By Michael Laris
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 29, 1998; Page A12

BEIJING, June 29 (Monday)—President Clinton capped off a visit to Beijing University with an impromptu campaign-style speech from the steps of its new library to a crowd of 2,000 to 4,000 students who climbed on flower planters and other objects for a view of the American leader and responded to him with cheers.

"China is a very old country, but thanks to you, your idealism, your spirit and your future, it will remain forever young," Clinton said in a highly unusual outdoor appearance on the leafy campus after an earlier speech and discussion with another group of students.

Speaking on the grounds of the university that was at the forefront of rebellions several times over the past century, including the 1989 Tiananmen Sqauare demonstrations that rocked the Chinese Communist regime, Clinton said, "history is not just something to be studied at universities. It's something that is always unfolding and here it's unfolding. I believe a large part of the next chapter in America's history will be its partnership with the new China."

The scene on the library steps was an unusual postscript to an already unusual day here. Earlier, in his speech in a campus lecture hall, Clinton was greeted by students who take a more practical, cautious view of political change than their predecessors and who pressed the American leader to test his motives in promoting individual rights and American ideals during his live televised address.

Students peppered Clinton with tough questions, challenging American military aid to Taiwan, urging him to look critically at democracy and human rights in America, questioning his implication that there is a contradiction between individual and collective rights and asking how he would feel if there were demonstrations outside the Beijing University hall similar to those outside a hall at Harvard University last October when Chinese President Jiang Zemin spoke there.

An international relations graduate student said five of the seven questions were ones that university administrators had instructed students to ask during a week of meetings before Clinton's speech.

But she and others said the questions reflect many of the concerns of Chinese students.

Qiao Xiaolan, 25, a student of information management, said "we really wanted to listen to him directly." She rated Clinton's answers to questions "pretty satisfactory" and said he had a "very positive" attitude. "He wants to promote relations. Clinton's trip to China can clear up some misunderstandings. . . . On some questions we hold the same opinions."

"I think it's good that Beijing University students had the courage to ask such questions. The students expressed what's in our hearts," said Wang Yanmei, a law student. Wang gave Clinton's responses a more than passing grade. "President Clinton is an excellent diplomat. His responses didn't completely satisfy us, but he made us understand his attitude."

While the students at Beijing University in 1988-89 held a series of salons about democracy that gave birth to the Tiananmen Square protest movement, today's students tend to major in economics. A large percentage seek to study overseas after graduation, in pursuit of professional skills more than personal liberty.

Yet in the century since its founding, Beijing University and its students have occupied a special place in the history of Chinese politics. Students led protest movements in 1919, before the Communist victory in 1949, and in 1989. The university has a long history of links with Western education, philosophy and science.

Today, despite preoccupation with pragmatic matters, many of its students are looking to Clinton to sound themes still sensitive in the aftermath of the 1989 student-led protest movement in Tiananmen Square.

"In China, we need the United States and other countries who love democracy [to] influence China," Tao Jiyuan, 31, a chemical engineering student, said after hearing Clinton's remarks this morning. "Most people in China know about America from TV and newspapers, but the news is not enough to know about the U.S. and Western countries. . . . I think the reason a country is poor is that its ideas are poor."

"It's inevitable [Clinton's speech] will have a big influence on China," said Bian Xueqi, as he sat shirtless studying a civil-procedure law textbook. Using a Chinese proverb, he said Clinton's speaking at Beijing University is like "throwing out stones to bring back jade," meaning it would encourage even more valuable and meaningful exchanges between the United States and China.