What did Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao do for China? - BBC News BBC News What did Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao do for China? By Kerry Brown Professor of Chinese politics, University of Sydney 14 March 2013 Close share panel Image caption Tackling inequality proved a tough task for Mr Hu (L) and Mr Wen A decade ago, immediately after Hu Jintao had been appointed Communist Party leader, he went down to a village in Hebei. Making such a place the destination for one of his earliest "investigative inspections" was interpreted as an attempt to reconnect with the party grassroots, and to demonstrate that the new leadership were earnest in wanting to do something about inequality. Inequality was seen as being something that had been rising over the previous decade as the country emerged even further from its state-led economic model of the past and was getting close to unsustainable levels. In 2013, when we look back at the Hu and Wen period, we can see that this aspiration was bold, and no doubt well-meant, but China is as unequal a place now as it was then.

The best that can be said for Mr Hu and his premier, Wen Jiabao, is that in their final three years in power, the country stabilised inequality even if it didn't reign it in. But the grand talk at one party meeting in 2005 of moving towards addressing broader development objectives as opposed to narrowly economic ones looks misplaced now. Growth first As Mr Hu retires from public life in China, this failure to do much about such a critical area raises the more general question of what, in the end, his achievement really was. Image caption The leadership appeared united as former high-flier Bo Xilai fell from grace Answering this is not easy. The things that he did were the results of painstaking political work and administrative patience. This crucial but unexciting stuff usually fails to excite anyone, even historians. In the long term therefore we may well view the Hu and Wen period as a great success. It made China a truly wealthy and significant country, saw off the threats of the economic crisis in 2008, and managed to build up national esteem and importance. The political elite remained unified enough to see through a tricky leadership change, despite needing to sacrifice one of their members - Bo Xilai.

Mr Hu was able to create consensus over this period and to maintain the Party's privileged place in society. Mr Hu and Mr Wen were also able to maintain growth over this period in ways which were indisputable and visible. China is now four times larger as an economy than it was in 2002. It has risen on almost every major indicator. It is an economic superpower, whatever its geopolitical status. Those who travel through China today see a country almost awash with activity, from infrastructure to housing, to rising car usage, to the emergence of a middle class in the main cities as consumption-driven as anywhere else on the planet. Consensus builder Image caption Mr Hu (3rd left) may find his legacy lies in the hands of his successors Mr Hu and Mr Wen also presided over an era of crises which they were able to manage and contain. They dealt with the snow storms of early 2008, the impact of the collapse of exports in 2009, the uprisings in Tibet and Xinjiang in 2008 and 2009 respectively, and the scandal around the fall of Bo Xilai and his wife in 2012.

Through all this, Mr Hu was the great consensus builder, almost pathologically tedious in his public statements, but someone amorphous enough in their public persona to never side too obviously with any group in the party against another so that it risked causing schism. Mr Wen performed the function of faithful implementer, the reassuringly human face of the modern Chinese elite, holding the banner of reform up towards the end in ways which granted hope, even though they lacked practical details. But in terms of a single historically significant event in this period, something like entry to the World Trade Organization in 2001 under the previous leaders, the Hu and Wen period is oddly sparse. The Beijing Olympics was important at the time - but securing it was the achievement of Jiang Zemin. There were no mould-breaking moves in terms of domestic reform, no rolling out of village elections to a higher level in government, no bold changes in terms of rule of law, nor of the military or the government system. Plenty of smaller changes, consistent with a cautious leadership, but nothing that stands out as a genuinely historic legacy.

The great contradiction of the Hu and Wen period is that, at a time of immense dynamism and change within China socially, economically, and technologically, the politicians proved themselves eerily faceless and, more often than not, absent. China was changing, whether they were there or not. Missed opportunity? Perhaps the single achievement that Mr Hu really expended personal political capital on was the dramatic improvement in relations with Taiwan on the re-election of the Nationalist Party there from 2008. Image caption It was Jiang Zemin, not Mr Hu or Mr Wen, that secured the Olympics for China The symbolic importance of signing of a major quasi-free trade deal in the form of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement in 2009 was immense, despite the lack of tangible results in terms of cross-strait trade. In leading however to direct air, postal and tourist links, this agreement and Mr Hu's leadership have done more to normalise the relationship than previous leaders. It is here that Mr Hu personally has some claim to historic leadership. Paradoxically, Mr Hu, who often came across as a highly controlled and a controlling political personality, may find that his legacy lies in the hands of his immediate successors.

If they are able to address the long menu of internal reforms in the areas of law, politics, administration and civil society, which he and Mr Wen seemed so reluctant to hit head on, then the Hu-Wen strategy of growth first, political and social change second, will have been proved the correct one. But if the ensuing decade proves unstable and leads to party division, then the Hu-Wen period will be judged a missed opportunity. For the next few years, the court will be out. But the judgment might come through quicker than Mr Hu, Mr Wen or anyone else might imagine. The Revenge of Wen Jiabao | Foreign Policy The Revenge of Wen Jiabao The ouster of Chongqing boss Bo Xilai was 30 years in the making -- a long, sordid tale of elite families and factions vying for the soul of the Chinese Communist Party. By John Garnaut <p> John Garnaut is China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. He is writing a book on the princelings shaping China's future.

</p> <p> Photo: Hu Yaobang (white coat), with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to the right, during a February 1986 inspection tour to Guizhou. </p> March 29, 2012 If Premier Wen Jiabao is "China’s best actor," as his critics allege , he saved his finest performance for last. After three hours of eloquent and emotional answers in his final news conference at the National People’s Congress annual meeting this month, Wen uttered his public political masterstroke, reopening debate on one of the most tumultuous events in the Chinese Communist Party’s history and hammering the final nail in the coffin of his great rival, the now-deposed Chongqing Communist Party boss Bo Xilai. And in striking down Bo, Wen got his revenge on a family that had opposed him and his mentor countless times in the past. Responding to a gently phrased question about Chongqing, Wen foreshadowed Bo’s political execution , a seismic leadership rupture announced the following day that continues to convulse China’s political landscape to an extent not seen since 1989. But the addendum that followed might be even more significant.

Indirectly, but unmistakably, Wen defined Bo as man who wanted to repudiate China’s decades-long effort to reform its economy, open to the world, and allow its citizens to experience modernity. He framed the struggle over Bo’s legacy as a choice between urgent political reforms and "such historical tragedies as the Cultural Revolution," culminating a 30-year battle for two radically different versions of China, of which Bo Xilai and Wen Jiabao are the ideological heirs . In Wen’s world, bringing down Bo is the first step in a battle between China’s Maoist past and a more democratic future as personified by his beloved mentor, 1980s Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang. His words blew open the facade of party unity that had held since the massacres of Tiananmen Square. This October, the Communist Party will likely execute a once-in-a-decade leadership transition in which President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen hand over to a new team led by current Vice President Xi Jinping. The majority of leaders will retire from the elite Politburo Standing Committee, and the turnover will extend down through lower tiers of the Communist Party, the government, and the military.

