China's tightly controlled national newspapers urged bolder economic reforms Monday in a front-page editorial - a sign that senior leader Deng Xiaoping's drive to embrace free-market principles is gathering strength.
"We should increase our boldness in reform and opening up to the outside world and step up our pace," the editorial said. "Reform and opening up is our only choice. There is no other road we can take."Among papers running the editorial was the People's Daily of the ruling Communist Party - normally a bastion of conservatism.
The message echoed comments Deng made last month during an unusual public tour of southern cities that have gone the farthest in advocating the introduction of free markets and other capitalist principles.
Deng said China can avoid the political turmoil that has toppled other communist parties only by maintaining economic growth. He said China will have to borrow more economic techniques from capitalist countries.
Although officially retired, the 87-year-old Deng still carries tremendous clout, and his calls for reform have been given increasing publicity.
On Sunday, the People's Daily carried a front-page article that said China can use capitalist methods and keep its socialistic goals.
"Capital and technology in themselves don't have a class nature," the article said. The newspaper identified the author, Fang Sheng, as an economics professor.
The People's Daily and other major newspapers still have not mentioned Deng's trip in the south, although a few local papers have quoted foreign news reports of it.
Chinese and foreign analysts have speculated that the silence at the time of the trip and the publication now of reformist articles are tied to a power struggle between Deng and hard-line conservatives.
Conservatives, who have controlled the People's Daily since the failed 1989 democracy movement, regard the reforms Deng began in 1978 as the opening wedge of capitalism.