Zhu's bold reforms
Only two days after his appointment, China's new Prime Minister Zhu Rongji announced his bold but concrete economic reforms yesterday at the closing of the 15-day annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC).
Although Zhu's ascendancy to the premiership, replacing Li Peng, has long been expected, the 69-year-old Zhu still surprised the world community by clearly mapping out his reform targets, which he said could be reached within three years.
Committed to rescuing China's economy from failing state enterprises which, for years, have been running in the red and from the monetary crisis which has hit several Asian countries, the premier pledged to keep economic growth rate at 8 percent and inflation within a single digit, at 3 percent, while streamlining the government bureaucracy by half.
Among Zhu's reform targets are the stimulating of domestic demand by investing in infrastructure and turning housing into a growth industry by removing state subsidies as well improving the country's tax collection system.
"We are very confident that at the end of the century, the objective of bringing most of the loss-making state-owned enterprises out of their difficult situation can be realized," Zhu said in his maiden media meeting as premier.
Aside from the dazzling set of economic reforms and the approval of younger professionals as cabinet ministers in Zhu's administration, another event worth noticing in NPC's (parliament) closing session was the protest voiced by nearly a third of the 2,907 delegates against the Communist Party leadership's handling of rising crime and pervasive corruption by government officials.
The unprecedented protest signifies that a bit of democracy is at work in China, one of the few remaining countries in the world which still adheres to communism as its state ideology, thereby contradicting the impression that the NPC is merely a rubber- stamp parliament.
The voting rights granted to NPC members, by which they choose leaders they think most befitting to represent the 1.25 billion population, also reflects that gradual political liberation is underway in a country often referred to as the "Bamboo Curtain".
Many believe that greater political relaxation will be introduced in China in the foreseeable future to boost its ambitious economic reforms. Especially now that Zhu, who proved himself a capable technocrat as mayor of Shanghai due to his broad outlook and deep faith in market operation, said yesterday that he was in favor of democratic elections of leaders in China.
"With regard to the question concerning democratic elections, of course I am in favor of democratic elections," he said.
Given all this, China's dream of bringing its people into the next millennium in a more prosperous condition and more democratic way of life seems to be within its grasp.