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Political tensions simmer as China prepares to cremate Deng

February 23, 1997
Web posted at: 11:45 a.m. EST (1645 GMT)

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BEIJING (CNN) -- China prepared Sunday for final funeral rites for deceased patriarch Deng Xiaoping amid hints of political infighting among Communist foes. icon (Mike Chinoy reports: 220 K / 20 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

Chinese soldiers in ceremonial green uniforms with yellow and red piping practiced carrying an empty transparent coffin at a cemetery for Communist veterans in western Beijing.

Eulogies praising Deng's economic reforms that lifted tens of millions of Chinese out of poverty gushed from state-run media, along with photographs of Deng and his chosen successor, President and Communist Party Secretary Jiang Zemin .

Deng, who died Wednesday evening at age 92, will be cremated Monday, following a small private ceremony at a Beijing military hospital.

An estimated 10,000 of Communist China's elite are to honor Deng at a memorial service Tuesday in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. No international heads of state have been invited because Deng, who retired in 1990, was officially a private citizen with no higher title than "comrade."

Deng's family has asked that his ashes be displayed during the memorial service in a casket covered with the red Communist flag before being scattered at sea.

Old rivalries resurface

In a sign that old rivalries are beginning to resurface, President Jiang has reportedly refused to allow former Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang to attend the memorial service -- an order in defiance of Deng's family.

Zhao, to the angst of Communist hard-liners, had sided with students in ill-fated 1989 pro-democracy protests. Zhao has remained under a virtual house arrest for the past several years. icon (Mike Chinoy reports: 275 K / 25 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

Also excluded from the memorial service list is China's top conservative ideologue, Deng Liqun, who openly criticized the patriarch for making a 1992 tour of southern China that jump-started a faltering economy. He was not invited at the family's request.

Deng Liqun, who is not related to the paramount leader, was the head of China's propaganda for several years under Deng Xiaoping and had been personally loyal to him for years.

Security on high alert

Meanwhile, authorities have tightened security throughout the nation, especially around Beijing's Tiananmen Square, where government troops crushed pro-democracy movements in 1989 that left hundreds, if not thousands, of demonstrators dead.

Chinese sources said the military had been placed on high alert since Deng's death and were prepared to use force in dealing with potential ethnic unrest or any other threat to internal stability.

"The government is very worried about any upsurge of protests or dissent during this very delicate period immediately after Deng's death," CNN's Mike Chinoy said from Beijing.

In the capital, extra patrols circled main streets and stood at intersections. Plainclothes police confiscated flowers from people headed toward a memorial for revolutionary heroes in the center of Tiananmen Square, where flags flew at half-staff.

The government also ordered discos, karaoke lounges and other entertainment spots to close during the six-day mourning period that ends with Tuesday's memorial.

Mourners remember leader

But despite signs of political jockeying at the top and increased security concerns, for most of China's 1.2 billion people, the fourth day of official mourning passed uneventfully.

In Shenzhen, the southern boom town near Hong Kong that Deng's reforms created, hundreds of people on Saturday laid yellow flowers beneath a billboard bearing his likeness.

Thousands of mourners streamed to Deng's birthplace, the isolated Paifang Village in the hills of southwestern Sichuan province. And throughout the nation, mourners packed state bookstores to buy posters and biographies of the late leader.

"I hope God will take care of him," one worshipper said at a service in Beijing.

Reuters contributed to this report.

 
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