Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) rejected any comparison yesterday between China and the -unrest-hit Middle East, but admitted his government faced potent risks from inflation and other hot-button issues.
“We face extremely daunting tasks and complex domestic and international situations,” Wen told reporters in an annual press briefing after the close of the nation’s parliament session.
China’s ruling Communist Party is grappling with a range of problems such as inflation, rampant corruption, environmental degradation and land grabs by property developers and local governments who evict existing residents.
Photo: Reuters
The leadership has thus watched with concern as a similar mix of issues — and a lack of democracy — sparked popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world, but Wen rejected any comparison with China.
“We have followed closely the turbulence in some North African and Middle Eastern countries. We believe it is not right to draw an analogy between China and those countries,” Wen said.
Inflation tops the government’s agenda and while pledging further efforts to contain rising prices of food, housing and other essentials in the world’s second-largest economy, Wen said inflation was “not easy to control.”
Wen called corruption — another key factor in the Middle East unrest — the “biggest danger” faced by China and said political reform was necessary to help combat it.
However, speaking after the close of the country’s annual parliament session, Wen made clear that any transition to electoral politics would be made only under the “leadership of the [Communist] party.”
“We must pursue a step-by-step approach in this process. We must believe that when the people are capable of running village affairs well, they will also be capable of ... running a township and a county,” he said. “That will be a gradual process.”
Wen made similar comments promoting political reform last August during a visit to the southern city of Shenzhen and in a subsequent interview with CNN.
The remarks sparked speculation of a divide between him and President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), who later made more tepid comments on reform.
However, political analysts have subsequently said Wen had actually intimated nothing significant in August, instead paying the usual lip service to reform and democracy favored by the Communist Party.
The ruling communists maintain an iron grip on political power and go to great lengths to crush challenges to their rule. China allows direct elections for village leaders across the country, but the process is tightly controlled by local Communist Party leaders.
China’s National People’s Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo (吳邦國), who is officially No. 2 in the country’s hierarchy, outranking Wen, last week ruled out any shift to multiparty democracy.
In a speech to the National People’s Congress, Wu said abandoning the current Communist Party-dominated system could cause the country to “fall into the abyss of civil strife.”
Beijing has targeted more balanced, less export-reliant, -sustainable development and a fairer distribution of wealth under a new five-year growth plan approved by the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress earlier yesterday.
It calls for a more moderate 7 percent annual economic expansion for 2011-2015. The economy grew 10.3 percent last year.
China has annually set an 8 percent economic growth target — considered the minimum required to keep the economy growing fast enough to stave off social unrest. The goal is surpassed each year.
However, Wen admitted it “will not be easy” maintaining enough growth to create sufficient new jobs, while also curbing inflation.
Decades of blistering export-dependent growth have made China’s economy a force in the world, but Beijing has struggled to spread the wealth evenly among its 1.3 billion population.
“Over the next five years and for a long period of time to come in the course of China’s development, we will make the transformation of China’s economic development pattern our priority,” Wen said.
He also pledged the government would make greater efforts to spur the development of affordable housing.
The urgency of appeasing disgruntled constituencies has come into focus over the past month with mysterious Internet calls for weekly Sunday “strolling” rallies in major Chinese cities.
They have largely fizzled under smothering security and no obvious protest actions have been reported, but the heavy police response revealed official concern over public dissatisfaction.
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