Wen hopes his words influence who gets key posts, what ideological course they will set, and how history records his own career. Wen Jiabao and Bo Xilai have long stood out from their colleagues for their striking capacities to communicate and project their individual personalities and ideologies beyond the otherwise monochromatic party machine. The two most popular members of the Politburo, they are also the most polarizing within China’s political elite. They have much in common, including a belief that the Communist Party consensus that has prevailed for three decades — "opening and reform" coupled with uncompromising political control — is crumbling under the weight of inequality, corruption, and mistrust. But the backgrounds, personalities, and political prescriptions of these two crusaders could not be more different. Bo has deployed his prodigious charisma and political skills to attack the status quo in favor of a more powerful role for the state. He displayed an extraordinary capacity to mobilize political and financial resources during his four and a half year tenure as the head of the Yangtze River megalopolis of Chongqing.

He transfixed the nation by smashing the city’s mafia — together with uncooperative officials, lawyers, and entrepreneurs — and rebuilding a state-centered city economy while shamelessly draping himself in the symbolism of Mao Zedong. He sent out a wave of revolutionary nostalgia that led to Mao quotes sent as text messages, government workers corralled to sing "red songs," and old patriotic programming overwhelming Chongqing TV. From his leftist or "statist" perch, Bo has been challenging the "opening and reform" side of the political consensus that Deng Xiaoping secured three decades ago. Wen Jiabao, meanwhile, who plays the role of a learned, emphatic, and upright Confucian prime minister, has been challenging the other half of Deng consensus — absolute political control — from the liberal right. He has continuously articulated the need to limit government power through rule of law, justice, and democratization. To do this, he has drawn on the symbolic legacies of the purged reformist leaders he served in the 1980s, particularly Hu Yaobang, whose name he recently helped to "rehabilitate" in official discourse.

As every Communist Party leader knows, those who want a stake in the country’s future must first fight for control of its past. Until last month Bo appeared to hold the cards, with his networks of princelings — the children of high cadres — and the gravitational force of his "Chongqing Model" pulling the nation toward him, while Wen’s efforts had produced few practical results. Bo earned his reputation as a rising star until Feb. 6 when his police chief and right-hand man, Wang Lijun, drove to an appointment at the local British consulate to shake his official minders and then veered off and fled for his life down the highway into the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu. He carried with him allegations of sordid tales of Bo family criminal behavior including in relation to the death of British businessman Neil Heywood, according to Western government officials. In Beijing’s eyes, this was the highest-level known attempted defection in 40 years, and it occurred on Bo’s watch. Wang "betrayed the country and went over to the enemy," said President Hu Jintao, according to a Chinese intelligence official.

Wen, the son of a lowly teacher, saw his family constantly criticized and attacked during the Cultural Revolution, and rose to power by impressing a series of revolutionary veterans. Bo, in contrast, was born to rule. The son of revolutionary leader Bo Yibo, he studied at the nation’s most prestigious middle school, Beijing No. 4. Bo had not yet turned 17 when a rift between the princeling children and those with "bad class backgrounds" erupted into class warfare. In June 1966, in the early months of the Cultural Revolution, one of Bo’s school mates invented the rhyming ditty that became the anthem for the princelings that led the early Red Guard movement: "The father’s a hero, the son’s a brave lad; the father’s a reactionary, the son’s a bastard." The student red guards at Beijing No. 4 turned an old eating hall into a gruesome incarceration chamber for the teachers and other reactionaries they captured. They painted the popular slogan "Long live the red terror" on the wall, in human blood.

Within months, however, Mao directed his Cultural Revolution toward his comrades-in-arms and unleashed a coterie of lesser-born red guards against the old "royalist" ones. Bo Xilai spent six years in a prison cell. His father, Bo Yibo, was tortured. Red Guards abducted Bo’s mother in Guangzhou and murdered her, or she committed suicide; if any records exist, they remain sealed. Since former leader Deng Xiaoping’s 1981 "Resolution on History," the Cultural Resolution has officially been a "catastrophe," but the Communist Party never explained what happened. It was left as little more than a name, signifying bad but unknown things. By raising the specter of the Cultural Revolution, Wen Jiabao has opened a crack in the vault of Communist Party history: that great black box that conceals the struggles, brutality, partial truths and outright fabrications upon which China has built its economic and social transformation. Beneath his carefully layered comments is a profound challenge to the uncompromising manner in which the Chinese Communist Party has always gone about its business.

And to grasp what the Cultural Revolution means to Wen Jiabao requires taking a journey through the life of his mentor, the 1980s reformist leader Hu Yaobang who ran the Communist Party in its most vibrant era. Hu Yaobang was struck down from his job at the helm of the Communist Youth League on Aug. 13, 1966, five days before Chairman Mao presided over the first mass rally of the Cultural Revolution. Detained for six weeks, Red Guards beat and abused him and forced him to stand for hours with a huge wooden placard hanging from his neck and his arms wrenched behind his back. Six weeks later, as they retired for their national holidays, they called Hu’s eighteen year-old son Hu Dehua to pick him up. "I cried when I saw his appearance," Hu Dehua told me. "He told me ‘don’t be such a good-for-nothing, let’s go home, it doesn’t matter.’" Hu Yaobang was already back at work when Mao died, in 1976, and the Communist Party united behind the idea of moving on from the Cultural Revolution but lacked any further road map.

Appointed head of the powerful Organization Department, Hu led a crusade to "seek truths from facts" — for ideology to yield to reality — and to rehabilitate fallen comrades. Deng, who by 1980 had secured his position as paramount leader, elevated Hu to general secretary of the Communist Party. By the early 1980s the Communist Party was rapidly retreating from everyday social life. As the economy grew, Chinese people began to enjoy a degree of personal freedoms, but the essential norms of internal party politics remained unchanged. At crucial junctures there were no enforceable rules, no independent arbiters, only power. In 1985, while most elders had been appointing each other or each other’s children to important positions, Hu Yaobang recruited Wen Jiabao, the teacher’s son, to run his Central Office — a position akin to cabinet secretary. The following year Hu Yaobang’s elder son, Hu Deping, spoke in terms uncannily similar to Wen Jiabao’s of two weeks ago. "The Cultural Revolution was a tragedy," he said to the then propaganda minister, at a time when his father was at the height of his power.

