BEIJING – The mother of a 15-year-old boy allegedly beaten to death by Chinese police during 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations has been compensated by the government, marking a first for China, an activist said yesterday.

Officials in the capital of southern Sichuan province, Chengdu, agreed to pay Tang Deying the equivalent of $8,745 in “hardship assistance” for the beating death of her son, Zhou Guocong, while in police custody there on June 6, 1989, activist Huang Qi said from Chengdu.

The payment did not appear to be a sign that the Chinese government was considering compensation payments for all those killed when military police were ordered to crush a swell of pro-democracy protests in the summer of 1989 that started in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The activist says Zhou was detained by police in Chengdu as part of a nationwide crackdown on protesters who took to the streets in cities across China to demand democratic reform.

The demonstrations started in May 1989 in Tiananmen Square and spread throughout China. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of demonstrators were believed to have been killed in the military crackdown that followed.

China says the government response to the protests – since officially classified as a counterrevolutionary riot – was justified because it laid the basis for the country’s rapid economic development over the past 17 years.

Last year, America’s State Department called on China to account for those killed in the crackdown, release about 250 people still in prison for Tiananmen-related activities, and re-examine its official verdict on the protests. Beijing rejected the appeal, saying the matter was an “internal affair.”

A well-known Beijing-based activist whose son also was killed in the 1989 crackdown, Ding Zilin, said she had never heard of Ms. Tang or her son’s case before Saturday, when a Hong Kong reporter called to ask her about it.

Ms. Ding has compiled a list of 186 Tiananmen victims and has campaigned to have the government acknowledge they were killed and compensate families for the deaths.

“We did not have his name on our list and she never got in touch with us,” Ms. Ding said by telephone from Wuxi in central China’s Jiangsu province.

She said, however, that if Ms. Tang’s compensation was confirmed it would be the first such case on record that she knew of.

“This case also shows that it has been useless for the Chinese government to say that the Tiananmen incident is in the past,” Ms. Ding said. “To the Chinese people, this event is not in the past at all.”

Ms. Ding also said she was campaigning for compensation for victims’ families that included an acknowledgment of wrongful death, which Ms. Tang’s “hardship assistance” did not seem to include.

A man who answered the phone at Chengdu’s Jinzhou District Public Security Bureau referred calls about the case to the Jinzhou government office. A woman who answered the phone there said reporters should call the propaganda office of the local government, where the phones rang unanswered. Neither official would give their name.

Mr. Huang posted photos of Ms. Tang holding the alleged compensation agreement to a Tiananmen forum Web site. Mr. Huang would not give Ms. Tang’s contact details, saying she was unwilling to talk with the press for fear of reprisals.

Another activist suggested that it may not be the first time compensation was given to Tiananmen families, but the first time that anyone had told the press about it.

“My guess is that other people, other families, have been compensated privately but have been asked to keep the matter quiet,” a former professor at Beijing Normal University who spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 protests, Liu Xiaobo, said.

Mr. Liu is currently chairman of the Chinese chapter of a group that defends writers who are harassed, imprisoned or killed for their views, International PEN.

“I also don’t think that Zhou’s case is a very representative one,” Mr. Liu said. “His situation was particular because he was only 15, he didn’t die in a public space as many others did, and he wasn’t shot. He was taken to a police station and beaten to death there.”

Because of those circumstances, Mr. Liu said, Zhou’s case might be interpreted by authorities as separate from and unrelated to the crackdown that began June 4, 1989.