September 5, 2006

NEWSMAKER - China's Wen, tested by power, turns to poetry

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao survived purges and years in the backwoods on his way to the pinnacle of government, yet he presents his far-reaching agenda with the measured precision of a mild professor.

Since becoming premier in 2003, Wen has spent Lunar New Year holidays down a coal mine and in an AIDS-stricken village. He has promised to restore migrant workers' unpaid wages, to stop factories spewing pollution and to end corrupt land seizures.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao answers a question during an interview with foreign media in Beijing September 5, 2006. (REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV)

He has promised, above all, to divert China's torrent of economic growth to the countryside, narrowing the chasm dividing hundreds of millions of farmers from new-found wealth.

In an interview with Reuters and several other news outlets on Tuesday, the bookish Wen summed up his feelings by quoting an ancient Chinese poem.

"Long did I sigh to hold back my tears, saddened I am by the grief of the people," Wen recited, speaking ahead of a week-long tour of Europe beginning on Saturday.

Wen's sympathy for the down-trodden has made him widely popular. But some observers wonder whether his background as a loyal bureaucrat has given him the steel to face down rival officials and economic interests wary of his populist leanings.

"The word I've heard is that he means well, but he's not very good at dealing with the opposition and passivity his plans have attracted," said Victor Shih, who studies Chinese politics at Northwestern University in Chicago. "To have fundamental change, you may need to be more hardline."

The defining icon of Wen's character is a black and white photograph taken two weeks before the bloody military crackdown of June 4 that ended the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.

The picture shows a poker-faced Wen standing next to then Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang as he made an emotional appeal to students to leave. Zhao was ousted days later.

Wen -- Zhao's chief of staff at the time -- survived and rose. The newly installed party chief, Jiang Zemin, was impressed by Wen's self-effacing obedience, said Cheng Li, a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"He does not have his own faction," Li said of Wen. "But his loyalty and administrative skills earned him respect."

A geologist by training, Wen spent 14 years in poor, far western Gansu province, where his memory for detail earned him the nickname "living map".

Appointed vice premier in 1998, he took charge of financial and agricultural reforms, development of the lagging western hinterland and environmental protection.

Wen, 64 this month, is seeking to tame China's blazing economic growth -- 11.3 percent in the second quarter, driven by investment in factories, power plants and real estate. A spate of pollution spills has underscored obstacles to repairing China's environment.

Wen's plans may bear their full fruit only in his likely second term from 2008, said Stephen Green, senior economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai. Ranked third in the Communist Party hierarchy, Wen is formally appointed by China's ceremonial parliament.

Governing the continent-sized country would be an increasingly tough test, said Green.

"As the economy gets more complicated, as other countries increasingly are affected, and as domestic interest groups grow ever-stronger -- it's a tougher job now than 10, even five, years ago," he said.

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NEWSMAKER - China's Wen, tested by power, turns to poetry

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