A group of former high-ranking political and cultural officials published a rare, strongly worded open letter to the top legislature calling mainland media censorship unconstitutional and saying it should be abolished.
They also demanded that media products and books from Hong Kong and Macau - popular among mainland readers - be made openly available on mainland newsstands and in bookstores.
The letter, published online, calls the lack of free speech, which is enshrined in the 1982 constitution, a 'scandal of the world history of democracy'. It even cites Hong Kong in the colonial era as an example of somewhere that enjoyed freedom of speech and publication.
In particular, the group of 23 well-known individuals condemned the Communist Party's central propaganda department as the 'black hand' with a clandestine power to censor even Premier Wen Jiabao's repeated calls for political reform and to deprive the people their right to learn about it.
For the last few weeks, well-connected professionals in Beijing have been talking about the party propaganda authorities' almost open insult to the premier by deleting his points on political reform the day after he made his speech in Shenzhen.
Open letters of this kind rarely lead to any reform, but can land the authors in trouble with the authorities. However, in this case, the high profile of the signatories means they are unlikely to be punished.