China's top leaders are considering "cultural reforms", state media reported, which analysts said would be aimed at tightening control over the media and Internet to shape public opinion.

A meeting chaired by President Hu Jintao on Monday called for the "mastering of new trends in cultural development" and for an emphasis on "Chinese characteristics" as part of the proposed overhaul, Xinhua news agency said.

Details of the draft changes to be considered by Communist Party leaders next month were not given, but analysts said they were likely to tighten Beijing's grip on newspapers, television and popular social networking sites.

"All cultural controls have the essential political mission to shape the people's mind to not directly challenge the party rule, to accept the status quo," a media expert at the University of California, Berkeley said.

"It highlights their nervousness and their awareness of the increasing challenges to their ability to control the cultural sphere", Xiao Qiang added.

For the past decade Beijing has been encouraging state-run media to be more competitive and less reliant on state subsidies, which has led to more critical reporting and racier programming as outlets compete for readers and viewers.

But the trend towards more free-wheeling reporting has undermined official efforts to control public opinion, and unnerved authorities who have seen previously obedient media outlets criticise their decisions and defy orders to toe the Communist Party line.

The huge and rising popularity of weibos -- microblogs similar to Twitter that have taken China by storm since they first launched two years ago -- has also posed major challenges to censors and fuelled official concerns.

There is "this anxiety over the influence of these truly commercially operating media which have gained a lot of strength in the past decade and have huge audiences," said David Bandurski of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong.

"You really have seen the progressive loss of control by the official media and in recent years they have been trying to re-grab that agenda."

A train crash that killed 40 people in July sparked an outpouring of public fury on the weibos -- apparently catching officials by surprise.

Weeks later Beijing's most senior Communist Party official visited the offices of Chinese Internet giant Sina, which operates a popular weibo, and Youku, a Chinese site similar to YouTube, to urge them to stop the spread of "false and harmful information".

Propaganda chief Li Changchun also recently visited the offices of Chinese search engine giant Baidu and urged city officials in Beijing to do more to control public opinion online in a country with 485 million users.

More should be done to "improve government influence over public opinion" and "build a new type of battlefront" against the Internet, Li was quoted by state media saying.

To combat the popularity of the web and fluffier provincial programming, China Central Television -- the government's broadcast mouthpiece -- plans to revamp its flagship news programmes from next year, previous reports said.

The government has also tried to strong-arm viewers into watching their shows by ordering problematic programmes such as "Super Girl" -- China's answer to US smash hit "American Idol" -- to be taken off the air.

The battle to control the country's media will continue "as long as there is a single party", Bandurski said.

"Controlling public opinion by controlling the press equals to maintaining social control and party legitimacy," he said.

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