Hot on the heels of the Nobel Committee angering Chinese authorities by awarding this year's Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo, a group of thinkers inside China are causing the authorities headaches over human rights and democratic reform.

On Tuesday, 23 former senior Communist Party officials and one-time editors in the official state media posted a letter online calling on the Chinese government to dismantle its elaborate censorship apparatus.

And then, as if to confirm that, yes, China indeed has an elaborate censorship apparatus, the letter was removed from its website by Chinese authorities within a few hours of its posting.

Despite the swift action of the Chinese government in removing the letter, it is not at all clear that Chinese officials are of the same mind when it comes to censorship and democratic reform. As the Financial Times reports in the article I just linked to, there is speculation that Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is pushing for some democratic reforms as his time in office winds down. There is also talk that political reform will be a major point of discussion at a key policy meeting of the country's powerful Central Committee.

How China should change, how quickly it should change and how much the outside world should try to push it to change has been debated for decades. These are topics we have covered several times on The Agenda.

Above, you can see a discussion we first aired this past February entitled "China and the West". The program delves into the debate over whether China is a country Western nations can work with, or a country that is an implacable adversary.

Next is a debate from late 2009 where we discussed the fears westerners have about a rising China and how those fears, real or imagined, may affect how we interact with China.

And below is another 2009 broadcast where we examined political reform in China and how the global recession may affect its pace.