Retired Party Members Call for 2 Top Chinese Officials to Resign BEIJING - In a rare sign of open opposition against two of China's most powerful leaders, a group of retired Communist Party members have called for the resignation of the country's security boss, Zhou Yongkang, and a top propaganda official, Liu Yunshan. In a petition that began to circulate Wednesday on social media and overseas Web sites, the 16 signers - all of them retired midlevel officials in the southern province of Yunnan - accused Mr. Zhou of supporting the fallen party leader Bo Xilai, who was suspended from his posts amid reports that he helped cover up a murder and abused power. Mr. Bo, who was the head of the city-state of Chongqing in southwestern China, advocated a return to old-style Communist propaganda and implemented a heavy-handed crackdown on organized crime. Although he was popular with many people for bolstering the economy, civil rights groups and lawyers said he ran a virtual police state. "We still care about the future of the country," said one of the signers, Wu Zhibo, 84, a former vice head of a vocational school in the city of Zhaotong. Mr. Zhou is widely thought to have backed Mr. Bo's methods and opposed his ouster. A member of the all-powerful nine-member Standing Committee of the Communist Party Politburo, Mr. Zhou is also the head of the Central Political and Legislative Committee. He is widely associated with the "stability maintenance" program that has led to heavy online censorship and tight control of the news media. The call for Mr. Zhou's removal comes as Communist Party leaders prepare for a once-in-a-decade leadership transition later this year. Mr. Zhou is due to retire anyway, but the call suggests the depth of his unpopularity and possibly a desire among grass-roots members for more far-reaching changes in the economy and the political system. Mr. Wu said the signers were mostly in their late 70s and 80s and wanted to express their support for Mr. Bo's dismissal. But they also think that the men behind Mr. Bo should go. Some reports have speculated that Mr. Zhou has already been stripped of power, although many party insiders doubt this. He has appeared at all major functions and recently made a major speech on the need for law to serve stability that was carried in official news media. Mr. Wu said that Mr. Liu, the propaganda official, also opposed calls for political change and blocked them from being disseminated in the news media. "We thought that such a person should not enter the next Politburo," he said. Mr. Wu said that police officials had visited him and other signers to try to persuade them not to post the petition, saying that "anti-Chinese forces" would exploit it. But he said they decided to go ahead anyway because of their strong feelings against the two men and their anti-reform policies. Shortly after its posting, the petition and associated search words were blocked on popular social media sites. Zhang Wei contributed research.