Beijing University

China's most prestigious university opened Saturday for the first time since soldiers crushed the massive pro-democracy protests its students helped lead last June. Students gathered to buy books at the center of the Beijing University campus near a long red banner that urged them to uphold Marxist principles and take a clear stand against Western capitalist values.

Fang Lizhi, one of China'sbest-known dissidents whose speeches inspired student protesters throughout the 1980s, has died in the United States, where he fled after China's 1989 military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. He was 76. His wife, Li Shuxian, confirmed that he died Friday in Tucson, where he had been a University of Arizona physics professor for about 20 years. As a leading astrophysicist in China and a senior administrator at the Chinese University of Science and Technology, Fang was once a ranking member of the Community Party.

The president of Beijing University, whose students helped lead the pro-democracy movement that was crushed in June, was replaced today by the Education Commission. Ding Shisun was the second university president replaced since the protests. The official New China News Agency portrayed the move as nonpolitical and said the 62-year-old Ding had asked as early as February to leave for "health and other reasons."

The bar was Irish, the sport originally French, but the zeitgeist on this night in Beijing was all about China. "China has made it into the history books once again. We're going to take on the world and no one can stop us," exulted Lei Jianbo, seconds after the match point that made Li Na the first Chinese player to win one of tennis' Grand Slam singles tournaments. That the geopolitical implications went far beyond the bounce of the tennis ball was clear to Lei and his friends, well-dressed professionals in their 20s and 30s who had gathered Saturday evening at a Beijing bar called Paddy O'Shea's.

"I have just received great news," blurted Ren Yanshen, the top Communist Party official at Beijing University, during a news conference the other day. "Our mountain climbing team has just conquered a peak in Nepal. Now there's the spirit of Beijing University for you!"

Students at Beijing University in the Chinese capital voted to continue a two-week class boycott for democratic reforms, despite calls by protest leaders to drop the strike. The United Assn. of Beijing Universities, an independent group that has organized three weeks of demonstrations, urged that students head back to class and continue their campaign through "speeches, plays and pamphlets." But at Beijing University, students voted in favor of continuing the boycott. Some students at Beijing Normal University also said they would stay out of school.

An unsigned poster mocking deposed Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu and China's hard-line leaders went up at Beijing University, birthplace of China's spring democracy movement, a source said today. "Lost dog," read the poster, which was put up over the weekend--after Ceausescu's flight from his palace in Bucharest and before his arrest and execution.

Chinese police detained a student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests before he could attend 100th anniversary celebrations for Beijing University, a human rights group said Sunday. Wang Youcai was last seen at a Beijing hotel April 27, shortly after he arrived in the capital to take part in festivities for his alma mater, China's most prestigious university.

A small group of university students staged a sit-down demonstration Sunday in Tian An Men Square in the heart of Beijing to press for increased funding of education and higher pay for intellectuals. The protest came after several days in which posters critical of government educational policies and supportive of political democratization were put up--and allowed to stay up--at Beijing University, the nation's most prestigious educational institution.

The week before China finally confessed the truth about the extent of the deadly pneumonia-like outbreak within its borders, some students in elite universities were already staring the epidemic in the eye. "There was total chaos. It felt like the end of the world," said Luo Yan, a 20-year-old engineering student who lived in the dorm where many of the 60 SARS cases were reported at Northern Jiaotong University, the hardest-hit campus in the capital. "If the virus doesn't kill you, fear might."

Signaling a shift toward a Western liberal arts system, China's top universities are introducing changes to give students a broader education and more freedom to choose their majors. The shift also heralds the gradual dismantling of China's Soviet-style education system, which was designed to meet the needs of the state rather than the individual.

In an unusual burst of campus violence, homemade bombs exploded in cafeterias at China's two most prestigious universities during lunchtime Tuesday, injuring nine people, according to police and university officials. The incidents occurred 90 minutes apart on campuses separated by just hundreds of yards. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

President Clinton's taboo-breaking dialogue with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his later uncensored discussion with Beijing University students--both sessions broadcast live nationwide--have sparked another debate here: Is this the beginning of more openness in China? "It is a turning point for our country," said Huang Renwei, a professor of American Studies at Shanghai's Academy of Social Sciences.

In November, during a speech at Harvard University, Chinese President Jiang Zemin drew chuckles when he talked about what he had learned to that point on his whistle-stop tour of the United States. "I have gotten a more specific understanding of American democracy--more specific than I've learned from books.

Chinese police detained a student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests before he could attend 100th anniversary celebrations for Beijing University, a human rights group said Sunday. Wang Youcai was last seen at a Beijing hotel April 27, shortly after he arrived in the capital to take part in festivities for his alma mater, China's most prestigious university.

"I have just received great news," blurted Ren Yanshen, the top Communist Party official at Beijing University, during a news conference the other day. "Our mountain climbing team has just conquered a peak in Nepal. Now there's the spirit of Beijing University for you!"

China's most famous dissident left Beijing suddenly Sunday, a day after he was released by police after a brief detention. Wei Jingsheng's abrupt disappearance came as the official New China News Agency accused him of violating his parole, and police extended a crackdown on dissidents by taking away a prominent student leader of the 1989 Tian An Men Square protests. Wei's secretary, Tong Yi, told reporters that the veteran activist had departed voluntarily.