AFTER A week in which he has been described as an actor without any genuine political feeling, China’s premier Wen Jiabao has emerged in local media saying that his country must pursue political reform to safeguard its economic health.
This vision of political progress ran beside a picture of the premier laying flowers at a memorial to Deng Xiaoping, the architect of economic reform, in the booming town of Shenzhen.
Overall, Mr Wen’s vaguely worded call for democratic reform was not big on detail, but his remarks reflect broader worries that unless the Communist Party embraces at least limited reforms to make officials more answerable, then corruption and abuses may erode the country’s economic prospects.
“Without the safeguarding of political restructuring, China may lose what it has already achieved through economic restructuring and the targets of its modernisation drive might not be reached,” Mr Wen was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying.
Shenzhen is the archetypal Chinese boom town, a former fishing village of a few thousand people that is now a megalopolis of 15 million.
The Communist Party has always ruled out broader political reform, insisting that any change must come in a carefully controlled fashion from the grassroots within the 78-million party structure. Mr Wen’s remarks show that there are elements within the leadership disposed to moderate political reform.
Earlier this week, dissident Yu Jie published a book in Hong Kong which put him at risk of prison, as it alleges that Mr Wen’s image as a kindly, caring grandfather is a sham. Mr Wen has been the most successful within the leadership of appearing sympathetic to relaxing some of the country’s top-down controls.
Mr Wen’s comments were quite outspoken. He spoke of creating conditions by which the people could criticise and supervise the government as a way to address issues of “over-concentration of power with ineffective supervision”.
But his room to manoeuvre within the intensely rigid party structure is limited as he is due to retire as premier in early 2013.