"It will not appear again in the same form, but a cultural revolution once or even twice removed cannot be ruled out from once again recurring." Perhaps he had an inkling of what was coming. By 1986 the tensions between an increasingly market-oriented economy and more liberal social environment began to clash with Communist Party elders’ demand for absolute political control. Hu Yaobang tried to limit corruption among the elders’ children, studiously ignored conservative ideological campaigns, and tolerated student protests. By the end of that year the elders had had enough. Then, as during the Cultural Revolution, and as remains the case today, no rules governed Hu Yaobang’s downfall; just a group of backstage power brokers who judged that he had gone too far. In January 1987, 21 years after his purging in the Cultural Revolution, party elders subjected Hu to a torrid five-day criticism and humiliation session called a "Democratic Party Life meeting." The harshest of Hu’s critics was Bo Xilai’s father.

Hu Dehua, the youngest son, lives at home with his wife in the same large but rundown courtyard home, just west of Beijing’s closed-off leadership district Zhongnanhai, where he has lived nearly all of his life. His recollections about what the Cultural Revolution meant to his family and his father, Hu Yaobang, informs the story that Wen Jiabao is telling today. Hu Dehua tells how his father was pained, but not surprised, when Communist Party elders used his own political demise to drive an "anti-bourgeois liberalization" campaign across China. Party apparatchiks instructed Hu Dehua to show his ideological opposition to his own father’s political platform, but he refused. "It was the same as 1966. If someone was said to be ‘liberalized’, then everyone would line up to criticize them," Hu Dehua said. "The country was turning back at a time when it should be have been democratizing and transitioning to rule of law." Hu Dehua told his father how pessimistic he felt about his country’s future. Hu Yaobang agreed that the methods and ideologies of the 1987 anti-liberalization movement came straight from the Cultural Revolution.

But he told his son to gain some historical perspective, and reminded him that Chinese people were not joining in the elite power games as they had 20 years before. He called the anti-liberalization campaign a "medium-sized cultural revolution" and warned that a small cultural revolution would no doubt follow, Hu Dehua told me. As society developed, Hu Yaobang told his son, the middle and little cultural revolutions would gradually fade from history’s stage. It is fortunate, perhaps, that Hu Yaobang could not see how his death in April 1989 triggered an outpouring of public grief at Tiananmen Square, as Chinese students held him up his honesty and humanity in contrast to their perception of other leaders of the time. The protests morphed into a mass demonstration for liberalization and democratization and against growing corruption among children of the political elite. Wen Jiabao remained in charge of the Communist Party Central Office, now working for Hu Yaobang’s increasingly reformist successor, Zhao Ziyang. A famous photo shows Wen standing behind Zhao’s shoulder as his boss declared the haunting words "I’ve come too late" to students who refused to leave the square.

Shortly afterward, Deng and the party elders ordered in the tanks, triggering another Cultural Revolution-style convulsion and adding a new bloody file to the Communist Party’s vault of history. Bo Yibo moved to have Wen purged, according to a source whose father was a minister at the time, but other elders were impressed with how Wen shifted his loyalty from Zhao (who spent the rest of his life under house arrest) and supported martial law. Wen played by the rules of a ruthless system, his family — especially his wife and son — leveraged his official status for their own business interests, while his career progression resumed. Hu Yaobang was largely airbrushed from official history after his purge in 1987. But because he did not publicly challenge the Communist Party, he maintained his legacy and his supporters, including all of the current and likely future party chiefs and premiers: Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping, and Li Keqiang. All four regularly visit the Hu family home during Spring Festival. But only Wen Jiabao has publicly honored his mentor’s legacy.

Two years ago, on the 21st anniversary of Hu Yaobang’s death, Wen penned an essay in the People’s Daily that was remarkable in a nation whose leaders rarely give any public hint of their personal lives. "What he taught me in those years is engraved on my heart," wrote Wen. Of the four top leaders who regularly pay homage to Hu Yaobang’s old home, Wen Jiabao has the warmest connection with Hu Yaobang’s widow and four children. Hu taught his children to resist the idea, wired into the Communist Party psyche, that they had any particular hereditary right to high office. Nevertheless the eldest son, Hu Deping, rose to vice minister rank in the United Front Department. And last year he used his princeling heritage and networks to organize and say things that would have banished lesser-born men to jail. He published a book about his father, with a forward written by Wen. He organized a series of closed-door seminars for leading intellectuals and other princeling children of reformist leaders to try and build a consensus for reform.

The first and most low-key seminar, in July, ignited what became a raging public debate about Bo Xilai’s "Chongqing Model" versus its possible antidote, the more liberal " Guangdong Model ." The second, in August, celebrated the 35th anniversary of the arrest of Mao’s radical "Gang of Four," which slammed the door shut on the Cultural Revolution just weeks after Mao’s death in August 1976. The third, in September , explored the 30th anniversary of the 1981 Resolution on History, which had confirmed the Cultural Revolution as a catastrophe that must never occur again. It was at the September gathering that Hu Deping set down the themes that Wen later referred to in his press conference, and published his comments on a website dedicated to chronicling the life and times of his father: "The bottom line is making sure to adopt the attitude of criticizing and fundamentally denouncing the Cultural Revolution … In recent years, for whatever reason, there seems to be a ‘revival’ of something like advocating the Cultural Revolution. Some people cherish it; some do not believe in the Cultural Revolution but nevertheless exploit it and play it up.

I think we must guard this bottom line!" The subtext, only barely concealed, was that Bo Xilai must be stopped from dragging Communist Party back toward its most radical, lawless past. How, one could be forgiven for asking, could Bo grasp for power by praising a movement that killed his own mother? Hu Deping honed in on the need to forge mechanisms to institutionalize the power games between party leaders. He told his princeling and intellectual friends in the seminar audience that the remnants of feudal aristocracy — old fashioned despotic power — might again emerge as the party had said it had during the Cultural Revolution. He foreshadowed the ructions that are now taking place: "If we really want to carry out democratization of inner-party political life, the cost is going to be enormous. Do we have the courage to accept that cost? If we do it now, there is a cost certainly. Do we dare to bear the cost? Is now the right time? I cannot say for sure. However, I think it might create some ‘chaos’ in some localities, some temporary ‘chaos’, and some localized ‘chaos’.

We should be prepared." Hu Deping has been stepping forward, with some reluctance, to draw on his father’s legacy to help shape China’s future. He is a member of the standing committee of one of China’s two representative-style bodies and mixes with senior leaders. He discussed the Cultural Revolution with both President Hu Jintao and his expected successor, Xi Jinping, not long before Wen Jiabao’s news conference and Bo Xilai’s demise, according to a source familiar with those conversations. China’s politically engaged population is watching the battle now under way within the Politburo to frame the downfall of Bo Xilai and set the lessons that will shape China’s future. "So far we cannot identify whether Wen Jiabao is representing himself or representing a group," says a recently retired minister-level official, who had confidently predicted Bo’s sacking to me 10 days before it happened. "Maybe it’s 80 percent himself and 20 percent the group. We still have to watch." It remains far from clear whether the Communist Party’s webs of patronage and knots of financial and bureaucratic interests can be reformed.

