Tiananmen

China's official news agency, not known for its quick reactions to international news, was one of the very first wire services in the world yesterday to report that Mikhail S. Gorbachev had been ousted by hard-line forces.The unusually rapid response by the New China News Agency underscores the importance of the fate of socialism in the Soviet Union for China's conservative Communist leaders, who have suffered increasing ideological isolation since the Tiananmen Square massacre two years ago.Scenes of non-violent confrontations between the Soviet military and irate citizens, televised from Moscow by Western media yesterday, also bore some striking similarities to events here immediately preceding the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations near Tiananmen Square.

Demonstrations at Tiananmen 20 years ago grew out of a paradox that had been building in China since 1978, all through the era of rapid economic reform. To achieve its aims, the Chinese Communist Party wished to liberate people economically while continuing to constrain them politically. A version of this same tension persists today. Following the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1965-1970s), the party no longer could base its legitimacy on Maoist socialism. Marxist-Leninist ideology was virtually dead.

Over the past decade, few people have influenced our view of China more than Orville Schell. To some degree, this is true by default; few people publish more than one book before fading out of view.But Mr. Schell has become a near-fixture on the China-watching scene. Every three or four years he comes out with a well-received, highly praised book on China that -- by the standard of books on China -- sells well.His latest book, "Mandate of Heaven," promises to be a similar mini best seller.

XINYAN, China -- Zhang Huimin, 8, skips, walks and jogs along National Highway 107, an impish girl in an undersized red track suit. She has been running since 2 a.m. and it's close to noon, but she's keeping a steady pace, driven by a goal: to complete the 2,150-mile trip from her hometown in southern Hainan province to Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the political heart of China. Her quest has caught the attention of a nation filled with pride at hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, which open a year from today.

BEIJING -- The widow of Edgar Snow, the American journalist who was celebrated here as a friend of China for his sympathetic portrayal of the Communist revolution, was prevented by police yesterday from meeting a prominent critic of the 1989 army crackdown on student democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Lois Wheeler Snow, 79, and her 50-year-old son, Christopher Snow, were halted at the gate of People's University. They had hoped to meet with Ding Zilin at her apartment inside the campus, where she is a professor, and to support her efforts to provide money and consolation to relatives of those killed by the army in the Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989.

BEIJING -- China's season of silence is in full swing.Every spring, Beijing's security apparatus, its relatively few dissidents and its foreign press corps gear up for the anniversary of the slaughter of hundreds of protesters near Tiananmen Square on June 3 and 4, 1989.The fragility of the Communist Party's grip on power is revealed by the silence it tries to enforce on many matters, beginning with the Tiananmen massacre."If one man talks, then a dozen other activists will talk. If a dozen activists talk, then everybody will talk.

BEIJING -- Wang Dan, among the most prominent student leaders of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, has been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government, a capital crime.The activities for which Wang, 27, was charged included publishing anti-government articles abroad, raising money to support needy dissidents and accepting a scholarship from the University of California.Prosecutors disclosed the charges Friday to Wang's parents, who were summoned to a Beijing court a day after they had been told to hire a lawyer to defend him.Wang has spent the past 17 months in detention at a secret police center, where he was not allowed visits from his family.

BEIJING -- Congress didn't want President Clinton to go near Tiananmen Square because of its symbolism as the site of the pro-democracy movement that soldiers crushed in 1989. Polls show that most Americans feel the same way.But many Beijingers -- even some who participated in the demonstrations nine years ago -- have trouble understanding the narrowness of the American obsession. Tiananmen Square may represent tyranny around the world, but to most here it is a place of national pride: the political heart of China.

BEIJING - Zhao Ziyang, the former leader of China's Communist Party who spent the last 15 years of his life under house arrest, came to symbolize an incident that the nation's political elite want to ignore but the world cannot forget: the Tiananmen massacre. Zhao, who died in a Beijing hospital today at age 85, was forced from office in 1989 for showing tolerance and empathy for students massing in the streets as China hurtled toward possible revolution. Today, few Chinese students are aware that hundreds if not thousands of protesters were killed by troops at that time.

BEIJING - The Chinese government branded as fake today secret government transcripts said to detail the Communist Party's decision to crack down on the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising. "Any attempt to play up the matter again and disrupt China by the despicable means of fabricating materials and distorting facts will be futile," said Zhu Bangzao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, in a statement reported this morning by the government's Xinhua News Agency. The crackdown was "highly necessary to the stability and development of China," Zhu added.

