BEIJING--Nearly a million people from all walks of life poured into central Beijing yesterday and demanded that leader Deng Xiaoping step down. Premier Li Peng told student leaders that their five-day hunger strike has thrown the city into chaos.

Thousands of trucks, buses, motorcyles and vans packed with protesters inched into the central city in the second straight massive protest for a freer China.

Undaunted by two downpours, the marchers chanted, sang, banged on pots and pans, and some acrobats did backflips as they converged on Tiananmen Square where more than 3000 college students are on a hunger strike for democracy.

Sparked by sympathy for the striking students, the protests are the most widespread in Communist China's 40-year history. Their broad appeal is reminiscent of the People's Power movement in the Philippines that ousted President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

Chief complaints are corruption and nepotism, widespread among all levels of the ruling Communist Party and the government.

Breakneck economic growth over the past decade has created enormous possibilities for malfeasance and laid to rest the Communists' revolutionary ideal of a simple, selfless existence.

Nostalgia for such an ideal was reflected yesterday in the posters of former leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai that appeared in the marching crowd.

"At least Chairman Mao was honest," said a worker from Hubei province as he carried a lifesized poster of Mao. "He even sent his son to the Korean War. Nowadays, the leaders send their sons to America."

Hundreds of thousands called for Deng, the 84-year-old leader who started China on its road to reform in 1978, to step down.

Rumors spread through the crowd yesterday afternoon that Deng had retired, touching off welps for joy and standing ovations.

None of them could be confirmed.

Reports have said Deng planned to relinquish his active role in setting policy after the Chinese-Soviet summit. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev left China yesterday.

Premier Li and pro-democracy student leaders held a tense meeting in the Great Hall of the People yesterday that ended in failure after student activist Wu'er Kaixi collapsed as he shouted at the premier.

The scene in the Xinjiang Room of the Great Hall was unprecedented in Communist China with Wu'er, a 21-year-old education major at Beijing Normal University wearing hospital pajamas and running shoes, shouting down the premier.

"Li started talking about friend- ship," said a student who was at the meeting."Wu'er stood up and told him to stop playing gamesand get down to business."