But with China’s leftist movement decapitated by the purge of Bo Xilai, and Bo’s critics now talking about his reign of "red terror" after daily revelations of political and physical brutality under his command, Wen has begun to win over some of his many detractors. "In the past I did not have a fully positive view of Wen Jiabao, because he said a lot of things but didn’t deliver," says a leading media figure with lifelong connections to China’s leadership circle. "Now I realize just to be able to say it, that’s important. To speak up, let the whole world know that he could not achieve anything because he was strangled by the system." Hu Yaobang’s most faithful protégé, who carried his funeral casket to its final resting place, is building on the groundwork laid by Hu and his children ostensibly to prevent a return of the Cultural Revolution. Wen Jiabao is defending the party line set by Deng Xiaoping’s 1981 historical resolution against attack from the left. Between the lines, however, he is challenging the Communist Party’s 30-year consensus from the liberal right.

Hu Dehua, the youngest son, spelled out the gulf between these positions in a rare Chinese media interview one month ago: "The difference between my father and Deng is this: Deng wanted to save the party; my father wanted to save the people, the ordinary people." Wen Jiabao sees Bo’s downfall as a pivotal opportunity to pin his reformist colors high while the Communist Party is too divided to rein him in. He is reaching out to the Chinese public because the party is losing its monopoly on truth and internal roads to reform have long been blocked. Ironically, he is doing so by leading the public purging of a victim who has no hope of transparent justice, because the party to which he has devoted his life has never known any other way. Share + Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's Mixed Legacy - YouTube Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's Mixed Legacy Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Feb 27, 2013 Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao will officially step down in March. They've been in power for a decade, and their legacy has been left open to interpretation. Economic growth pushed China to be the world's number two economy. But that's come at the expense of rampant corruption, environmental damage and growing social tension. [Yu Jie, Chinese Writer, Taiwan]: "For every percentage of growth, we may have to pay 10 percent of the cost or even more to make it right in the future. For example, we may have to spend 10 times or much more in the future to reverse environmental degradation caused by destructive development. And we will have to pay heavy prices for corruption, deepening disparity between the rich and poor, and wide-spread demoralization caused by the antagonism and hatred between ordinary people and the privileged." China's human rights and rule of law saw a turn for the worse over the past decade. When Hu Jintao inherited power from his predecessor Jiang Zemin, he inherited a persecution campaign against an estimated 70 to 100 million people.

The brutal crackdown of the Falun Gong spiritual practice continued under Hu and Wen. Claims that detained adherents were being killed for their organs also surfaced during their term. In one of his final public speeches in 2012, Wen Jiabao appeared regretful over some of what happened over the past decade. [Wen Jiabao, Outgoing Chinese Premier]: "I bear responsibility for the problems that have arisen in the economy and society during my term." During the upcoming Congressional meeting set to begin on March 5, Hu Jintao will hand over the presidency role to newly-anointed Communist Party chief Xi Jinping. Wen's successor has not been made public, but is widely expected to be current Vice Premier Li Keqiang. For more news and videos visit ☛ Follow us on Twitter ☛ Add us on Facebook ☛ Category Wen Jiabao Meets with Kyrgyz President Atambayev Wen Jiabao Meets with Kyrgyz President Atambayev 2012-12-04 On December 4, 2012, visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev in Bishkek.

Wen conveyed to Atambayev the greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping. The diplomatic ties between China and Kyrgyzstan in the past 20 years have demonstrated that the bilateral relationship is built on mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, accords with the fundamental interests of both countries and enjoys a promising future, Wen said. "China appreciates and supports Kyrgyzstan's firm stand on safeguarding national security and stability and its efforts in developing the economy and improving people's living standards," he added. The two nations should make concerted efforts to maintain high-level contact and tackle common challenges, Wen said, adding that they should beef up cooperation in law enforcement and security and crack down on the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism. He also proposed that the two sides advance cooperation in such areas as economy, trade and transportation and enhance coordination under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. For his part, Atambayev asked Wen to convey his greetings for Hu and Xi, and noted that China's long-standing selfless assistance and strong support have promoted Kyrgyzstan's economic and social development.

Kyrgyzstan regards China as a sincere friend and friendly neighbor, he said, adding that his country attaches great importance to developing its ties with China and is willing to work with China to make bilateral exchanges and cooperation more fruitful. The president also expressed his confidence that the two countries' relations will rise to higher levels. Suggest To A Friend Family of Wen Jiabao Holds a Hidden Fortune in China - The New York Times The New York Times Global Business |Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader Search Continue reading the main story BEIJING — The mother of China ’s prime minister was a schoolteacher in northern China. His father was ordered to tend pigs in one of Mao’s political campaigns. And during childhood, “my family was extremely poor,” the prime minister, Wen Jiabao , said in a speech last year. But now 90, the prime minister’s mother, Yang Zhiyun, not only left poverty behind, she became outright rich, at least on paper, according to corporate and regulatory records. Just one investment in her name, in a large Chinese financial services company, had a value of $120 million five years ago, the records show. The details of how Ms.

Yang, a widow, accumulated such wealth are not known, or even if she was aware of the holdings in her name. But it happened after her son was elevated to China’s ruling elite, first in 1998 as vice prime minister and then five years later as prime minister. Many relatives of Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership, an investigation by The New York Times shows. A review of corporate and regulatory records indicates that the prime minister’s relatives — some of whom, including his wife, have a knack for aggressive deal making — have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion. Continue reading the main story In many cases, the names of the relatives have been hidden behind layers of partnerships and investment vehicles involving friends, work colleagues and business partners. Untangling their financial holdings provides an unusually detailed look at how politically connected people have profited from being at the intersection of government and business as state influence and private wealth converge in China’s fast-growing economy.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Unlike most new businesses in China, the family’s ventures sometimes received financial backing from state-owned companies, including China Mobile, one of the country’s biggest phone operators, the documents show. At other times, the ventures won support from some of Asia’s richest tycoons. The Times found that Mr. Wen’s relatives accumulated shares in banks, jewelers, tourist resorts, telecommunications companies and infrastructure projects, sometimes by using offshore entities. The holdings include a villa development project in Beijing; a tire factory in northern China; a company that helped build some of Beijing’s Olympic stadiums, including the well-known “Bird’s Nest”; and Ping An Insurance, one of the world’s biggest financial services companies. As prime minister in an economy that remains heavily state-driven, Mr. Wen, who is best known for his simple ways and common touch, more importantly has broad authority over the major industries where his relatives have made their fortunes. Chinese companies cannot list their shares on a stock exchange without approval from agencies overseen by Mr. Wen, for example. He also has the power to influence investments in strategic sectors like energy and telecommunications.

