International; 19 March, 1998
China's new PM is free-thinker with few allies
By Andrew Higgins
BEIJING: Alone among China's current leaders, Zhu Rongji, the man endorsed on Tuesday as China's new prime minister, has made a career challenging stagnant convention rather than bowing to it.
"He is going to tackle problems head-on. You need someone who makes enemies not friends," said Huang Yasheng, a Chinese economist at Harvard University. "Whether he will last long is another question, but we need someone to start the process."
The problems he faces are immense. While his predecessor, the stiff apparatchik Li Peng, presided over a decade of mostly double-digit growth, Mr Zhu assumes his post at a time of economic crisis throughout Asia. China has so far been spared the worst, but much pain lies ahead as the party embarks on a plan to slash millions of jobs in state industry and government.
A graduate of China's elite Qinghua University in electrical engineering, he largely avoids ideological talk and has made a reputation as an economic troubleshooter ready to dirty his hands - and often his image among functionaries more accustomed to flattery than criticism.
According to one story, he dismantled the water-saving toilet in his room to find out how it worked during a trip to Australia. He is also famous for tearing apart incompetent underlings. While mayor of Shanghai he rebuked an overweight colleague for attending too many banquets.
This emphasis on results helped secure an important entree to the world of China's revolutionary-era elders, a once all-powerful group headed by Deng Xiaoping until his death last year.
Mr Zhu's political views are a study in ambiguity. As Shanghai's boss in 1989, he went on television after clashes in Beijing to promise that troops would not be used in his own city.
Instead, he mobilized worker militias to clear the streets. Commenting on the bloodshed in the capital, he said the "truth will become apparent in the end". The formulation calmed protesters without alienating Beijing, which could interpret it as support.
A wariness of politics is reinforced by personal trauma. He is the only senior Chinese leader to have been branded a "right-winger" in a purge of intellectuals launched by Mao Zedong in the late 1950s.
In between purges he worked mostly at the state planning commission, a background that has instilled a faith in strong central control at odds with his image among his many foreign fans as a radical free-marketeer.
His economic medicine - a mix of administrative fiat, relentless supervision and free market stimulus - has yielded results, as well as many terrified subordinates. Already in effective control of the economy for the past five years, Mr Zhu is widely credited with engineering China's "soft-landing" after a burst of frenzied growth.
But his austerity drive infuriated provincial leaders. "He has put a lot of noses out of joint. A lot of people don't like him," said Lawrence Brahm, head of a Beijing-based venture capital company Naga. "He moves against the trend."
His meteoric rise contrasts with the usual pattern of advancement. He has no solid political power base of his own. But this weakness is also an asset: he poses no threat to the man on whose support he depends, Jiang Zemin, the president and party boss.
Should he falter, however, there will be many enemies ready to attack him and few friends to protect him.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service.