China said ready for political reform (Justin Jin, Reuters)

BEIJING, March 18 (Reuters) -- China's radical streamlining of government has ''broken the ice'' for political reform, says one of Beijing's top Communist Party theoreticians.

Reform would now charge ahead like the ''flow of a turbulent river in springtime,'' Xing Bensi, vice president of the Chinese Communist Party School, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

The aim was to build a ''democratic socialist country ruled by law,'' incorporating the best of Western-style democracy, Xing told the agency.

''In promoting the process of political restructuring, China will draw on some good experience of Western democracy, instead of copying it blindly,'' Xinhua quoted him as saying on Tuesday.

The National People's Congress, now holding its annual meeting, endorsed a plan to reduce the number of ministry-level bodies to 29 from 40 and to lay off four million civil servants.

It is the most ambitious scaling down of government ever attempted in the Communist era.

Slimming the bloated bureaucracy will remove Communist bureaucrats from the day-to-day running of enterprises.

Hardliners have bitterly opposed the reform, and moves to push state enterprises towards the market. They believe the dismantling of the socialist planned economy will erode the power of the Communist Party.

Parliament itself has emerged as China's most liberal institution, and in the absence of any legal opposition to the Communist Party is the only national forum in which government policy and leaders can be challenged.

Its retiring chairman, Qiao Shi, used his position to press for the rule of law and boost the lawmaking role of what has traditionally been a rubber-stamp body.

Diplomats said it was unclear how outgoing Premier Li Peng, elected new chairman on Monday, would lead the legislature.

Xing said parliament's role would be enhanced.

''The arrow is ready to be released now that it has been put on the bow,'' he said.

The normally tame parliament voiced anger on Tuesday at rising crime and corruption with a large protest vote against the government's candidate as top prosecutor. More than one third of the 2,950 delegates either voted ''no'' to the selection of Han Zhubin or abstained.

Moments earlier, the legislature overwhelmingly endorsed reformist economic tsar Zhu Rongji as Premier, indicating he had a strong mandate to implement structural economic changes.

A Hong Kong-based human rights group on Wednesday made public a letter by 12 Chinese dissidents urging Zhu to push for more media freedom and democracy.

The dissidents, from the eastern province of Zhejiang, warned that without political reforms, problems such as rising unemployment and corruption would hinder economic development.

''For economic reforms to step out of difficulties, the only way is to carry out political reforms as soon as possible,'' said the letter released by the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.

As well as laying off four million civil servants this year, a further 3.5 million industrial workers are expected to be made redundant.

China introduced direct elections for village leaders on an experimental basis in 1987, but voting takes place in only about one third of the country's 930,000 villages, according to official data.

There are no direct elections in urban areas.


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