Hu Peng, a 27-year-old from Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, studied at Kiel University.

He was spending his summer holiday working in a factory in Markgroningen near Stuttgart, making carpets for car interiors. He quarreled with a 35-year-old German colleague on Tuesday evening of last week before a fight broke out. There were no eyewitnesses.

A Bonn-based Chinese diplomat who spoke on terms of anonymity yesterday told China Daily by telephone that a suspect has already been arrested and that local prosecutors have started an investigation.

A statement on the website of the Chinese Embassy in Berlin called the murder "a serious incident."

The embassy urged the German police to provide a detailed report on the case soon and to punish the murderer according to the law.

Embassy officials also asked the local police to keep Hu's remains until his relatives arrived in Germany.

The source in Bonn said that Hu's parents, his wife and two uncles were due to be escorted to accommodation prepared by the local Chinese students' organization.

The detailed schedule of their stay in Germany and the funeral arrangements will be discussed and decided on after their arrival, according to the diplomat.

However, embassy officials stressed that the case is an individual one and does not necessarily indicate that Chinese students as a whole are in danger from racially motivated violence.

(China Daily August 15, 2002)