The author of the essay has not revealed himself, but Deng Liqun, an orthodox Marxist ideologue and former propaganda chief, denied he had penned it."Spiritual civilisation" serves several purposes: a media clamp curries favour with anti-liberals, while anti-crime campaigns seek popular support.The question is whether modern Chinese notice old-style propaganda campaigns like "spiritual civilisation": among most, traditional values have given way to cynicism.. "Enhance consciousness of environment, and improve the sanitary level of the city," said one placard.Peking Youth Daily, China's most liberal newspaper, had a cartoon of a lonely old woman: "Today, go back home and spend some time with your parents," read the caption. Water conservation was the theme of another advertisement."Spiritual civilisation" has its more overtly political side. This month the Peking Youth Daily editor was replaced with a hardline propagandist, and Peking has implemented a plan to block Internet access to several sites, including US media, human-rights bodies, and pornography.Most tellingly, the government suspended Economic Work Monthly magazine, which published a criticism of an unofficial leftist tract which has become known as the "10,000- word essay" and which attacked the decline of the state sector and the fast pace of reform.

This week Liu Jiachen, deputy president of the Supreme People's Court, admitted crime syndicates were "seriously affecting the normal operation of our government and party units and administration" and would be the target of the next stage of the "Strike Hard" anti-crime blitz.As part of "spiritual civilisation", this month was deemed Public Service Announcements Month and thus billboards and newspapers have devoted space to wholesome messages. The People's Daily, the party mouthpiece, is paving the way with a series featuring a new generation of model workers. The deeds of a tax collector, an industry-and-commerce cadre and a bureaucrat have been described in detail as the "vivid educational material of socialist spiritual civilisation construction".These officials have been chosen to exemplify the core of "spiritual civilisation": love for the motherland, loyalty to the party, care for fellow citizens, diligence at work (especially incorruptibility) and - modishly - respect for the environment.The emphasis on patriotism and gratitude to the party is supposed to fill the moral vacuum in which the Chinese find themselves and to improve the party's image.More practical tenets address a society racked by crime, corruption, environmental damage and collapsing family values. President Jiang Zemin, keen to shore up his position with the people and the army, has chosen "spiritual civilisation" as the guiding theme. "Spiritual civilisation" is about to be launched on the Chinese as an all-embracing palliative for the country's social ills. Next week, the Communist Party holds its annual plenum, a private affair which this year is expected to dwell on values in modern China. "Of course this sort of thing does us harm, but then, Bulgaria is a funny country," said a government source.Moderates hope the situation will improve after the presidential election in late October in which Mr Zhelev will not be standing.. It was his exclusion from the current assembly, indeed, that triggered the latest row.For most Bulgarians, such shenanigans have long since become a way of life, adding to a general sense of disillusionment with the 1989 revolution.

With the economy in deep crisis and inflation set to reach 200 per cent this year, most people are more concerned about how to make ends meet.But the row between Mr Pashovski and the government threatens to seriously damage the country's international standing. Thus, although he is Bulgaria's ambassador to the UN, Mr Pashovski has for two years running not been included on the government- chosen list for the Bulgarian delegation to the UN's annual general assembly. Much to their annoyance, however, the only man in Bulgaria who has the power to hire and fire ambassadors is President Zhelev - who is the government's most ardent critic.The result has been a political stalemate which has paralysed foreign policy and exacerbated the divisions between the pro-Nato approach of Mr Zhelev and the more ambiguous Moscow-friendly approach of the Socialists.It has also - as in the case of Mr Pashovski - turned the country's foreign policy into farce. It is both ridiculous and sad that a high- ranking diplomat can talk in such a way."Mr Pashovski was originally appointed to the United Nations post in 1992 at the behest of the then governing Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and enjoyed the full blessing of the staunchly anti-communist President, Zhelyu Zhelev.But relations with the government nosedived in 1994 when the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) - successors to the former ruling communists - romped to election victory.Since then the new government has consistently sought the removal of Mr Pashovski and a host of other ambassadors who they believed to be appointees from the previous regime. put an end to the infamy of the Bulgarian umbrella once and for all," he added in a reference to the bizarre killing in 1978 of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian defector who died shortly after being stabbed in the leg by a poison-tipped umbrella on the streets of London.Government representatives in Sofia quickly dismissed Mr Pashovski's charges as groundless, describing as "ridiculous" the claim that they had been behind an apparent attempt on his life involving tampering with the steering wheel of his car.They also rejected the ambassador's claim that the Bulgarian ambassador to Albania, another government critic, had been driven off a cliff in the Macedonian mountains by a hired assassin."Mr Pashovski's allegations are pure flights of the imagination," said Panteley Karassimeonov, the foreign ministry spokesman in Sofia "His conduct is quite inadmissible. The curse of the poisoned umbrella tip returned to haunt Bulgaria yesterday after the country's top diplomat to the United Nations accused his own government of deploying dirty tricks against political opponents similar to those allegedly used against former dissidents.