A former secretary to late supreme Chinese leader Mao Zedong has called on the ruling Communist Party to drop its reliance on Marxist and Maoist ideology, and to embrace political reforms.
In a rare interview with Hong Kong's Chinese-language Ming Pao newspaper, outspoken Party elder Li Rui, 96, said that recent attempts to boost China's "soft power" through cultural promotion amount to a return to the mentality of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
He said the ideologies linked to Marx, Mao, Deng and former president Jiang Zemin were a stumbling block to further reform in China.
Speaking in response to the communique which resulted from last year's 17th Party Congress, Li said the attempt to promote the Party's core ideologies as a cultural message were simply an attempt to continue the Cultural Revolution, and, as such, "won't stand up."
In a speech to China's parliament last week, premier Wen Jiabao vowed to "promote the reform and development of the cultural system."
Wen said the government would "vigorously promote nonprofit cultural services and strengthen cultural infrastructure in communities, particularly in rural areas and the central and western regions."
The aim of the government's cultural campaign was to promote "core socialist values," Wen told delegates to the National People's Congress (NPC).
Reforms crucial
According to Li, the Communist Party is unable to act as a driving force behind any kind of developed culture, including technological and scientific innovation.
Beijing-based scholar and former Communist Party propaganda official Wu Jiaxiang agreed, adding that political reforms were crucial to any cultural development.
"If political reforms don't come first, then there will be no cultural reform," Wu said. "Reforms mean opening things up; you can't then embed Marxism, Maoism or [the ideologies of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin] into that process."
"Right now, it feels as if China is returning to the Cultural Revolution," he said.
Wu said China's leaders could come up with endless excuses not to begin political reforms, and that Chinese governments had successively recoiled from true political reform twice in the past century.
"Both times they retreated in the face of a powerful political and business elite, but if they don't reform, the results will be even worse [than back then]," he said.
"These days ... everyone knows what happens to dictatorial regimes that suppress democracy and attack its proponents; the outcome for them is very grim," Wu warned.
"What happened to the Communist Party in Romania is a typical example."
Bleak outlook
Former Communist Party biographer Gao Wenqian, who currently advises the New York-based Human Rights in China, said political reform in China was currently at a dead end.
"The authorities aren't going to come up with any sort of decent reform proposals ahead of the 18th Party congress [later this year], because the entire Party machine has become a specialist organization devoted to the preservation of its own interests," Gao said.
"Any reforms that take place will have to coincide with the interests of the political and business elite."
He said that the outlook was equally bleak for further economic reform, or even the Party's notion of cultural improvement.
"Cultural reforms are likely to have the side effect of further social controls," Gao said.
Reported by He Ping for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.