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Next Premier Came of Age in Era of Openness
Keywords:
Tags: Current Focus, China,
Li Keqiang, China's new premier, is a member of the "Class of 77," who gained entry to Peking University when university entrance exams were reinstated after Mao's death. This is a period of great curiosity in China about the outside world. Li described it this way in 2008: "In this period knowledge was expanding with the speed of an explosion. I came here not just for knowledge, but to mold a kind of temperament, to master a kind of academic discipline." This he did by working extremely hard trying to master the English language and Western legal theory. He is now the only leader in China who can speak fluent English and is familiar with western concepts of law. For this he owes much to one of his professors, Gong Xiangrui, who studied at the London School of Economics in the 1930's and supported a multiparty system for China. Li was selected as one of the students to translate "The Due Process of Law" by Lord Denning, a British jurist. He spent the next 15 years in the Communist party's Youth League and moved up through the ranks. Many of the "Class of 77' " are still close friends and in academic positions in Singapore, Hong Kong and other universities. He understands the weaknesses in China's legal system because many of his close friends are lawyers, judges and law professors. Evidence of his intellectual openness, is his return to Peking University for a masters degree in economics years later, his thesis on urbanization, and his sponsorship through the Development Reform Commission think tank and the World Bank's Zoellick, of the report published in 2012, "China 2030." That report called for China to change course and reverse the role of state owned firms in the economy, giving consumers a bigger role. Like many of China's leaders this openness also meant during the period of turmoil of the Mao period and the decades following this, of a reticence to talk about political change that came over the entire country, in the words of the 2012 Chinese Nobel Prize Laureate's name, Mo Yan, a kind of "Don't Speak." Taking any kind of political position was simply too risky. The presence of 4 older Politburo members in their mid-60's who are close allies of former president Jiang Zemin and likely to preserve the status quo, also suggests a cautious approach in making changes. One key difference between Jinping- Keqiang from the Jintao-Wen Biao leadership is that Jinping has experience in provincial leadership positions in Hebei, and Keqiang was provincial leader in Henan, China's most populous province, as well as leader in industrial Liaoning province. By odd contrast Hu Jintao was a leader in the remote Tibet region and Wen Biao was a geologist in the northeast for many years. This gives the new leadership team a first hand knowledge of conditions in populous provinces, and the connections with the World Bank's Zoellick a kind of window to the outside that no other leader has had. Jiang Zemin, a former mayor of Shanghai, China' most westernized city in the 1930's and today, was himself a experimenter in his own right when he initiated the changes tht gave China entry into the World Trade Organization. His support of Xi Jinping gives Xi the needed backing for making change happen when the time comes.
Beijing's view of the universal suffrage issue in Hong Kong- Shiu Sin-Por, head of the Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
11/16/2012
Shiu Sin-Por says the irony of the matter is that the issue arose when the Chinese government agreed in 2014 to accept universal suffrage for Hong Kong's citizens. The problem for the Democracy protest movement is the restriction that all candidates be acceptable to Beijing. Sin-Por cites as reason for this restriction as China's need for national security so that goals of national development can be achieved. China new government has serious economic challenges. Would it be easier and more certain with the lack of true Hong Kong sentiment being reflected in a fully open vote? There are risks for the Communist Party but these may be small compared to the benefits to the Communist Party of being able to get voter sentiment especially when there is no way to guage sentiment on the mainland. It is also consistent with the relationship China has sought with the U.S., Europe and Japan since 1990 for openness in the economy, technology transfers and foreign investment, which are even more important for China's next phase of development to transition into an advanced technological society- more important than in the first where basic technologies could be adopted easily. It is too small a price even for the cited "national security," as national security of China is better accomplished with continued technological progress through openness and contact with western society and institutions. The years in Li Keqiang's early personal development which he spent reading and studying about western institutions is itself proof about its lasting value to China. This kind of openness would be a fitting way to honor Gong Xiangrui, a professor of Li Keqiang, who also advocated this kind of openness to ideas, and which provided inspiration to Li to move China's development to the next stage. Jiang Zemin also took risks as he experimented with new ideas as Mayor of Shanghai, and later as president, the risks were small compared to the opportunities that came up in the process.
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China's new prime minister in 2013 is from the Class of 1977, when there was a huge burst of energy as students looked with great excitement to gaining knowledge after a decade when learning and books were suppressed.
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The ideas and thinking of China's leaders and how this will affect China and the global economy.
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Li Keqiang and the era of Openness in China 1977-2023
11/02/2023
LI Keqiang was able to pass entrance exams to Peking University in 1977 after entrance exams were reinstated following Mao's death. He led the modernization of China during the 2000-2022 period two decades of fast growth turning China into a middle income industrialized country after centuries of decline. During this period China urbanized at a rapid rate and Li's advanced studies focused on urbanization. It was also a period when China realized the damage done to the environment and quality of air, water, with haphazard growth, and shifted to climate change action through focus on solar energy and limiting use of coal.
Linked Articles
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Next Premier Came of Age in Era of Openness
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