Because the Chinese government rarely makes its deliberations public, it is not known what role — if any — Mr. Wen, who is 70, has played in most policy or regulatory decisions. But in some cases, his relatives have sought to profit from opportunities made possible by those decisions. The prime minister’s younger brother, for example, has a company that was awarded more than $30 million in government contracts and subsidies to handle wastewater treatment and medical waste disposal for some of China’s biggest cities, according to estimates based on government records. The contracts were announced after Mr. Wen ordered tougher regulations on medical waste disposal in 2003 after the SARS outbreak. In 2004, after the State Council, a government body Mr. Wen presides over, exempted Ping An Insurance and other companies from rules that limited their scope, Ping An went on to raise $1.8 billion in an initial public offering of stock. Partnerships controlled by Mr. Wen’s relatives — along with their friends and colleagues — made a fortune by investing in the company before the public offering.

In 2007, the last year the stock holdings were disclosed in public documents, those partnerships held as much as $2.2 billion worth of Ping An stock, according to an accounting of the investments by The Times that was verified by outside auditors. Ping An’s overall market value is now nearly $60 billion. Ping An said in a statement that the company did “not know the background of the entities behind our shareholders.” The statement said, “Ping An has no means to know the intentions behind shareholders when they buy and sell our shares.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story While Communist Party regulations call for top officials to disclose their wealth and that of their immediate family members, no law or regulation prohibits relatives of even the most senior officials from becoming deal-makers or major investors — a loophole that effectively allows them to trade on their family name. Some Chinese argue that permitting the families of Communist Party leaders to profit from the country’s long economic boom has been important to ensuring elite support for market-oriented reforms. Even so, the business dealings of Mr. Wen’s relatives have sometimes been hidden in ways that suggest the relatives are eager to avoid public scrutiny, the records filed with Chinese regulatory authorities show.

Their ownership stakes are often veiled by an intricate web of holdings as many as five steps removed from the operating companies, according to the review. In the case of Mr. Wen’s mother, The Times calculated her stake in Ping An — valued at $120 million in 2007 — by examining public records and government-issued identity cards, and by following the ownership trail to three Chinese investment entities. The name recorded on his mother’s shares was Taihong, a holding company registered in Tianjin, the prime minister’s hometown. The apparent efforts to conceal the wealth reflect the highly charged politics surrounding the country’s ruling elite, many of whom are also enormously wealthy but reluctant to draw attention to their riches. When Bloomberg News reported in June that the extended family of Vice President Xi Jinping, set to become China’s next president, had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the Chinese government blocked access inside the country to the Bloomberg Web site. “In the senior leadership, there’s no family that doesn’t have these problems,” said a former government colleague of Wen Jiabao who has known him for more than 20 years and who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“His enemies are intentionally trying to smear him by letting this leak out.” The Times presented its findings to the Chinese government for comment. The Foreign Ministry declined to respond to questions about the investments, the prime minister or his relatives. Members of Mr. Wen’s family also declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Duan Weihong, a wealthy businesswoman whose company, Taihong, was the investment vehicle for the Ping An shares held by the prime minister’s mother and other relatives, said the investments were actually her own. Ms. Duan, who comes from the prime minister’s hometown and is a close friend of his wife, said ownership of the shares was listed in the names of Mr. Wen’s relatives in an effort to conceal the size of Ms. Duan’s own holdings. “When I invested in Ping An I didn’t want to be written about,” Ms. Duan said, “so I had my relatives find some other people to hold these shares for me.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story But it was an “accident,” she said, that her company chose the relatives of the prime minister as the listed shareholders — a process that required registering their official ID numbers and obtaining their signatures.

Until presented with the names of the investors by The Times, she said, she had no idea that they had selected the relatives of Wen Jiabao. The review of the corporate and regulatory records, which covers 1992 to 2012, found no holdings in Mr. Wen’s name. And it was not possible to determine from the documents whether he recused himself from any decisions that might have affected his relatives’ holdings, or whether they received preferential treatment on investments. For much of his tenure, Wen Jiabao has been at the center of rumors and conjecture about efforts by his relatives to profit from his position. Yet until the review by The Times, there has been no detailed accounting of the family’s riches. His wife, Zhang Beili, is one of the country’s leading authorities on jewelry and gemstones and is an accomplished businesswoman in her own right. By managing state diamond companies that were later privatized, The Times found, she helped her relatives parlay their minority stakes into a billion-dollar portfolio of insurance, technology and real estate ventures.

The couple’s only son sold a technology company he started to the family of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, for $10 million, and used another investment vehicle to establish New Horizon Capital, now one of China’s biggest private equity firms, with partners like the government of Singapore, according to records and interviews with bankers. The prime minister’s younger brother, Wen Jiahong, controls $200 million in assets, including wastewater treatment plants and recycling businesses, the records show. As prime minister, Mr. Wen has staked out a position as a populist and a reformer, someone whom the state-run media has nicknamed “the People’s Premier” and “Grandpa Wen” because of his frequent outings to meet ordinary people, especially in moments of crisis like natural disasters. While it is unclear how much the prime minister knows about his family’s wealth, State Department documents released by the WikiLeaks organization in 2010 included a cable that suggested Mr. Wen was aware of his relatives’ business dealings and unhappy about them.

Advertisement “Wen is disgusted with his family’s activities, but is either unable or unwilling to curtail them,” a Chinese-born executive working at an American company in Shanghai told American diplomats, according to the 2007 cable. China’s ‘Diamond Queen’ It is no secret in China’s elite circles that the prime minister’s wife, Zhang Beili, is rich, and that she has helped control the nation’s jewelry and gem trade. But her lucrative diamond businesses became an off-the-charts success only as her husband moved into the country’s top leadership ranks, the review of corporate and regulatory records by The Times found. A geologist with an expertise in gemstones, Ms. Zhang is largely unknown among ordinary Chinese. She rarely travels with the prime minister or appears with him, and there are few official photographs of the couple together. And while people who have worked with her say she has a taste for jade and fine diamonds, they say she usually dresses modestly, does not exude glamour and prefers to wield influence behind the scenes, much like the relatives of other senior leaders. The State Department documents released by WikiLeaks included a suggestion that Mr. Wen had once considered divorcing Ms.

Zhang because she had exploited their relationship in her diamond trades. Taiwanese television reported in 2007 that Ms. Zhang had bought a pair of jade earrings worth about $275,000 at a Beijing trade show, though the source — a Taiwanese trader — later backed off the claim and Chinese government censors moved swiftly to block coverage of the subject in China, according to news reports at the time. “Her business activities are known to everyone in the leadership,” said one banker who worked with relatives of Wen Jiabao. The banker said it was not unusual for her office to call upon businesspeople. “And if you get that call, how can you say no?” Zhang Beili first gained influence in the 1990s, while working as a regulator at the Ministry of Geology. At the time, China’s jewelry market was still in its infancy. While her husband was serving in China’s main leadership compound, known as Zhongnanhai, Ms. Zhang was setting industry standards in the jewelry and gem trade. She helped create the National Gemstone Testing Center in Beijing, and the Shanghai Diamond Exchange, two of the industry’s most powerful institutions.