BO YIBO, 98 Leader in Tiananmen protests The last of the "Eight Immortals" who led China through economic reforms and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests has died, an official news agency reported Tuesday. Hong Kong's Phoenix Satellite Television, which has close ties to Beijing, said Mr. Bo died Monday at a hospital in the Chinese capital. The father of China's commerce minister, he was a veteran of the 1949 communist revolution and a former vice premier. He was the last of the "Eight Immortals," the group of revolutionary veterans who included supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, and led China through the launch of economic reforms in 1979 and the upheaval of 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.

HONG KONG -- The highest official of the Roman Catholic Church in China used the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre yesterday to strongly criticize the Chinese government and call on it to hold a full and open review of the killings. The criticism by the official, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, is the latest sign that the Vatican may not be willing to compromise on human rights to establish diplomatic relations with mainland China. Pope Benedict XVI has pursued the normalization of ties with China for the past year.

NATIONAL Officials focus on foreign oil President Bush's new chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, said yesterday that the White House plan to address high gasoline prices will have only a modest impact and that the ultimate goal must be reducing dependence on foreign oil. Administration officials, on the Sunday talk shows, drove home the importance of reducing U.S. consumption of foreign oil. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called it a trap, and Energy...

Tonight's rambling episode of Frontline asserts that from China's teeming citizenry, one man's brief, thwarted act of defiance actually changed the world. "The Tank Man," as he is called in lieu of a confirmed identity, was the Beijing obstructionist who stood in the way of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square nearly 17 years ago. This episode (10 p.m.-11:30 p.m., MPT, Channels 22, 67), produced by the provocative filmmaker Antony Thomas, argues that although the Tank Man's gesture did not lead to his government's collapse after soldiers fired on peaceful protesters, it inspired reformers everywhere to challenge totalitarian oppressors.

IN IMPERIAL China, one of the first acts of new dynasties was to rewrite the history of the last dynasty. The minimal notice so far by China's state media of the death of former reformist leader Zhao Ziyang speaks volumes about the feudal strains in modern Chinese authoritarianism - and gives life to the nightmares haunting an insecure single-party state trying to control rising aspirations and a vast potential for unrest. Within China, official mourning for the ousted former premier and party secretary, under house arrest since right before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, might unleash welled up cries for the long-denied reappraisal of that watershed slaughter of unarmed demonstrators - and highlight the lasting damage wrought by those murders on the Chinese Communist Party's claims to legitimacy.

BEIJING - Zhao Ziyang, the former leader of China's Communist Party who spent the last 15 years of his life under house arrest, came to symbolize an incident that the nation's political elite want to ignore but the world cannot forget: the Tiananmen massacre. Zhao, who died in a Beijing hospital today at age 85, was forced from office in 1989 for showing tolerance and empathy for students massing in the streets as China hurtled toward possible revolution. Today, few Chinese students are aware that hundreds if not thousands of protesters were killed by troops at that time.

BEIJING -- As Beijing University celebrates its 100th anniversary this week, it looks little like the school that helped ignite the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising -- and that is just how Chinese leaders want it.Long gone are posters calling for human rights and salons where people openly discuss democracy and public protest.Traditionally a powerful force for political change in China, many students at the country's most prestigious university are now more interested in finding well-paying jobs or studying for graduate school exams.

Demonstrations at Tiananmen 20 years ago grew out of a paradox that had been building in China since 1978, all through the era of rapid economic reform. To achieve its aims, the Chinese Communist Party wished to liberate people economically while continuing to constrain them politically. A version of this same tension persists today. Following the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1965-1970s), the party no longer could base its legitimacy on Maoist socialism. Marxist-Leninist ideology was virtually dead.

BEIJING - Zhao Ziyang, a former Communist Party chief deposed for opposing the violent crackdown on democracy protesters in 1989, has fallen into a coma after suffering multiple strokes, people in contact with his family said yesterday. Police stepped up security in Beijing as the government prepared for the possibility that the death of Zhao, who advocated faster political and economic reform before losing power, could set off popular protests. The authorities told Zhao's family members to gather at Beijing Hospital, where is he being treated.

BEIJING - The Chinese military surgeon who exposed China's SARS cover-up and pressed state leaders to admit that the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters was wrong has been released from detention, people informed about his case said. The doctor, Jiang Yanyong, 72, returned home late Monday after about 45 days in military custody, where he underwent political indoctrination sessions and was investigated for possible criminal activity, said one person who had been told about his case.