Chaos hits Peking for summit talks

Press, 17 May 1989, Page 10

Chaos hits Peking for summit talks

NZPA-Reuter Peking Several thousand students and workers paralysed central Peking in scenes of chaos yesterday, demonstrating outside the Chinese Communist Party and Government headquarters and forcing Sino-Soviet summit talks to change venue.

Witnesses said the crowd swarmed over giant stone lions standing outside the vermillionwalled Zhongnanhai compound, where Chinese leaders live and work. Troops guarded the ornate archway leading into the compound but a Western reporter at the scene said there were no clashes. Nearby tens of thousands of people — students, workers, teachers, journalists — demonstrated for democracy and freedom for the third day running in Peking’s vast Tiananmen Square. Ambulances with sirens blaring ferried to hospital scores of students collapsing from the effects of four days without food. Student leaders said they and more than 3000 of their colleagues were on a hunger strike to press demands for equal dialogue with top leaders. The Chinese Premier, Li Peng, was obliged to change his rendezvous with Mikhail Gorbachev

from the Great Hall of the People in the Square to the State guest house in western Peking, where the Soviet leader is staying. Crowds were threatening to surround the hall but no official reason was given for the change in venue. Mr Gorbachev and Mr Li shook hands warmly and indulged in light banter before settling down to talks on bilateral relations and international issues. No mention was made of the student unrest in their opening comments which were broadcast live over State television. As they spoke, students handed a long petition of cloth bearing 10,000 signatures to grey-suited Chinese officials at the entrance to the Zhongnanhai compound. Students said the petition demanded that their movement be officially recognised as a patriotic campaign and that top leaders meet them for talks.

Behind them, columns of protesters — representing a broad spectrum of Chinese life from lawyers to factory technicians — jammed Peking’s main boulevard for at least a kilometre. Two middle-aged gentlemen in suits walked up to the gate of the compound with a placard saying "Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng — speak to the people.” The crowd roared its approval. Mr Zhao — China’s Communist Party leader who has voiced some support for the students but refused to talk with them — was due to meet Mr Gorbachev later yesterday to normalise relations with the Soviet, Communist Party. State-to-State relations between China and the Soviet Union returned to an even keel after three decades of hostility yesterday morning when Mr Gorbachev met China’s senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, in the first SinoSoviet summit since 1959.