By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 19, 1998; Page A01

BEIJING—The intellectual seeds of liberal political reform are sprouting here, making this the most open spring since the massive pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were crushed nine years ago.

Influential intellectuals here in the capital are talking about promoting individual rights, expanding low-level direct elections, shrinking government and scaling back the ubiquitous role of the Communist Party.

A professor from the elite Communist Party school has blasted the "climate of fear" that he says impedes free speech. A leading business newspaper has hailed a "third liberation of thinking" and devoted two pages to excerpts from "Crossed Swords," a book that harshly attacks orthodox Marxist "leftists."

"Recently, the general environment has relaxed," said Mao Yushi, whose recent essay, "Liberalism, Equal Status and Human Rights," has put him in demand on China's long-dormant college lecture circuit. On a Saturday night in March, 150 students at the Chinese Geological University here crowded into a lecture hall to hear the 69-year-old economist praise Western liberalism, denounce the late Communist chairman Mao Zedong and call for human rights.

Beijing's spring appears to reflect a growing awareness within the party's senior ranks that it must move forward on political reform as Chinese society changes and the economy grows more complex and sophisticated. The party can no longer dictate every aspect of the economy or people's lives, nor easily represent the diverging interests of state workers, entrepreneurs, peasants and city residents.

What started early this year as a debate among a few influential academics has moved this month into the state-run mass media, from Shenyang in the northeast to Shenzhen in the south.

"Only in a democratic environment can people dare to voice new opinions and can their intelligence, wisdom and ability be fully brought into play," central party school professor Shen Baoxiang was quoted as saying by the China Economic Times this month. "If we don't encourage people to think freely and voice new opinions, our society will actually be utterly stagnant, though it may seem tranquil."

Many liberals wield economic arguments, noting that economic progress cannot rely on a handful of officials and experts. China's 1.2 billion people "are not only a 'labor force,' they are also the world's largest thought warehouse and brain. We can thus use the magic weapon of freedom of thought to achieve success," Hu Weixi wrote in a March issue of a magazine called Fangfa ("Way").

The opening is limited, and for the time being, true free speech and democracy remain distant. Open debate is a relative concept. For example, Li Bifeng from Sichuan, jailed for five years after the 1989 demonstrations, was arrested again this month for publicizing incidents of labor unrest. Police also seized written materials from Xu Wenli, briefly detaining the veteran dissident who has called on China's legislature to allow independent trade unions and challenged the government to live up to the United Nations human rights covenant it agreed to sign.

Nonetheless, many intellectuals here say this is the most fertile time in a decade for debate about China's political future.

Mao, the economist with the same name as the Chinese Revolution leader, traces the relaxation to January, when Reform Magazine's 10th anniversary issue featured a hard-hitting article titled "[We Should] Also Champion Political Reform," by Li Shenzhi, 76, a prominent reformer and the retired vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The "implementation of political reform will determine the ultimate success or failure of economic reform," Li wrote. Rejecting the government line that feeding people is the top human rights priority, Li said China must adopt universal human rights.

In February, Mao, who in 1993 retired from the academy and established an independent economic think tank called Unirule, organized a forum to discuss a new Chinese translation of "The Constitution of Liberty," a long-banned book by one of socialism's harshest critics -- the late Austrian Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, a philosopher and economist. In the 1960 work Hayek argued, "A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom."

About 50 Chinese academics and government policymakers showed up to talk about the book's relevance to China. "Hayek refuted the idea that the ideal system could be artificially designed," Mao said. "He said it comes out of gradual evolution."

In contrast to Communist China's emphasis on class, commune and work units, Mao stresses respect for individual rights, including the right to pursue one's self-interest. "What I'm saying is that in the market economy, the individual has the right to protect the benefits of himself, while at the same time he has to observe others' rights," Mao said. "We need a society of equal status."

That has not always been the case in China, as Mao knows from experience. He was branded a rightist in 1957, his works barred from publication, his salary cut, his job taken away and his rights revoked. It took years to restore his career, and when he was invited to join the Communist Party during the 1980s, he refused.

No longer an outcast, Mao was interviewed recently by Liaoning provincial television on his fast-selling book titled "The Future of Chinese Ethics." In addition to his talk last month at the geology institute, he is slated to appear at Beijing University.

The magazine Fangfa published a special March issue on political reform, including articles on limited government, property rights, the separation of party and government, and corruption's link to Confucian culture.

"The most pressing issue is the separation of the powers of the government and the party," said Fangfa's assistant editor, Li Ke.

Perhaps for political cover as much as for historical accuracy, editor Li and others in this loosely knit liberal intellectual community argue that their views grow directly from the wishes of China's leadership. Li cites a comment by the late leader Deng Xiaoping, and pulls from a drawer a speech by President Jiang Zemin last September, pointing to a sentence about expanding democracy.

Some people believe Jiang was further encouraged to loosen controls on political debate by his October trip to the United States. In January, Jiang told the Central Discipline Inspection Commission that Asian governments are too "feudal," which some analysts took as another signal of relaxation. In March, newly selected Premier Zhu Rongji held a free-wheeling press conference that further emboldened China's liberals.

The recent ferment carries extra meaning because of echoes of the past. In 1988, leading intellectuals debated political reform and held meetings on college campuses. Then, nine years ago this week, the death of Hu Yaobang, the ousted general secretary of the Communist Party and a patron of political reform, sparked weeks of student-led protests in Tiananmen Square that eventually were crushed in the bloody June 4, 1989, army crackdown.

Until this year, Hu has been a taboo subject, and political reform has been a sensitive one. Zhao Ziyang, the reformist Communist Party chief ousted in May 1989 on the eve of the military crackdown, remains under loose house arrest in Beijing.

In 1989, as now, a visit by a foreign leader was seen as a restraint on repressive action by the Chinese government. In May 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing. In June, President Clinton will travel to China, and many analysts predict that China's leaders will refrain from harsh repression before then.

But participants in this year's debates say it isn't a rerun of 1989. "What happened at the end of the 1980s -- the 'political disturbance,' to use the prevailing political lingo -- has made people cooler and more reasonable," said Fangfa editor Li, who is a party member.

Another intellectual said, "You can speak about liberalism, but you can't say 'Down with the Chinese Communist Party.' " Change, he said, would come from within the party.

"Both the government and the people learned lessons from that event," said Mao of Unirule. "The government knows that kind of suppression carries a very high cost, especially in terms of the international response, and at the same time the people know that in case of emergency, the government may open fire. So both sides are very cautious."