Three Liberals Reported Ousted by Chinese Party

BEIJING — The Communist Party, in a surprise move apparently linked to a campaign against Western trends, expelled or forced the resignation of three liberal intellectuals this month, Western diplomatic and Chinese sources said Wednesday.

The sources identified the three as playwright Wu Zuguang; Wang Ruoshui, the former deputy editor of the party newspaper People’s Daily, and Su Shaozhi, director of the Research Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought.

There was no official confirmation of the report. But the sources said the move was apparently related to a campaign against “bourgeois liberalization”--a catch phrase for Western trends--that was launched in January in response to nationwide student demonstrations for democratic reforms.

A Western diplomat said he was surprised at the party’s latest move since the campaign against Western influences and crackdown on liberal dissent all but ended in mid-May when reform-minded leaders emerged supreme in a behind-the-scenes struggle with hard-liners.