China Pledges Further Reforms but Won’t Return to Capitalism

China promised Saturday to reform its political structure and continue with economic advances but warned that a return to capitalism would only bring back feudalism.

The Communist Party’s ideological journal, Red Flag, quoted by the official New China News Agency, said that China must stick to socialism although it is still imperfect.

The journal also attacked three top intellectuals recently expelled from the party during a campaign against pro-Western ideas. It said the three negated China’s achievements and claimed that the Chinese political system was a failure.

Acting Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang has said that procedures for county elections, the lowest level in the political hierarchy, will be improved.

Zhao succeeded Hu Yaobang, who was ousted last month for “political errors” linked to nationwide protests in December by students calling for more democracy.

The sackings were part of a hard-liners’ campaign against “bourgeois liberalism,” which officials blamed for the student unrest. It stopped short of attacks on the nation’s top leader, Deng Xiaoping.

Red Flag said that Chinese communism faced a protracted and complicated struggle when it was introduced in 1949 but that it could be gradually perfected by reforming various systems and raising the quality of people administering it.

Quoting figures of higher agricultural output and increased production of raw materials and industrial products, it said China’s growth rate cannot be called slow even when compared with developed capitalist countries.

“Capitalism does not work in China,” the journal contended.