Deng Likens Crackdown to U.S. Quelling ‘60s Protests

HONG KONG —  Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said the United States should not criticize China for its crackdown on dissidents because America used troops to quell student demonstrations during the 1960s, a Hong Kong newspaper reported.

The English-language South China Morning Post on Tuesday published what it said is the full speech Deng made to senior military officers June 9, five days after the army entered Beijing to quell the pro-democracy movement.

Portions of the speech, broadcast on national Chinese television, were reported previously. The newspaper did not say how it obtained the full text.

China has launched a propaganda campaign urging its citizens to read the speech, but the text has not been widely available there.

In the speech, 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.

Deng said the pro-democracy protesters hoped to “topple the Chinese Communist Party and to overthrow the socialist order. . . . Of course . . . their goal is to establish a totally Westernized, bourgeois republic.”

He conceded that in the course of quelling the rebellion, many people died. China has said about 200 people died, about half of them soldiers. Western intelligence sources and Chinese students have estimated that up to 3,000 may have been killed.