Beijing Students Protest Detention of Lecturer

Students in Beijing protested the reported detention of a popular lecturer and “self-help guru,” Ding Xiaoping, the New York Times reports:

At least 100 students, many from the country’s finest institutions of higher learning, were protesting the detention of Ding Xiaoping, an entrepreneur, inventor and charismatic purveyor of “self-perfection” who spent three years in jail for his role as a student organizer during the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

By Monday, however, a number of them said they had been visited by officials from their respective schools and persuaded to sign statements promising not to make any more trouble.

A man who answered the phone at the Haidian District Public Security Bureau in northwest Beijing, where the students briefly tussled with the police, said no protests had taken place over the weekend. He also denied that Mr. Ding was in police custody.

The rare outburst of anti-establishment fervor among students came at a particularly sensitive time for China, which is gearing up for a huge public celebration to mark the 60th anniversary of the Communist revolution. Although impossible to confirm, those who took part in the weekend protests contend that the authorities are seeking to silence Mr. Ding before the National Day festivities on Oct. 1.

Read also a report from 2007 posted on xys.org (translated by ESWN) about Ding Xiaoping.

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