Military Clashes, New Party Chief Reported in China

BEIJING —  The threat of civil war appeared to escalate Tuesday as witnesses reported the movement of military convoys and apparent skirmishes between units of rival armies within Beijing city limits, and foreigners heeded the warnings of their embassies to leave China for their safety. This morning, in the first sign of a new political lineup since the declaration of martial law on May 20, Beijing Radio indicated that Qiao Shi, a leader who has been in charge of internal security matters, is now the highest-ranking member of the ruling Politburo. Qiao thus becomes acting head of the Communist Party, replacing reformist General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who opposed the bloody martial-law crackdown.

The United States, meanwhile, granted asylum inside the U.S. Embassy compound to China’s most famous and outspoken pro-democracy activist, astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, 53. Fang was accompanied by his wife, also well known among dissidents, and his child.

Could Affect Americans

That decision, which could have repercussions on the situation of Americans in China, was announced by White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater in Washington not long after Chinese authorities warned that they might shoot at foreigners in a strategically located diplomatic compound.

When President Bush visited Beijing in February, Fang had been invited to a dinner the President gave for Chinese officials but was blocked from attending by Chinese authorities in what became an ugly diplomatic incident. Officials said that Fang apparently fears he is now in jeopardy.

There was still no clear sign of who is in charge in Beijing. The indication of Qiao Shi’s rise to a more prominent leadership position was itself indirect.

Beijing Radio said this morning that the Supreme People’s Court sent a telegram to “Comrade Qiao Shi and the Standing Committee of the Politburo to express support for the actions to suppress counterrevolutionary riots.”

That Qiao Shi was singled out for specific mention in this way seemed to indicate that he had for now taken over leadership of the party from Zhao, apparently purged after a power struggle.

Qiao Shi, widely known as the “party’s policeman,” is believed by many Western analysts to be a leader of China’s secret service and the party’s own security network.

He is believed to be aligned with the hard-line faction that favored a tough approach to dealing with the pro-democracy students.

At the White House, Fitzwater reported Tuesday that U.S. officials are now unable to contact any top-level Chinese leaders in Beijing, although they have talked to some middle-level officials.

“The assumption has been that the top-level people have moved out to other locations,” he said. “It’s like the place is closed down. . . . There’s no indication who the leadership is.”

Embassies advised foreigners to evacuate, and crowds of people jammed the airport to get on flights leaving Beijing.

While the capital buzzed with widespread but unconfirmed rumors of larger confrontations dozens of miles from Beijing, residents could see and hear for themselves evidence of the growing strife.

The sound of gunfire reverberated sporadically through different sections of the city all day.

Shortly before midnight Tuesday, a column of four tanks, five armored personnel carriers and 51 troop trucks, each capable of carrying about 40 soldiers, drove from Tian An Men Square past the Jianguomenwai diplomatic compound, where many foreign residents of Beijing reside, and headed toward the eastern suburbs as if setting off for battle.

At least 400, and possibly several thousand, unarmed Beijing residents and students were killed when the troops took control of the square and the central part of the city over the weekend.

Around 6:30 a.m. today, what appeared to be the same convoy, apparently loaded with new supplies and troops, returned by the same route to the central square, which has been held since Sunday morning by the 27th Army. The 27th Army is believed to be directly controlled by President Yang Shangkun, a hard-liner, and his family.

About the same time, a convoy of troops heading from the square along Changan Avenue--a main artery in downtown--passed the Beijing International Hotel. As the last armored vehicle passed, a soldier on top sprayed a cluster of civilians standing in front of the hotel with rifle fire, witnesses said. Four people were hit. The witnesses said the victims were taken to a nearby hospital, but their fate was not immediately known.

Later in the morning, bystanders set up small shrines made of cinder blocks and twisted metal rails where the four had fallen. One young man stuck his finger in a pool of blood and wrote in a notebook, “Revenge.”

About 10 a.m. today, a young American at the Beijing-Toronto Hotel saw 22 trucks, four jeeps, two trucks with sandbags and one tanker truck pass by. Half an hour later, another 140 trucks and 10 jeeps rumbled past, and about 15 minutes after that, between 300 and 500 armed soldiers marched by on foot.

During the morning’s troop movements, there were reports of troops firing into the air. One Western journalist said the firing didn’t appear to be aimed at civilians but was wild shooting into the air.

Between these bursts of firing, some of the soldiers and Chinese residents--watching the scene from windows and open doorways of apartment blocks along the road--were seen waving to each other.

