Online rumors that some articles and poems under the name of China's late chairman Mao Zedong were written by his secretary Hu Qiaomu and other colleagues are unfounded, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

The rumor says two reports concerning the issue were filed to the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee in 1993 and one in 1995.

The website cpc.people.com.cn, affiliated to People's Daily, cited the unnamed spokesman of the Party Literature Research Center, the Party History Research Center and the Party School of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC), as saying the reports are rootless.

The spokesman said contrary to the rumor, Hu said on many occasions before his death that Mao often helped him edit his articles, and many of his old-style poems were learned from Mao.