Beijing hushed on university bombings

A dining hall at Tsinghua University in Beijing reopened Thursday after a small bomb went off there and another exploded at a crowded Beijing University cafeteria during lunch hours Tuesday, injuring nine. Most students at China’s most elite universities, however, took their meals back to their dorms Thursday – amid heavy speculation about who conducted what most students called a terrorist act. News of the highly unusual bombings has been hushed in the Chinese media – with authorities evidently unwilling to raise a shocking incident one week ahead of the annual People’s Congress. Thursday, state media, and even semiofficial websites and chat rooms, contained no stories or discussion on the bombings. Sina.com, the most popular site among China’s Internet users, ran a lead story the day of the incident, but the subject disappeared the next day. No information is available about the condition or identity of the students taken to the hospital. In coming days, Hu Jintao is expected to replace Jiang Zemin as president of the state. In November, Mr. Hu took over from Mr. Jiang as head of the Communist Party – part of a major transition to a more youthful “fourth generation” of leaders. Many of those leaders, and most of the top echelon of officials, were educated either at Tsinghua or Beijing University. Full Story