RULERS with foresight scrap outdated institutions in good time. Some dinosaurs collapse under their own weight or, as the Chinese say, because the ''overall climate'' has changed to the extent that oxygen and nutrients are hard to come by. Others suffer the painful fate of incremental atrophy by sheer force of irrelevance. Last week, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) put up a valiant effort to prevent its Propaganda Department and related yamens from going the way of absolute monarchy and primogeniture. In the largest gathering of specialists in propaganda, ideology, culture and the media since 1957, top cadres including President Jiang Zemin, Premier Li Peng and Propaganda Chief Ding Guan'gen spoke about ushering in a new era of propaganda through ''the further liberation of thought'' and ''upholding the construction of spiritual civilisation''. As the custodians of Marxism, however, CCP chieftains should know that construction makes up only half of social engineering. The other equally crucial half consists of destruction - the planned obsolescence of institutions that seem, to use Hong Kong slang, to be obstructing the movement of the Earth. The problem with an administration as intent on guarding its turf as the CCP is that its accent has always been on ''construction'', preservation, and aggrandisement. On the economic side, this has resulted in up to two-thirds of state enterprises and conglomerates dripping in red ink. Even before the June 4 crackdown in 1989, patriarch Deng Xiaoping had emphasised the double-pronged strategy of economic construction on the one hand, and the erection of the police-state apparatus and ''socialist spiritual civilisation'' on the other. This ''both fists be tough'' credo, especially since mid-1989, has resulted in a mushrooming of propaganda-related units, what cynics call ideological or thought police whose task is to keep out Western spiritual opium such as democratic ideals. Aside from the Propaganda Department itself, other units such as the Culture Ministry, the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television, state news agencies and publishing houses, as well as departments responsible for overseas propaganda, held strategy sessions last week to map plans for the 90s. The agenda of these closed-door conclaves was how to maintain discipline in the ideological, media and cultural arenas after Mr Deng's demise. For example, precautions are being taken to suppress calls for political liberalisation that might appear in the more racy provincial papers. While addressing the conclaves, President Jiang indicated ''propaganda and ideological work'' should consist of ''using scientific theories to arm people; correct press opinion to guide people; lofty spirit to mould people; and superior artistic creations to energise people''. In his remarks, Mr Deng pledged the party would give up such Cultural Revolution-vintage measures as ''mass movements'' and ''large-scale criticism campaigns'' to enforce orthodoxy. ''We will implement principles of democracy and the goal of guidance through respecting and understanding people, showing them concern, and arousing their enthusiasm,'' he said. Most of the time, however, the ideologues did not bother to hide behind this veil of heavy-handed patronage and noblesse oblige. In his talk to the propagandists, Premier Li demanded that editors ''guard against one-sidedness'' and ''provide a correct guide to public opinion''. Presumably, a Chinese journalist would be guilty of ''one-sidedness'' if his reports fail to show the party in the best light. Mr Deng came directly to the point in an unpublicised series of ''dos and don'ts'' he issued last weekend. ''Give help [to the party], do not add confusion; sing the leitmotif [of socialism, patriotism, collectivism] and avoid cacophony; pay attention to social benefits and not the profit motive; observe propaganda discipline and do not go your own way; sharpen your focus and do not dissipate your energy; work hard at materialising your goals and do not just go for show.'' Mr Deng did not elaborate on what constituted ''cacophony'' or ''confusion''. Yet Chinese media watchers said that his edicts were in essence no different from those endorsed by a similarly large-scale propaganda conclave in 1957, whose purpose was to launch the infamous Anti-Rightist Campaign by ridding the media and cultural scene of ''poisonous weeds''. As the commissars were holding forth on the need to cleave to a reform and open-door policy in the media, authorities in Shanghai last week closed down four financial tabloids suspected of fanning speculation on the local bourse. Restrictions on co-operative ventures with Hong Kong and foreign media and cultural companies were tightened even as the ban on the reception of international satellite TV programmes continued. In spite of Mr Deng's commitment to ''using well the modern mass media'', his department has killed uncountable proposals by enterprising cadres and businessmen to start quasi-private newspapers, magazines and TV stations. It never crossed the mind of the ideological inspectors that, six years shy of the 21st century, it would no longer do for a propaganda machine which reports to only one faction of a political party with a declining number of practising members to tell anation of 1.15 billion what to read and what to watch on television. Or perhaps the incongruity has become apparent even to cadres inured to the mores of the Yan'an caves. In a conversation in English between the politburo's leading linguist, Mr Jiang, and Political Consultative Conference member Israel Epstein a year ago, the President expressed dissatisfaction that the Chinese word xuanchuan (''to publicise, propagate, and conduct propaganda'') had invariably been translated as propaganda. ''Can we look for a more neutral, less stilted [English] term?'' Mr Jiang reportedly asked. The fault, however, is with the party. Since the 30s, CCP's translators have identified their Xuanchuan Bu as the Propaganda Department, and its work as making propaganda. Some bourgeois-liberal wags within the party have suggested converting the Xuanchuan Bu into a Public Relations Department. But then PR professionals do not usually take such draconian steps as banning books or kicking avant-garde writers out of political parties. Presumably, a Chinese journalist would be guilty of ''one-sidedness'' if his reports fail to show the party in the best light