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China Marks May 4th Anniversary
1999-05-04
BEIJING - China's communist leadership today used the 80th anniversary of a student-led protest movement to urge present-day students to be patriotic without being rebellious, AP said, citing an editorial from the People's Daily. China's leaders claim the May Fourth movement as the predecessor to the Communist Party. On May 4, 1919, 3,000 students gathered in Tiananmen Square and marched through Beijing to protest a decision by allied governments to transfer Germany's colonial possessions in China to Japan after World War I. The May Fourth movement saw China as weak and held back by corrupt traditions. They called for Western science and democracy. Two years later, the more radical participants helped found the Communist Party and advocated revolution. ``Today, the spirit of patriotism and progress means working hard for the prosperity of the country,'' People's Daily said in a front-page editorial. It described prosperity as ``the development of socialist productive forces and accelerating the steps toward reform and opening and socialist modernization.'' The editorial added: ``History tells us that youth can only succeed if they unite with science, patriotism and the needs of the nation.'' China's democracy movement also claims to be descended from the May Fourth movement and marked the anniversary. ``The China Democracy Party will forever struggle in the spirit of the May Fourth movement to make China a democratic, wealthy, strong, pluralistic and modern country,'' the outlawed opposition group said in a statement.
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