Premier Li Peng Thursday angrily rejected the demands of students leading mass pro-democracy demonstrations across China and issued a veiled warning of a crackdown unless they ended their peaceful protests.

"I don't care if you want to listen or not," Li told the students. "Beijing is paralyzed, coming to anarchy, out of control. The entire nation is affected," he said at the meeting with student leaders shown on state television.More than 1 million people from a broad cross-section of society marched for a second day in Beijing, and hundreds of thousands protested in all provinces and regions except Tibet and western Xinjiang. There were no reports of violence.

The pro-democracy demonstrations are the broadest since the 1949 communist revolution, and the marches have swelled with workers from factories, offices and construction sites and hundreds of truck, taxi and bus drivers. They shouted, sang, honked horns and rang bells.

Chinese sources with access to the military said soldiers were being moved closer to Beijing from outlying regions after generals of the 38th Army, stationed south of the capital, refused orders to move into the city.

Two generals in northern Liaoning Province also refused to move their troops and resigned, the sources said.

About 100,000 people demonstrated in Shanghai, local television reported, many marching on its famed Bund waterfront. Protests disrupted the Shanghai schedule of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who returned to Moscow at the end of his historic visit to China.

The protests, fueled by discontent over economic problems and official corruption, mushroomed after a month of student demonstrations.

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(additional information)

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`Out of control'

Russia's official Tass news agency waited until President Mikhail S. Gorbachev left Beijing Thursday to report that police in China's capital, confronted by more than 1 million demonstrators, had "lost control."

As Gorbachev spoke at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday, armies of protesters filled the streets to demand democratic reforms. The rallies spread to at least 20 provincial capitals.

A 45-minute report on the Soviet evening television news program "Vremya" on Wednesday on Gorbachev's trip made no mention of the protests.

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