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    WASHINGTON (TCN)-In a stunning development, Premier Li Peng has staged a coup d'etat and gained control of the Chinese government in the early hours of this morning. Aided in the coup by General Yu Quili, leader of the so-called Petroleum Faction, Li has apparently ordered the arrest of Jiang Zemin, president and successor to the late Deng Xiaoping, and Zhu Rongji, senior vice premier. Both political rivals in the struggle for control, Jiang and Zhu have yet to be located and are presumed in hiding.

    Li, a conservative with broad support from both the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military, issued a statement to the effect that Deng's liberal economic policies were causing ruin within China, destroying the socialist ideals that the Communist Party has been striving to maintain. He also stated that rampant capitalism and greater economic ties to the West threaten to undermine the "national focus of China" and that "it was time that the people of China stood together in a common cause." Precisely what that cause is remains to be seen.

    However, Taiwan has requested aid from the United Nations, fearing that Li may attempt an invasion of the country, which China has regarded as a renegade province since 1949. If such an invasion was to take place, it would probably be masterminded by General Yu Quili, the one-armed army veteran who led the Petroleum Faction, a group of engineers that developed the rich Daqing oil field in Manchuria with the aid of then Chairman Mao Ze-dong.

    The Petroleum Faction wielded enormous power over China's economic policy until Deng consolidated his own power base within the government in the early 1980s. Now, with Li and other allies, including Wang Tao, chairman of the China National Petroleum Corporation, General Yu seems poised to take a place among the executive elite of China.

    East Asia political expert Adrian Mann commented today on the current radical shift of government power. "Energy production seems to have become the engine for a neoconservative upheaval in China. Politically, those who control the means of energy production can control the country. It's a very strong position." Doubly strong, Dr. Mann went on to argue, in a country with a well-documented shortage of raw power.