According to Mr Wen Jiabao, China's premier, the biggest challenge facing his country is to ensure its 1.3 billion people achieve sustainable development and a good quality of life. As premier, his challenge is to ensure the poor improve their livelihood, he told The Irish Times in an interview in Beijing yesterday.
The sheer scale of the task he confronts is brought home by his observation that over the last 20 years, since China embarked on economic reforms by introducing an open market system, some 250 million people have been lifted out of poverty. These are mind-numbing figures. Along with the pace of economic growth in recent years, they have put China increasingly at the centre of discussion on world economic prospects. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, surprised members of his audience at the Irish Management Institute annual conference last weekend by his statement that the consuming middle class there is now 350 million people, more than double other estimates; but his emphasis on China's huge importance for the world economy was timely and well taken.
Mr Jiabao's visit here on May 11th and 12th during his first trip to Europe since he was appointed last year is of great significance in this context (he will also go to Germany, Belgium, Italy and Britain). He has a good knowledge of Ireland, commenting on our education system, achievements in high technology, literary and artistic endeavour and on the 60,000 Chinese students and workers here. He vigorously rejects any comparison between Northern Ireland and Taiwan.
Mr Jiabao hopes "our friends in Ireland will be able to appreciate the progress China has made in developing democratic systems". As he sees it China is such a huge country with a huge population and "an extremely uneven development from region to region" that it is not possible to introduce elections above village level. Poverty and democracy are uneasy bedfellows because the poor need subsistence and development before they can have true individual freedom. For this reason the pace of political reform will not match that in the economic sphere, he says. But isn't democracy the best way for the poor to assert their rights?
Mr Jiabao's stress on political responsibility is borne out by the immense task he faces in leading China through a period of such rapid change. He is a talented and widely experienced leader with a popular touch and a more open style than his predecessors. Ensuring China enjoys sustainable political, social and economic development is a colossal challenge for its leadership. Its importance for the rest of the world is increasingly recognised.