A group of veteran reformers in China's Communist party has demanded that the country dismantle its elaborate censorship apparatus, an appeal for accelerated political reform which Beijing quickly moved to silence.

In an open letter to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, 23 former senior party cadres and one-time editors at party media called on the legislative body to pass laws entrenching the freedoms of speech and publishing that are guaranteed in the constitution but often denied in practice.

"The 'socialist democracy' with Chinese characteristics propagated by [our] country has become just too embarrassing," said the letter. It called for publishers and editors to be put in full control of the content of books and newspapers and for the ending of pre-publication screening by outside censors. It also calls for an end to Internet censorship.

The document was published on the blogging platform of sina.com, China's largest news portal, on Tuesday morning, but was taken down a few hours later.

The letter follows the award on Friday of this year's Nobel peace prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident serving an 11-year jail sentence on charges of subversion. In its citation, the Nobel committee focused on the freedoms guaranteed in China's constitution but not always respected.

Coming days before a key policy meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Communist party, the letter also follows a series of intriguing statements in recent months by Wen Jiabao, premier, calling for greater political reform in China. These include an interview in which he told CNN that demands for "democracy and freedom are irresistible".

Although Chinese leaders often pay lip service to support for democracy, especially when talking to foreign audiences, some observers had speculated that Mr Wen was making a major push for political reform in his last two years in office. However, some analysts believe that the Nobel prize and the embarrassment it has created for Beijing might in the short-term strengthen conservative voices opposed to faster reform.

The letter proposes that Southern Weekend and Yanhuang Chunqiu, two reformist media outlets, be transformed into private media as a test project. It demands radical changes to the functions of the party's propaganda department, so far the main censorship authority.

The letter's authors include Li Rui, a former personal secretary of Mao Zedong and former deputy head of the Communist party's organization department, Huang Jiwei, a former editor of the People's Daily, the party mouthpiece, and Zhong Peizhang, a former senior official at the propaganda department.

Some of them are associated with Hu Yaobang, the reformist party chief ousted in 1987. Although they have criticized the party in public before, they are no dissidents.

"There are a lot of things happening around freedom of speech, around publishing freedom right now," said Zhan Jiang, head of the journalism school at China Youth University for Political Science. "Of course these old men are all old Communist party members, they want to save and reform the party, I believe these voices deserve to be heard."

Xinhua, the official news agency, quoted Yu Keping, deputy head of the party's translation and compilation bureau and author of a widely-discussed book on democracy, as saying that he expected political reform to be one focus of the party meeting.

By Kathrin Hille and Geoff Dyer

Source : Financial Times / cnn.com