China’s Impatient Would-Be Premier

It’s easy to spot Zhu Rongji among a group of senior leaders at official functions here. Whether it’s at the airport to greet a returning fellow Politburo member or at the Great Hall of the People for a banquet, he’s the one who looks most uncomfortable. His body language says: This is a waste of time.

Zhu, tapped as China’s new premier, has no patience for the interminable banqueting and formalized protocol that characterize business and government here. On road trips as China’s top economic official, he agrees to only one formal meal with his nervous hosts. After that, he dines alone to save time and money.

Cutting through China’s red tape and formality has earned Zhu, 69, a reputation as a straight-talking facilitator. His staff, both cowed and awed by his authority, refers to him simply as “The Boss.”

Western diplomats laud his sophistication and urbanity. Zhu, they say, has proved his managerial toughness as China’s chief market reformer. Also reassuring to foreigners: He speaks English, the international language of the marketplace. He studied it diligently even while serving in a Cultural Revolution reform camp.

Younger Chinese remember him gratefully as the man who, as mayor of Shanghai during the 1989 democracy movement, refused to summon the People’s Armed Police and deftly avoided bloodshed in China’s largest city. Older Chinese marvel at his skill as a musician, singing classical Peking opera or accompanying his wife on the stringed hu qin instrument.

Best of all, Zhu’s supporters say, the man who has directed China’s supercharged economy since 1992 is nothing at all like China’s much-maligned lame-duck premier, Li Peng.

At the conclusion of the two-week session of the National People’s Congress that opens today, Zhu is expected to replace Li at the head of the Chinese government. Li--cast as one of the “butchers of Beijing” for his hard-line role in the 1989 crackdown on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square demonstrators--has completed the two consecutive five-year terms permitted under China’s Constitution.

As a concession to his conservative supporters in the Communist Party, the National People’s Congress is expected to name Li, also 69, its new chairman.

In the carefully choreographed protocol of the Communist Party, Li will keep his No. 2 ranking in the Politburo behind President and party chief Jiang Zemin. Thus, Zhu will be first in government but third in the party pecking order.

Some fear that this awkward arrangement may create political tensions, not only between the incoming and outgoing premiers but also with top leader Jiang, who also presides over China’s powerful military.

When Zhu served in the late 1980s under Jiang, then the Shanghai party secretary, said former senior party official Xu Jiatun, who now lives in Orange County, “the gossip was that there was a lot of tension between the two. Zhu was held in higher esteem in Shanghai than Jiang.”

Nonetheless, Zhu’s anticipated elevation to the premiership has lifted the spirits and heightened expectations of many in China’s emerging white-collar class of businesspeople and reform-minded bureaucrats. “Everyone knows that when a new official takes office,” said one scholar, quoting an ancient dictum about the administrator’s need for a quick, impressive start, “he must light three fires.”

According to advance indications, Zhu has enough kindling for more than three blazes.

Reorganization Plans

Among the expected changes is a major reorganization of government ministries in an attempt to lessen the Communist Party’s dominant--often stifling--role. Under this plan, several new super-ministries would be created and reconfigured along market lines. Some ministries with direct industrial links--most notably electronics, electric power, coal mining, machinery, metallurgy and chemistry--would be reborn as corporations or, alternatively, as less centralized “industry associations.”

The Beijing-based official Economic Times newspaper reported that the restructuring would eliminate 4 million government jobs, including 100 minister-level positions.

Other rumored radical proposals include the sale of long-term land leases in the underdeveloped regions of western China to private developers. Now, all land and mineral resources belong to the state.

Fittingly--and perhaps not accidentally--Zhu’s ascendancy comes just as state-controlled media are engaged in lavish coverage marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of China’s longest-serving and most-revered premier, the late Chou En-lai. Chou--the most cosmopolitan of the original core of “Long March Communists”--served as premier from the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 until his death in 1976.

The saturation hagiography, including a nightly serialized documentary on China Central Television, is more extensive than that marking the 1993 centennial of the birth of People’s Republic founder Mao Tse-tung. The television documentary stresses Chou’s decency and practicality during the worst moments of the Communist era, including the 1958-61 “Great Leap Forward” and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

If he gets the job, as expected, Zhu will be only the fifth premier in the history of the People’s Republic. But his route to power has not been without twists and turns, including the time he was kicked out of the Communist Party and another when he hauled manure in an ideological reform camp.

Imperial Ties

Zhu was born Oct. 1, 1928, at Changsha in Hunan province, which also produced Mao and dozens of other statesmen and poets over the centuries. According to a series of articles published last week in Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper, Zhu’s family traces its ancestry to Zhu Quan, the 14th son of Zhu Yuanzhang, first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Ming Pao reported that several years ago, while on a visit to Anhui province, Zhu paid a private visit to the emperor’s tomb near Fengyang.

But Zhu’s personal history is much more humble. His father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was 10. He was raised by an uncle, Zhu Xuefang, who had three daughters and a son. According to the various biographies of Zhu, the family was so poor that the uncle kept his daughters out of school so that he could afford to educate his son and nephew.

