Chinese Students Plan to Boycott Classes

BEIJING--Students yesterday paraded on campuses, made speeches on street corners and began organizing a nationwide boycott of classes to press their demands for democratic reform.

The protests in Beijing were organized and generally peaceful, but marches turned violent Saturday in Xian and Changsa. Rampaging mobs looted stores, burned cars and seized a government building. Scores were reported hurt.

The unrest was perhaps the most violent since demonstrations began April 15, when the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang stirred antigovernment sentiments and an organized protest campaign by university students.

Protest leaders said students at Beijing universities planned to join a class boycott beginning today and to contact schools nationwide to persuade them to join.

They said the boycott was a peaceful, legal attempt to force communist authorities to meet with them and discuss demands for a free press, an end to official corruption and other reforms.

Many students also called for Premier Li Peng's resignation and hung posters on campus mocking him.

The official Xinhua News Agency said today's People's Daily newspaper contained a commentary that warned, "Social turmoil can only do good to an extremely small number of people with ulterior motives."

About 150,000 people joined Saturday in one of the biggest protests in Communist China's 40-year history, holding a 15-hour rally at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Authorities allowed the protest to unfold, but students alleged yesterday that police beat several and injured one seriously.

Worse violence was reported Saturday in Xian and Changsha. The state-run Xinhua News Agency said rioters in Xian, a popular tourist city and capital of northwestern China's Shaanxi province, forced their way into the provincial government compound and burned buildings and vehicles.

It said 130 security officers were injured and 18 people were arrested. Xinhua said the melee began after students who had been mourning Hu left the scene.

A student contacted by telephone said at least 30 people were arrested.

Another student, speaking on condition of anonymity, saw about 50 youths began "ripping limbs off trees and throwing anything they could," including rocks, at a truck of security forces. He said hundreds of armed security forces in riot gear closed off the area by nightfall.