In a country where the state has long dominated the marketplace, jewelry regulators often decided which companies could set up diamond-processing factories, and which would gain entry to the retail jewelry market. State regulators even formulated rules that required diamond sellers to buy certificates of authenticity for any diamond sold in China, from the government-run testing center in Beijing, which Ms. Zhang managed. Advertisement Continue reading the main story As a result, when executives from Cartier or De Beers visited China with hopes of selling diamonds and jewelry here, they often went to visit Ms. Zhang, who became known as China’s “diamond queen.” “She’s the most important person there,” said Gaetano Cavalieri, president of the World Jewelry Confederation in Switzerland. “She was bridging relations between partners — Chinese and foreign partners.” As early as 1992, people who worked with Ms. Zhang said, she had begun to blur the line between government official and businesswoman. As head of the state-owned China Mineral and Gem Corporation, she began investing the state company’s money in start-ups. And by the time her husband was named vice premier, in 1998, she was busy setting up business ventures with friends and relatives.

The state company she ran invested in a group of affiliated diamond companies, according to public records. Many of them were run by Ms. Zhang’s relatives — or colleagues who had worked with her at the National Gemstone Testing Center. In 1993, for instance, the state company Ms. Zhang ran helped found Beijing Diamond, a big jewelry retailer. A year later, one of her younger brothers, Zhang Jianming, and two of her government colleagues personally acquired 80 percent of the company, according to shareholder registers. Beijing Diamond invested in Shenzhen Diamond, which was controlled by her brother-in-law, Wen Jiahong, the prime minister’s younger brother. Among the successful undertakings was Sino-Diamond, a venture financed by the state-owned China Mineral and Gem Corporation, which she headed. The company had business ties with a state-owned company managed by another brother, Zhang Jiankun, who worked as an official in Jiaxing, Ms. Zhang’s hometown, in Zhejiang Province. In the summer of 1999, after securing agreements to import diamonds from Russia and South Africa, Sino-Diamond went public, raising $50 million on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The offering netted Ms. Zhang’s family about $8 million, according to corporate filings. Although she was never listed as a shareholder, former colleagues and business partners say Ms. Zhang’s early diamond partnerships were the nucleus of a larger portfolio of companies she would later help her family and colleagues gain a stake in. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The Times found no indication that Wen Jiabao used his political clout to influence the diamond companies his relatives invested in. But former business partners said that the family’s success in diamonds, and beyond, was often bolstered with financial backing from wealthy businessmen who sought to curry favor with the prime minister’s family. “After Wen became prime minister, his wife sold off some of her diamond investments and moved into new things,” said a Chinese executive who did business with the family. He asked not to be named because of fear of government retaliation. Corporate records show that beginning in the late 1990s, a series of rich businessmen took turns buying up large stakes in the diamond companies, often from relatives of Mr. Wen, and then helped them reinvest in other lucrative ventures, like real estate and finance.

According to corporate records and interviews, the businessmen often supplied accountants and office space to investment partnerships partly controlled by the relatives. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up “When they formed companies,” said one businessman who set up a company with members of the Wen family, “Ms. Zhang stayed in the background. That’s how it worked.” The Only Son Late one evening early this year, the prime minister’s only son, Wen Yunsong, was in the cigar lounge at Xiu, an upscale bar and lounge at the Park Hyatt in Beijing. He was having cocktails as Beijing’s nouveau riche gathered around, clutching designer bags and wearing expensive business suits, according to two guests who were present. In China, the children of senior leaders are widely believed to be in a class of their own. Known as “princelings,” they often hold Ivy League degrees, get V.I.P. treatment, and are even offered preferred pricing on shares in hot stock offerings. They are also known as people who can get things done in China’s heavily regulated marketplace, where the state controls access.

And in recent years, few princelings have been as bold as the younger Mr. Wen, who goes by the English name Winston and is about 40 years old. A Times review of Winston Wen’s investments, and interviews with people who have known him for years, show that his deal-making has been extensive and lucrative, even by the standards of his princeling peers. State-run giants like China Mobile have formed start-ups with him. In recent years, Winston Wen has been in talks with Hollywood studios about a financing deal. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Concerned that China does not have an elite boarding school for Chinese students, he recently hired the headmasters of Choate and Hotchkiss in Connecticut to oversee the creation of a $150 million private school now being built in the Beijing suburbs. Winston Wen and his wife, moreover, have stakes in the technology industry and an electric company, as well as an indirect stake in Union Mobile Pay, the government-backed online payment platform — all while living in the prime minister’s residence, in central Beijing, according to corporate records and people familiar with the family’s investments. “He’s not shy about using his influence to get things done,” said one venture capitalist who regularly meets with Winston Wen.

The younger Mr. Wen declined to comment. But in a telephone interview, his wife, Yang Xiaomeng, said her husband had been unfairly criticized for his business dealings. “Everything that has been written about him has been wrong,” she said. “He’s really not doing that much business anymore.” Winston Wen was educated in Beijing and then earned an engineering degree from the Beijing Institute of Technology. He went abroad and earned a master’s degree in engineering materials from the University of Windsor, in Canada, and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., just outside Chicago. When he returned to China in 2000, he helped set up three successful technology companies in five years, according to people familiar with those deals. Two of them were sold to Hong Kong businessmen, one to the family of Li Ka-shing, one of the wealthiest men in Asia. Winston Wen’s earliest venture, an Internet data services provider called Unihub Global, was founded in 2000 with $2 million in start-up capital, according to Hong Kong and Beijing corporate filings.

Financing came from a tight-knit group of relatives and his mother’s former colleagues from government and the diamond trade, as well as an associate of Cheng Yu-tung, patriarch of Hong Kong’s second-wealthiest family. The firm’s earliest customers were state-owned brokerage houses and Ping An, in which the Wen family has held a large financial stake. Advertisement Continue reading the main story He made an even bolder move in 2005, by pushing into private equity when he formed New Horizon Capital with a group of Chinese-born classmates from Northwestern. The firm quickly raised $100 million from investors, including SBI Holdings, a division of the Japanese group SoftBank, and Temasek, the Singapore government investment fund. Video The People’s Premier Wen Jiabao, the outgoing prime minister of China, is state-run media’s favorite populist leader. But a New York Times investigation reveals that he is the head of one of China’s wealthiest families. By David Barboza and Emma Cott on Publish Date October 25, 2012. . Watch in Times Video » embed Under Mr. Wen, New Horizon established itself as a leading private equity firm, investing in biotech, solar, wind and construction equipment makers.