An excellent student, Zhu attended Changsha No. 1 High School, considered the best school in the province. Report cards from the high school, obtained by Ming Pao, showed him at the top of his class, recording several perfect marks of 100. In 1947, he was accepted by two of China’s most prestigious universities, Jiaotong University in Shanghai and Beijing’s Qinghua University.

He attended Qinghua, majoring in electrical engineering. His ties to Qinghua have remained strong. He still lectures there occasionally and holds a position as dean of the school of management.

In 1948, one year before the Communist victory in the civil war with the Nationalists, Zhu joined the pro-Communist New Democratic Youth League at Qinghua. In 1949, just as the People’s Republic came into being, he joined the Communist Party.

While at Qinghua--where he was elected class president and chairman of the student government committee--Zhu met his wife, Lao An, who shares his passion for Peking opera.

According to Guo Daohui, a classmate at Qinghua interviewed by Ming Pao, the marriage is very good. “When Zhu Rongji met with a series of setbacks,” Guo said, “Lao An stood by him. They are really an all-weather couple.”

Like her husband, Lao is said to be skilled at languages, capable of speaking English, Russian and French. They have a son and a daughter, both of whom studied in the United States.

A Political Outcast

After serving for several years as an economic planner with the State Planning Commission, Zhu suffered his first setback in 1957, when Chairman Mao called on the Chinese to “let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend.” Emboldened by Mao’s insincere appeal for criticism, Zhu stood up at a meeting and spoke critically for three minutes about leadership shortcomings.

Branded a reactionary, Zhu was kicked out of the Communist Party. He was rehabilitated in 1962 but exiled to the countryside eight years later during the Cultural Revolution for “ideological remolding.” For more than five years, China’s future head of government planted wheat, fed swine and hauled manure in rural northeastern China.

In all, Zhu spent nearly 10 years as a political outcast. But given the wild ideological swings that marked the Mao era, they were mostly good years to be disassociated from the regime. Moreover, by averting bloodshed in Shanghai, he escaped the stigma of 1989, when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were gunned down by People’s Liberation Army troops in Beijing.

In May 1989, when Li Peng declared martial law and accused Tiananmen Square demonstrators of “subversion,” Zhu went on Shanghai television in an attempt to calm the citizenry of his city. While urging Shanghai’s student protesters to back down, Zhu acknowledged that “the work of our party and government has many shortcomings.”

Additionally, he publicly recognized the merits of the students’ goals: “The broad masses of students, out of patriotic zeal, hope to promote democracy and punish corruption. This is entirely in line with the objectives our party and government are working hard to realize.” Notably, he refused to condemn the students’ actions, saying that history would show who was right or wrong.

After serving three years as Shanghai mayor, Zhu was called to Beijing and placed in charge of problems created by China’s overheated economy, which was expanding wildly after more than a decade of market reforms.

In 1993, China faced a retail inflation rate of more than 25%. Food prices were out of control.

Functioning as China’s version of Alan Greenspan, the U.S. Federal Reserve chief, Zhu launched a series of austerity moves, including tax reforms, restrictions on credit and bank loans and, in 1994, a currency devaluation that greatly boosted China’s exports.

By 1996, Zhu was widely credited with engineering what many had considered impossible, leading the overheated Chinese economy to a “soft landing” while the country amassed more than $100 billion in foreign exchange surplus. Inflation dropped last year to a negligible 0.8%. Meanwhile, Zhu also managed to stabilize food prices by mixing market reforms with selective price controls on some key items and maintaining subsidies for others.

Along the way, he earned a fair share of enemies. Several times, particularly after the death of “paramount leader” Deng Xiaoping in February 1997, Zhu was rumored to be out of the picture in the Chinese leadership. According to sources, Zhu several times offered to quit.

But by the time of last fall’s 15th Party Congress, Zhu had emerged as the top candidate for premier, eclipsing his chief rivals for the job, outgoing National People’s Congress Chairman Qiao Shi and Jiang protege Wu Bangguo.

Turf Battles in Party

Getting the job is one thing; keeping it may be another. Zhu comes in as premier just as most of Southeast Asia--China’s main competitor for exports--has undergone massive currency devaluations that will lower the prices of the nations’ goods. He will be under increasing pressure to counter by devaluing China’s currency, something he has vowed not to do.

Given the massive nature of the government restructuring he has proposed, Zhu is certain to create frictions. “In streamlining the government and reconfiguring the bureaucracy,” said former party official Xu in Orange County, “it is inevitable that he will offend people, particularly the bureaucrats he will be putting out of work.”

Finally, his turf battles inside the Communist Party are just beginning. Two powerful previous reformers, the late party Secretary Hu Yaobang and former Premier Zhao Ziyang, were ousted from office in party purges.

To survive, Zhu may need to draw inspiration from his favorite opera tune, “Young Master He Swears in Court,” which tells the story of a court succession battle at the beginning of the Song Dynasty.