The warning emerged on Chinese news Web sites that carried accounts from local party committees describing a directive from the Central Committee General Office, the administrative engine of the party leadership under Xi Jinping. 

The central document, “Concerning the Situation in the Ideological Sphere,” has not been openly published, and most references to it disappeared from Chinese news and government Web sites by Monday afternoon, apparently reflecting censors’ skittishness about publicizing such warnings. But what did come to light in the local summaries exuded anxiety about the party’s grip on opinion. 

Mr. Xi has been credited with strengthening national cohesiveness since he became general secretary in November, said a summary of a party organization meeting last week of the Commission of Urban-Rural Development of Chongqing, a municipality in southwest China. 

“At the same time, the central leadership has made a thorough analysis of and shown a staunch stance toward seven serious problems in the ideological sphere that merit attention, giving a clearer understanding of the sharpness and complexity of struggle in the ideological sphere,” said the account, which later disappeared from the commission’s Web site. 

The Chinese government has confronted demands for democratic changes from activists emboldened by Mr. Xi’s vows to respect the law. In recent days, some activists have cited rumors that the party issued a warning against seven ideas that are considered anathema, including media freedom and judicial independence. But the official summaries did not include such language.
Officials must “fully understand the dangers posed by views and theories advocated by the West,” said the account from Chongqing, which said officials must “cut off at the source channels for disseminating erroneous currents of thought.” 

“Strengthen management of the Internet, enhance guidance of opinion, purify the environment on the Internet, give no opportunities that lawless elements can seize on,” it said. 

Reports on other local party committee Web sites in northeast and southwest China also described the directive, although in less detail. 

The demands for ideological conformity show that Mr. Xi and other leaders want to inoculate the public from expectations of major political liberalization, even as they explore loosening some state controls over the economy, several analysts said. 

“If anything, there seems to be some regression in the ideological sphere,” said Chen Ziming, a prominent political commentator in Beijing who supports democratic change. “I think that there will be some steps forward in economic reform, but there are no notions of political reform. Such warnings reflect that mentality.” 

Calls for orthodoxy from Chinese leaders are by no means new. But Mr. Xi is caught in a sharpening conundrum, trying to satisfy widespread public expectations for cleaner, more accountable government and a fairer share of prosperity while also defending centralized control, said Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California who specializes in Chinese politics. 

“I think in his mind he has two conflicting priorities,” Professor Pei said.
“The top priority is to maintain the party’s rule,” he said. “But he also has this immediate political priority; that is, he wants to show he will end this period of stagnation. But clearly the two priorities are in conflict with each other.”
Mr. Xi has commissioned officials and researchers to study seven areas of potential economic change, including loosening state controls on bank interest rates and on resource prices, said a Chinese businessman with close links to senior leaders, confirming a report in The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. 

Some of the proposals are likely to be endorsed by a meeting of the party’s Central Committee late this year, said the businessman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing concern about harming his ties to leaders. 

On Monday, the prime minister, Li Keqiang, reinforced the theme of change, urging officials to cut red tape stifling market competition, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. “The market is the creator of social wealth,” Mr. Li said. “Let go of the powers that should be let go.” 

Yet Mr. Xi has accompanied such signals of change with the messages defending party tradition and control. In December, he said China must absorb the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union, for which he blamed political ill-discipline and ideological laxity under Mikhail S. Gorbachev. 

More recently, Mr. Xi told officials that the Chinese Communist Party might not have survived if it had disowned Mao Zedong in the same way that the Soviet Union condemned Stalin, a party newspaper, The Guangming Daily, reported last week. 

If Mr. Xi is to advance some economic liberalization, he must first convince potential opponents that he will not jeopardize one-party control, said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, an American businessman who wrote an authorized biography of the former party leader Jiang Zemin and has met Mr. Xi and other senior officials. 

“It’s not an irrational combination in the Chinese system,” Mr. Kuhn said in an interview. “My guess is that some of the talk is designed to consolidate a position so that he’s not attacked by the extreme left. People can read into Xi what they like, because he gives each side the opportunity to see what they like.”