Since it began operations, the firm has returned about $430 million to investors, a fourfold profit, according to SBI Holdings. “Their first fund was dynamite,” said Kathleen Ng, editor of Asia Private Equity Review, an industry publication in Hong Kong. “And that allowed them to raise a lot more money.” Today, New Horizon has more than $2.5 billion under management. Some of Winston Wen’s deal-making, though, has attracted unwanted attention for the prime minister. In 2010, when New Horizon acquired a 9 percent stake in a company called Sihuan Pharmaceuticals just two months before its public offering, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange said the late-stage investment violated its rules and forced the firm to return the stake. Still, New Horizon made a $46.5 million profit on the sale. Soon after, New Horizon announced that Winston Wen had handed over day-to-day operations and taken up a position at the China Satellite Communications Corporation, a state-owned company that has ties to the Chinese space program. He has since been named chairman.

The Tycoons In the late 1990s, Duan Weihong was managing an office building and several other properties in Tianjin, the prime minister’s hometown in northern China, through her property company, Taihong. She was in her 20s and had studied at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Around 2002, Ms. Duan went into business with several relatives of Wen Jiabao, transforming her property company into an investment vehicle of the same name. The company helped make Ms. Duan very wealthy. Advertisement Continue reading the main story It is not known whether Ms. Duan, now 43, is related to the prime minister. In a series of interviews, she first said she did not know any members of the Wen family, but later described herself as a friend of the family and particularly close to Zhang Beili, the prime minister’s wife. As happened to a handful of other Chinese entrepreneurs, Ms. Duan’s fortunes soared as she teamed up with the relatives and their network of friends and colleagues, though she described her relationship with them involving the shares in Ping An as existing on paper only and having no financial component. Ms.

Duan and other wealthy businesspeople — among them, six billionaires from across China — have been instrumental in getting multimillion-dollar ventures off the ground and, at crucial times, helping members of the Wen family set up investment vehicles to profit from them, according to investment bankers who have worked with all parties. Established in Tianjin, Taihong had spectacular returns. In 2002, the company paid about $65 million to acquire a 3 percent stake in Ping An before its initial public offering, according to corporate records and Ms. Duan’s graduate school thesis. Five years later, those shares were worth $3.7 billion The company’s Hong Kong affiliate, Great Ocean, also run by Ms. Duan, later formed a joint venture with the Beijing government and acquired a huge tract of land adjacent to Capital International Airport. Today, the site is home to a sprawling cargo and logistics center. Last year, Great Ocean sold its 53 percent stake in the project to a Singapore company for nearly $400 million. That deal and several other investments, in luxury hotels, Beijing villa developments and the Hong Kong-listed BBMG, one of China’s largest building materials companies, have been instrumental to Ms.

Duan’s accumulation of riches, according to The Times’s review of corporate records. The review also showed that over the past decade there have been nearly three dozen individual shareholders of Taihong, many of whom are either relatives of Wen Jiabao or former colleagues of his wife. The other wealthy entrepreneurs who have worked with the prime minister’s relatives declined to comment for this article. Ms. Duan strongly denied having financial ties to the prime minister or his relatives and said she was only trying to avoid publicity by listing others as owning Ping An shares. “The money I invested in Ping An was completely my own,” said Ms. Duan, who has served as a member of the Ping An board of supervisors. “Everything I did was legal.” Another wealthy partner of the Wen relatives has been Cheng Yu-tung, who controls the Hong Kong conglomerate New World Development and is one of the richest men in Asia, worth about $15 billion, according to Forbes. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In the 1990s, New World was seeking a foothold in mainland China for a sister company that specializes in high-end retail jewelry. The retail chain, Chow Tai Fook, opened its first store in China in 1998. Mr.

Cheng and his associates invested in a diamond venture backed by the relatives of Mr. Wen and co-invested with them in an array of corporate entities, including Sino-Life, National Trust and Ping An, according to records and interviews with some of those involved. Those investments by Mr. Cheng are now worth at least $5 billion, according to the corporate filings. Chow Tai Fook, the jewelry chain, has also flourished. Today, China accounts for 60 percent of the chain’s $4.2 billion in annual revenue. Mr. Cheng, 87, could not be reached for comment. Calls to New World Development were not returned. Fallout for Premier In the winter of 2007, just before he began his second term as prime minister, Wen Jiabao called for new measures to fight corruption, particularly among high-ranking officials. “Leaders at all levels of government should take the lead in the antigraft drive,” he told a gathering of high-level party members in Beijing.

“They should strictly ensure that their family members, friends and close subordinates do not abuse government influence.” The speech was consistent with the prime minister’s earlier drive to toughen disclosure rules for public servants, and to require senior officials to reveal their family assets. Whether Mr. Wen has made such disclosures for his own family is unclear, since the Communist Party does not release such information. Even so, many of the holdings found by The Times would not need to be disclosed under the rules since they are not held in the name of the prime minister’s immediate family — his wife, son and daughter. Eighty percent of the $2.7 billion in assets identified in The Times’s investigation and verified by the outside auditors were held by, among others, the prime minister’s mother, his younger brother, two brothers-in-law, a sister-in-law, daughter-in-law and the parents of his son’s wife, none of whom is subject to party disclosure rules. The total value of the relatives’ stake in Ping An is based on calculations by The Times that were confirmed by the auditors.

The total includes shares held by the relatives that were sold between 2004 and 2006, and the value of the remaining shares in late 2007, the last time the holdings were publicly disclosed. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Legal experts said that determining the precise value of holdings in China could be difficult because there might be undisclosed side agreements about the true beneficiaries. “Complex corporate structures are not necessarily insidious,” said Curtis J. Milhaupt, a Columbia University Law School professor who has studied China’s corporate group structures. “But in a system like China’s, where corporate ownership and political power are closely intertwined, shell companies magnify questions about who owns what and where the money came from.” Among the investors in the Wen family ventures are longtime business associates, former colleagues and college classmates, including Yu Jianming, who attended Northwestern with Winston Wen, and Zhang Yuhong, a longtime colleague of Wen Jiahong, the prime minister’s younger brother. The associates did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Revelations about the Wen family’s wealth could weaken him politically. Next month, at the 18th Party Congress in Beijing, the Communist Party is expected to announce a new generation of leaders.

But the selection process has already been marred by one of the worst political scandals in decades, the downfall of Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party boss, who was vying for a top position. In Beijing, Wen Jiabao is expected to step down as prime minister in March at the end of his second term. Political analysts say that even after leaving office he could remain a strong backstage political force. But documents showing that his relatives amassed a fortune during his tenure could diminish his standing, the analysts said. “This will affect whatever residual power Wen has,” said Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese leadership and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California. The prime minister’s supporters say he has not personally benefited from his extended family’s business dealings, and may not even be knowledgeable about the extent of them. Last March, the prime minister hinted that he was at least aware of the persistent rumors about his relatives. During a nationally televised news conference in Beijing, he insisted that he had “never pursued personal gain” in public office. “I have the courage to face the people and to face history,” he said in an emotional session.

