevolutionary riots. What qualifications do they have to criticize us?” he said.

In his speech, Deng said the pro-democracy protesters hoped to “topple the Chinese Communist Party and to overthrow the socialist order. . . . Of course, these slogans are just a front. . . . Their goal is to establish a totally westernized bourgeois republic.”

Deng indicated in the speech that the student-led protest movement, which lasted seven weeks, was inevitable.

“This storm was bound to come sooner or later. . . . We are fortunate that it has come about now, mainly because we have a large group of senior comrades who are still alive,” the 84-year-old leader said.