Premier Li Keqiang faces his audience
- By Tim Collard
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 14, 2014
One more of China's potential competitive advantages lies within modern technology, one area in which China in no way lags behind the West. Premier Li has recognized that innovation is key; it must be used to support and lead economic structural improvement in order to cement China's established progress from low-paid low-tech industrial contributor to the higher ranges of the global value chain. Until recently, the rest of the world came up with the ideas and the Chinese simply implemented them; that need not always be the case.
In this context, the premier made it clear that China must build on one of her clearly established advantages -- education. Standards of education in the capital and the main coastal cities are already awesomely high; if these standards could be rolled out to the whole country, China would become unstoppable. So why not make a solid effort to boost this kind of social capital?
However, in his closing press conference on March 13, Premier Li had no choice but to respond to the special interests of his foreign interlocutors. He made it clear that China's economy has "tremendous potential and resilience," and displayed no doubt that this situation was indefinitely sustainable. Even though recent 8 percent (and higher) growth levels could not indefinitely be guaranteed, the economy would focus on quality rather than quantity. This makes excellent sense.
In some ways, a property price bubble and choking smog hovering over the cities are signs of a booming economy. This is how Britain started out 200 years ago. Nevertheless, China is now confronted with the questions: what is possible and what is desirable? Premier Li addressed these questions without holding back, promising "tough measures and regulations to fight pollution and a differential approach to curb speculation on the housing market." With the best will in the world, the premier is going to have to face down some strongly entrenched vested interests here.
Likewise, official corruption has been so strongly flagged up -- not by Westerners intent on interference, but by Chinese citizens themselves -- that the premier has no wish to ignore it. "Corruption is a natural enemy of the people's government," Li told the press conference, reiterating his "zero-tolerance" approach to corrupt officials, no matter who they are. The premier's Politburo Standing Committee colleague Wang Qishan, chairman of the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection, has been thoroughly supportive on this front, but how easy will it be to bring the culprits, strongly fixed within their power bases as many of them will be, to account?
An international press conference is not always the best way to judge the success of a nation's decision-making process. Foreign journalists will always be looking for more sensation-tainted topics, and China has clearly decided this is not what her people require at this point. What China needs is solid, steady, well-prepared reform and progress and if that is not what foreign journalists want to report to their respective audiences, well then, foreign journalists are just not really that important.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/timcollard.htm
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