Still Respects Intellectuals, China Says

China said today that its crackdown on dissent will not endanger intellectuals, but it also announced that a prominent dissident holed up in the U.S. Embassy has been fired from an academic board.

Also today, the government declined to comment on a report that senior leader Deng Xiaoping is seriously ill with prostate cancer. The official New China News Agency’s Hong Kong office described the report as mere rumor.

An unsigned commentary in the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily said China will continue to respect its intellectuals’ knowledge and talent, even though some participated in the recent pro-democracy movement that the government calls a “counterrevolutionary rebellion.”

“China needs a strong intellectual force for modernization. . . . We should thoroughly implement Deng Xiaoping’s policy to ‘respect knowledge, respect talent’ and use intellectuals to achieve the modernization goal,” it said.

The crackdown ended a period of relatively free political debate.

Fang Lizhi, the dissident who evaded arrest by seeking refuge at the U.S. Embassy, has been relieved of his position on the Academic Degrees Committee under the State Council, China’s Cabinet, and is no longer qualified to tutor doctoral students, New China News Agency reported.

Fang, who entered the U.S. Embassy with his wife shortly after the June crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, had already been relieved of his posts at the Natural Dialectics Research Society but apparently still retains his main job at the Beijing Observatory.