Also at mid-morning, heavy automatic rifle and machine-gun fire could be heard for about 10 minutes coming from the area just east of the Jianguomen Bridge. The cause of the firing was not clear, but during the firing, troop trucks moved rapidly east over the bridge and other military vehicles crossed the bridge heading west.

Civilian bicycle traffic continued along the north-south highway under the bridge throughout the incident, and immediately after the shooting ended, a convoy of about 10 military trucks could be seen heading north along the same highway. About 10 minutes later there was another smaller and briefer round of firing.

A Western military attache in Hong Kong said that these troop movements did not necessarily mean that the 27th Army was vacating central Beijing. Furthermore, the attache said, there are other army units allied with the 27th in the downtown area, including a unit based in Chengdu in central China. “The 27th didn’t go into the square all alone, and they weren’t holding the square all alone,” the attache said.

There was other speculation that the troops in the square were simply establishing a wider perimeter of control.

Just after noon, soldiers posted on Changan Avenue unleashed volleys of automatic weapon fire into the facade of an 11-story apartment building where members of the U.S. mission and other diplomats reside, according to United Press International.

Bullets hit the high-rise structure, smashing windows but causing no injuries. Officers then stationed soldiers with assault rifles around the entire compound, UPI said, sealing its exits and trapping occupants inside. But several hours later, at least some residents were allowed to leave the Jianguomenwai diplomatic compound, the largest center for foreign residents in Beijing.

One of several skirmishes in the city Tuesday took place near a military museum several blocks west of centrally located Tian An Men Square.

Troops from some army other than the 27th had abandoned about 100 military vehicles, including armored personnel carriers and troop trucks, during the predawn hours Monday and had taken refuge in the museum rather than fire on crowds blocking their way. They then apparently clashed with soldiers of the 27th.

Chinese residents told United Press International that the clash was between troops of the 28th Army and the 27th Army. Details of the clash were not immediately available.

The British news agency Reuters quoted a Western witness who said that at a different intersection west of the city, troops widely reported to be at odds over the martial-law crackdown were facing each other.

Another key confrontation point since the weekend has been the Jianguomen Bridge on the east side of the city, directly adjacent to the Jianguomenwai diplomatic compound.

Over the weekend, families of diplomats and some journalists have watched from their apartment balconies as martial-law troops engaged in a tense standoff with crowds of citizens. Monday evening, 20 tanks arrived to take control of the bridge, a strategic intersection of major east-west and north-south roads, and assumed defensive positions to hold it.

Some of the tanks guarding the bridge kept their guns pointed at a convoy of about 40 troop trucks that had failed to fight their way against citizens to enter Tian An Men Square on Saturday night.

This too was widely assumed to be a standoff between rival armies. Chinese in crowds near the bridge said the soldiers who had stopped rather than shoot Beijing citizens were from the 23rd Army of Northeast China’s Shenyang military district.

The diplomatic compound has thus become a potentially dangerous area. On Tuesday, the government agency under the Chinese Foreign Ministry that serves as landlord for the compound informed the U.S. Embassy and at least some other embassies that the Beijing martial-law headquarters had decreed that soldiers could shoot at diplomats and journalists in the apartments.

Among the martial-law orders is a prohibition against taking pictures of troops. But some in the compound have continued to take pictures of the nearby troops.

Martial-law orders also include tight restrictions against foreign press reporting, rules which have been widely ignored in the chaos engulfing Beijing.

Apparent divisions in the Chinese government have contributed to the ability of journalists to continue to function in Beijing. But during the violent weekend takeover of central Beijing by the 27th Army, troops shot, beat or detained at least eight foreign journalists, and at least six photojournalists had their equipment smashed. There were no deaths among the journalists, and those detained were subsequently released.

“They said if soldiers saw anyone with a camera or binoculars, they would shoot to kill,” a U.S. Embassy official said.

During the takeover of Tian An Men Square and other points in central Beijing on Saturday night and Sunday morning, a Japanese reporter was shot in the foot and a French journalist was hit in the back by a bullet. Two CBS television reporters were kicked and punched by martial-law troops and held for a day. A reporter for the British wire service Reuters was blindfolded and detained for six hours. Three other British reporters were beaten.

A handful of incidents in which foreigners have been detained or beaten and the growing danger of the situation prompted many foreign embassies, including the U.S. Embassy, to advise their nationals Tuesday to leave China. “You should leave Beijing,” a caller from the U.S. Embassy told one American resident of the capital.

The government offered its first version of the toll from last weekend’s bloody takeover when Yuan Mu, spokesman for the State Council, appeared on television in a Tuesday night press briefing for Chinese journalists.

Yuan and other officials insisted that martial-law forces had exercised restraint in the face of a violent counterrevolutionary rebellion.

