In China, Following in Footsteps of Reform BEIJING - The ghost of China's past hovers over its present. As the country grapples with its biggest political challenge in decades over the purge of Bo Xilai, the polarizing former Communist Party chief of Chongqing, ahead of changes in the top leadership, hidden forces in the party, military and economy battle over China's future. Into this brittle mix, Yu Jianrong, one of the country's leading scholars, has dropped a detailed proposal for political reform. We've been here before. In 1895, an equally prominent scholar, Kang Youwei, led a group of thinkers that submitted proposals for far-reaching reform to the intrigue-ridden Qing court. Three years later, the Emperor Guangxu set in motion the "Hundred Days" Reforms," comprehensive changes to education, the economy, the military and the bureaucracy aimed at modernizing China. Alarmed, the Empress Dowager Cixi and conservative officials staged a coup, on Sept. Mr. Kang fled China, reformist advisers were executed and Guangxu, aged just 27, was placed under house arrest until his death in 1908. Yet the tide of change was unstoppable. Thirteen years later the Qing fell in a republican revolution. The parallels across a century - political machinations, an ambitious program for change, an autocratic state - are striking, even though Mr. Yu's proposal, posted on his microblogs at the end of March, won't take three years to spread in this age of instant communications. They are an important reminder of how blocked China seems to be in its efforts to modernize politically, shackled by ancient habits of autocracy, censorship and secrecy, all reinforced by a sprawling state security apparatus, said many reform-minded analysts who spoke privately. Yet there is an important difference, says Liu Yu, a political scientist at Tsinghua University in Beijing: China today has no Emperor Guangxu. "Who is Guangxu?" she asked in an interview. I don't think anyone in the leadership today has the courage to work with a Kang Youwei on a plan. Considering the disastrous outcome of the Hundred Days" Reforms, that might not be all bad. Ms. Liu's recent work has focused on how change in China is rooted in shifting attitudes across society, a move linked to technology and globalization. Master plans like Mr. Kang's, or Mr. Yu's are "unrealistic," she said. "All Chinese intellectuals, especially the men, they tend to blur the line with being an official and then they're thinking, "How should I design a system for the country?" and "How to make progress?" "In the West there are intellectuals who make proposals on specific things, but in general they don't make plans for the whole country," she said. What is needed instead, she believes, is a broad debate, among ordinary people. "A good plan should involve the whole society," she said. There should be a big debate on where the country should be going. In some ways, she believes that China is doing rather well. That can be a source of change, too. There doesn't need to be something wrong to bring changes. Things going well is also change. Because it's a question of ideas, and ideas bring change," she said. And Mr. Yu's plan may prompt discussion. "It may be a talking piece, maybe even among leaders, to put it on the agenda," she said. At least it opens people's minds and raises awareness. Mr. Yu's "10-Year Outline of China's Social and Political Development" is not the first reform proposal put forward by Chinese scholars in recent years, but it is engagingly detailed, with a road map that begins in October this year and ends a decade later, in September 2022. It calls, initially, for three years and three months of important social and legal changes. A private property law must be enacted so that farmers, millions of whom have already lost their land to rapacious officials and private developers, can protect themselves, wrote Mr. Yu, a specialist in rural issues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The hukou, or residency, system, which ties people to their place of origin and which critics consider a source of great social and economic injustice, must be fundamentally reformed, he wrote. Judicial reforms should follow to improve the quality of courts and judges, whom Mr. Yu regularly advises in the course of his work. Importantly, "speech crimes" should be abolished, he wrote. Then, beginning in January 2016, when the president-designate, Xi Jinping, is set to enter the fourth year of his administration, China should begin major political reforms that would culminate with full liberalization of the news media and political parties. Mr. Yu, who is cautious about meeting foreign reporters, declined to be interviewed, but wrote on his microblog that Chinese journalists have asked whether his ideas were commissioned or supported by the state, a reflection of intense interest in the topic. While he has carried out research for the government in the past, these proposals were not part of that, he wrote, phrasing it indirectly. "This is just something of Mr. Yu's, reaching out for the amusement of gentlemen and sovereigns," he wrote, playing down their impact. In fact, one of his main points, ending the hukou system, has already begun in small ways around the country and is set to expand. With China's economy slowing, Ms. Liu sees hukou reform as an effort to increase consumption and growth. But economic reform is easy compared with political reform, she said. "Economic reform can happen in a steady way," she said. It's easy to let the economic pie grow and grow. Political reform is another matter, she cautioned. "The sum of power is constant, and if you gain power, I lose," she said. The logic of the two reforms is very different.