Beijing police freed a schoolboy who was taken hostage by a young man at a training school Sunday afternoon.

A police source told Xinhua that a man armed with a knife broke in to the English training school in Chaoyang District at around 3 p.m. and took the student hostage. The teacher and other students managed to escape from the back door and called the police.

Police seized the man amid a negotiation with him one and a half hours after the hostage incident took place. The boy was saved unhurt.

The hostage taker, surnamed Tang, 23, is a native from Ziyang, southwest China's Sichuan Province. He did not ask for money but demanded a meeting with officials from local television station, witnesses said.

Police are still investigating the case.

(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2009)