“The efforts to put down the counterrevolutionary rebellion in Beijing have scored an initial success, but the rebellion has not yet been completely suppressed,” Yuan said.

He said that 300 soldiers and city residents had been killed in the weekend violence, including only 23 students. Yuan said 5,000 soldiers and 2,000 residents were wounded and that 400 soldiers were missing.

Various Western media have estimated the number of confirmed deaths, based on statements from hospitals and bodies seen by foreign witnesses, at about 400 to 700, but it is widely believed among Chinese and foreigners in Beijing that at least 1,000, and perhaps many more, died in the weekend violence.

A spokesman for the Chinese Red Cross, which had displayed some sympathy for the student protesters in the square, had said early this week that the death toll was “in the thousands.”

KEY PLAYERS IN CHINA’S STRUGGLE FOR POWER

Deng Xiaoping, 84, China’s paramount leader, holds only one high-ranking position--chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Communist Party. The commission, not the Defense Ministry, has the final say on military matters, and that plus his personal ties to top generals gives Deng control of the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military. Deng is presumed to have ordered troops to march on the capital last weekend to suppress pro-democracy unrest.

Deng, a veteran of the epic Long March of the 1930s, became general secretary of the party but was purged twice by radicals during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and then staged a comeback that transformed China from a country dominated by ideological battles into one with pragmatic, market-oriented economic policies. Living standards have improved for millions of Chinese, but the modernization drive has led to serious problems of inflation and corruption.

Deng has been out of sight since May 16, when he met Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Chinese sources say he has been hospitalized for treatment of prostate cancer. Rumors have circulated in Beijing that he is gravely ill, and the government denied a report that he had died. His name is pronounced Dung sheeow-PING.

Zhao Ziyang, 70, reportedly purged last month for sympathizing with the students, has been general secretary of the Communist Party since 1987 and the nation’s leading advocate of rapid economic reforms.

As governor of Sichuan province in the late 1970s, he led the country in successful experiments in restoring family farming.

Deng brought him to Beijing in 1980, and he was quickly named premier. He became party chief in 1987 after the ouster of fellow reformist Hu Yaobang, who was blamed for failing to deal with student unrest.

Zhao was last seen May 19 when he went to Tian An Men Square to meet student hunger strikers. Martial law was imposed in most of Beijing the next day. There have been no official reports of his whereabouts, and he is said to be under house arrest. His name is pronounced Jow dz-YAWNG.

Li Peng, 60, who declared martial law in Beijing on May 20, has been premier since April, 1988. Li studied in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and represents the technocrats now filling many government offices.

He opposed the scope of Zhao’s moves in market-oriented reforms, saying he supports the plan but prefers a more cautious pace.

Li briefly met student protesters in a testy televised exchange just before martial law was imposed, and has not been seen in public since he met three new ambassadors May 25 and said the government was “stable.”

One Hong Kong newspaper reported that Li was shot and wounded in the thigh Sunday by a police officer in the Great Hall of the People. It said Li was not seriously injured and that the officer was immediately shot to death. His name is pronounced Lee Pung.

Yang Shangkun, 82, who supported Li’s declaration of martial law and led the hard-liners demanding a tough stand against the students, became China’s president, or head of state, in April, 1988.

The post of president is largely ceremonial, but Yang has close ties to Deng and holds a seat on the 17-member party Politburo.

A career military man, a veteran of the Long March who was active in Red Army campaigns in the 1930s and 1940s, Yang was appointed permanent vice chairman of the Central Military Commission in 1982. Yang’s power in that post reportedly has grown, and some say he has been running the commission.

More important, Yang is widely believed to have family connections within the hierarchy of the armed forces, particularly the 27th Army that marched on Beijing last weekend. His name is pronounced Yawng shawng-KWUN.

Qiao Shi, 64, head of China’s secret police and intelligence operations. He holds key swing vote on the five-member Standing Committee of the Communist Party Politburo. Observers see him as a fulcrum between those who want to accelerate change and those who want it slowed.

Qiao was born in 1924 in Zhejiang province and joined the Communist Party at age 16, serving as the secretary of a student committee in the party’s underground organization in Shanghai in the 1940s.

He disappeared during Cultural Revolution but later surfaced as deputy director of the party’s international liaison department, dealing with foreign Communist parties. Qiao was promoted to the Central Committee and party Secretariat in 1982.

Qiao rarely speaks in public and is seen by analysts as more of an organization man than an innovator. A nonsmoker and nondrinker, Qiao gets up before dawn, jogs and walks for nearly an hour, before starting his 10-hour day. His name is pronounced Cheeow Sher.