EVEN before the end of the official six day mourning period, jockeying for power and influence in the post Deng Xiaoping era has already begun within the ranks of China's top Communist Party leadership, according to diplomats and other sources in Beijing.

In a sign that he will not tolerate any attempt to reassess the bloody events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, President Jiang Zemin has refused permission to former Communist party leader, Zhao Ziyang, who sympathised with pro democracy students, to attend the funeral tomorrow.

At the same time Mr Jiang (70), has omitted from the funeral committee, at the family's wishes, a top conservative who criticised Deng for his pro market reforms in the early 1990s.

The body of Deng Xiaoping, who died on Wednesday, will be cremated today and a funeral service attended by 5,000 official mourners will take place tomorrow in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.

As Deng's hand picked successor, President Jiang has reassured China that he will continue the market oriented reform policies which Deng used to transform the country. He holds three posts, President, head of the Communist party and head of the army, but has yet to consolidate his position as the supreme authority in the complex structures of Chinese power.

In remarks to a visiting Central Asian leader on Saturday, Mr Jiang appeared to take a bold first step to assert his leadership, telling him that he would achieve even greater successes than Deng in pushing ahead with capitalist style reforms.

"We would run China's undertakings still better, and make greater contributions to the cause of peace, development and progress of the mankind," he told President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

While the statement is a mark of self assurance, it may leave Mr Jiang open to attack for being disrespectful by criticising Deng too early, observers said.

Rivals for influence at the top will try to change key personnel at the People's Daily the official party newspaper, in tile coming weeks, another source said.

Those seeking to increase their prestige this way are said to include Mr Qiao Shi, former head of the country's security system and now chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC), and Mr Yang Shangkun, a sprightly 90 year old former military figure who once tried to assume power through his military connections.

Sources say that Mr Qiao and his deputy Tian Jiyun are seeking to reform the NPC, which will meet at the end of the month, so that it becomes something more than a rubber stamp parliament.

In a move which will dismay those in China who opposed Deng Xiaoping's use of the army to suppress students in 1989, Mr Jiang is reported to have refused a request from his predecessor as Communist Party General Secretary, Zhao Ziyang, to attend tomorrow's memorial service.

Deng selected Zhao as his successor in 1987 but dismissed him two years later for sympathising with the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Zhao pleaded with the students in tears to end their challenge to the Communist party. The next day martial law was declared in Beijing.

China's leadership is nervous of the influence of Zhao and of any attempt to reverse Deng's verdict on the students as violent counter revolutionaries, sources say. Mr Jiang apparently overruled Deng's family and some party veterans who had agreed to allow Zhao to attend.

The 77 year old former party chief has been under house arrest in the capital since 1989, only travelling away from home or to play golf with permission. He is believed to be in Hangzhou in eastern China where he had spent the Chinese lunar New Year and to have been refused permission to return to Beijing until the funeral is over.

Zhao's relatively liberal political and economic policies made him popular while in office and he has retained his popularity with liberals by refusing to acknowledge making mistakes.

China's top conservative ideologue, Deng Liqun, who openly criticised Deng Xiaoping's 1992 tour of southern China which sparked the current economic boom, was left off the high profile 459 member funeral committee for Deng at the request of the dead man's family, according to reports in Beijing. Deng Liqun was China's propaganda chief for several years under Deng.

In the past week Jiang has come under veiled attack in a conservative magazine from left wing hard liners who seek to return to the more ideologically driven policies of Chairman Mao Zedong.