China vows political reform after ministry shake-up

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has vowed to deepen political reform, starting with an administrative shake-up creating four "super-ministries" to steer key economic sectors and streamline decisions, state-run media reported on Thursday.

China's leaders have long said they support political reform, but any change has been halting and they have shown no sign of abandoning the one-party rule they claim is the linchpin of stability and development.

Under a plan approved by the ruling Communist Party's 204-member Central Committee, parliament, which meets next week, will form over-arching ministries for energy, industry, transport and the environment, the Ta Kung Pao, a mainland-run Hong Kong newspaper, said.

They would absorb dozens of often rival agencies that make administration fragmented and sluggish. More changes could come later, said the report.

It did not mention previously discussed proposals for "super-ministries" for finance and culture, nor did it give details of the new bureaucracies' powers -- sure to be a source of contention in the sprawling government.

But the official meeting report indicated China's leaders, confronted with economic strains, widespread corruption and restive citizens, held out at least the prospect of political change, including a bigger say for the now tame parliament, the National People's Congress.

"We must deepen political system reform," said the official meeting summary in the People's Daily, adding a rare acknowledgement of public dissatisfaction with government.

"Relative to our country's economic and social development and relative to new demands to ensure citizens' democratic rights and protect social fairness and justice, our political system still has many parts that are ill-adjusted."

The government is also trying to improve the rule of law, responding to growing public concern at corruption and a feeling that government and Party officials are above the law.

"In some regions and departments, laws are not observed, or strictly enforced, violators are not bought to justice," the State Council, or Cabinet, admitted in a 70-page white paper on the legal system published on Thursday.

"Some civil servants take bribes and bend the law, abuse their authority to override the law, and substitute their words for the law," the document added.

BIGGER SAY FOR NON-COMMUNISTS

Noting citizens' "democratic consciousness" has constantly grown, the meeting said one-party control remained essential but that the national parliament -- now packed with Party officials -- and non-Communist officials would get a bigger say.

The meeting's repeated references to "deepening political system reform" come after the recent release of a blueprint for political liberalization by scholars at the Party's top thinktank.

Their plan calls for the parliament, whose near 3,000 delegates are mostly Party officials, to be replaced by a smaller and more independent body.

China's national leaders want to show that they can answer -- and control -- demands for faster political change, Beijing-based experts told Reuters.

"Political reform has been under discussion for years, and I'm sure the higher levels have been thinking about these things more than before," said Mao Shoulong of the People's University of China.

The blaze of international attention on the Beijing Olympic Games later this year, as well as the 30th anniversary of a 1978 meeting that launched Deng Xiaoping's reforms, had magnified expectations of some political loosening, Mao said.

"I think their approach is clear. Not major change, but steady adjustment."

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Sugita Katyal)