China party paper rejects democratic reform call

BEIJING, May 25 (Reuters) China has launched a public counter-attack against calls for bold democratic reform, with the Communist Party's top newspaper condemning ''democratic socialism'' and saying the one-party state must not mimic foreign systems.

The criticism underscores how raw fears of threats to one-party rule are ahead of a party congress later this year that is set to give a cautious President Hu Jintao five more years as party general secretary.

In February, a veteran Chinese Communist made an impassioned call for democracy in the magazine China Across the Ages (Yanhuang Chunqiu), a monthly backed by reformist party elders.

Xie Tao, 85, described 20th-century history as a contest between capitalism, communism and Swedish-style democratic socialism, with its stress on equality and political rights.

He said the democratic socialist model had won, outlasting communism and transforming capitalism, and he urged China to renew itself through democratic reform.

Xie's arguments drew fierce but secretive condemnation from Communist Party officials, wary of stirring political debate before a major party congress later this year.

Party criticism of ''democratic socialism'' has now become public, with the People's Daily issuing commentaries calling it a capitalist idea that has no place in China.

''Democratic socialism does not suit China's national conditions,'' said a commentary in the paper, the chief pulpit of the ruling party.

''The democratic socialist road cannot save China, and only socialism with Chinese characteristics can rejuvenate China,'' it said, referring to the country's one-party rule.

Chinese Communist leaders' desire to defend their Marxist pedigree may appear archaic to an outside world focused on the nation's market boom. Yet protecting those ideological moorings remains crucial for leaders who fear that the economic tide threatens one-party rule.

A separate commentary in the People's Daily said democratic socialism was actually a capitalist tool. The virtues of Western welfare states, such as social safety nets, ''can be appropriately consulted and drawn on'', it said.

''But consulting and drawing on is absolutely not tantamount to total identification, and even less is it mimicry.'' REUTERS SM VV1012