“There are people who will appreciate what I have done, but there are also people who will criticize me. Ultimately, history will have the final say.” A version of this article appears in print on October 26, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Billions Amassed in the Shadows By the Family of China’s Premier. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe What Hu Jintao Leaves Behind | The Diplomat Image Credit: Flicker (ΠΑΣΟΚ) What Hu Jintao Leaves Behind With President Hu set to step down, Elizabeth Economy reviews the dangers and opportunities he leaves for Xi Jinping. By Elizabeth C. Economy for The Diplomat November 10, 2012 Now that the U.S. presidential election has concluded, the world’s attention is turning to China. November 8 marked the opening of the 18th Party Congress, China’s version of a political convention at which all the top Communist Party leaders will be announced.

While we won’t be treated to the sight of hundreds of millions of Chinese turning out at their local schools and senior citizen centers to vote—although the American Embassy in Beijing did host an invitation-only mock U.S. election for Chinese citizens—the suspense is almost as great. True, we already know that Xi Jinping will be the next president and Li Keqiang the next Premier, but we don’t know who will occupy the other five to seven seats within the top-level Standing Committee of the Politburo. For that, we will have to wait. The Communist Party is savvy enough to know that once the leadership lineup is revealed, no one will pay much attention to the rest of the week-long Congress. No matter what Xinhua says, the world is not waiting for an elucidation of the country’s cultural policies. While we sit and wait, I thought it might be interesting to think not only about the future but also a bit about the past—namely what is President Hu Jintao leaving behind for President-elect Xi Jinping. Not surprisingly, Hu’s legacy is mixed, captured best perhaps by the Chinese word weiji—which combines the characters for both danger and opportunity.

Navigating a path forward will require that Xi address at least the following “dangers” and “opportunities.” The Not-So-Great Communicator: One of the most distinguishing features of Hu Jintao’s presidency was his almost complete lack of presence. Hu avoided the press and sent Premier Wen Jiabao to manage any crisis that required a personal touch. (Wen earned the affectionate moniker “Grandpa Wen” because of his responses to the people’s suffering during earthquakes, floods, and health crises.) Even Hu’s political slogans failed to excite: Who in or outside China understands “scientific development” or believes China is a “harmonious society” in the midst of a “peaceful rise.” The bar couldn’t be lower for Xi to assume the mantle of the Great Communicator. Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. Trains, planes, and automobiles: If Hu’s interpersonal skills left something to be desired, he nonetheless presided over one of history’s great economic transformations.

During his tenure, per capita GDP in China jumped from roughly $1200 to $5400; per capita car ownership increased from 15 per 1000 people to around 80 per 1000 people in 2011; China now boasts the largest high speed rail and expressway systems in the world; and the country has transformed from serving as one of the world’s largest recipients of World Bank loans to loaning more money to the rest of the world than anyone else, the World Bank included. On the face of it, Xi Jinping could not have asked for a better legacy…or could he? A Chinese people on the move: The Chinese people can’t vote at the ballot box, but they do vote with their feet. The wealthiest flee the country. During Hu’s tenure, fully 27 percent of Chinese with at least $15 million in assets have emigrated and another 47 percent are considering it. They cite the quality of the educational system, the environment, health care, food safety and protection of assets as the drivers behind their desire to leave.

The poorest Chinese, citing the same exact challenges, take to the streets to protest; and those protests now total more than 180,000 annually. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has officially arrived in China. A mandate for reform: The stasis in political and economic reform achieved during ten years of Hu-Wen rule, would seemingly be a boon to Xi: after all anything he does will be better than the nothing that was. Unfortunately for Xi, the Chinese people already appear to have an idea of what they want. A Global Times survey released just in time for the Party Congress reveals that 80 percent of Chinese advocates political reform; and more than 70 percent says Beijing needs to tackle healthcare, pensions, and social security in the next five years. What do people want most from political reform? According to the survey, they want more power to oversee the government for themselves and for the media. Nothing in Xi’s background suggests that this would be his top reform priority, but unless he wants to preside over more social unrest, more capital flight, and more brain drain, he might want to listen. Backyard bully: One of the great surprises in recent years has been the unraveling of Chinese foreign policy.

After more than a decade of earning kudos for a relatively sophisticated and nuanced approach to the rest of the world, China has become the backyard bully of the Asia-Pacific . It is a problem largely of China’s own making, and includes: serious, occasionally violent, conflicts with the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan; disaffection in Canberra and Singapore; and a new degree of unpredictability in relations with previously stalwart supporters Burma/Myanmar and North Korea. Dialing all this back won’t be easy, particularly in the context of a newly revitalized U.S. presence in the region. Still, some nice words and a renewed willingness to share might get Beijing an invitation to play again. In an interview he gave in 2000, Xi Jinping stated , “When you have just taken over a new job you will also want to set your own agenda in the first year. But it must be on the foundations of your predecessor. It is like a relay race. You have to receive the baton properly and then yourself run it to the goal.” The foundations laid by Hu are somewhat shaky, and we don’t know what Xi will see as his goal.

But it sounds as though we won’t have long to wait before we know what it is and how he plans to get there. Elizabeth C. Economy is C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an expert on Chinese domestic and foreign policy and U.S.-China relations and author of the award-winning book, ' The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future .' She blogs at Asia Unbound , where this piece originally appeared. Topics Wen Jiabao | The Plaid Avenger The Plaid Avenger Official Title: Premier of the People's Republic of China Government: One-Party State Years Left in Office: To 2012 Political Classification: Right Age: 74 (born September 15, 1942) Wen Jiabao Facts and Information Important Points Wen is essentially a very powerful 2nd in command of China Wen has shifted China's domestic policy to deal with more social issues Wen has mostly focused on resource acquisition in his foreign affairs dealings However, Wen increasingly does high-level diplomatic work for China abroad too Know who is Hu, and when to say Wen! The Rundown Wow!

I can’t say enough about the unlimited energies and non-stop political action of Wen Jiabao! This dude may be the 2nd in command in China, but he has the top slot in international kick-ass as far as the Avenger is concerned! Soft-spoken, mild-tempered, and with a killer work ethic that would put Bill Gates to shame, Wen is certainly a mover and shaker on the world stage that you should know. Why? Cuz he’s affecting your world, people! So who is this dude? No! Hu is the President! This is Wen we are talking about here. And Wen wears many hats too: he is in the top tier of the Communist Party ruling council, Wen is the Premier of China, essentially the head of the operational government, and is kind of the top ranking cabinet member of the President too. I think of Wen as one part Commie Party leader, one part Prime Minister, one part Secretary of State, and one part Vice-president. That’s a lot of parts! Just like his boss Hu Jintao, Wen originally studied engineering and made his way up the political chain through intense work ethic and quiet patience.

Just like Hu, Wen spent a lot of his career out in the rural areas of China. And just like Hu, because of all these factors, Wen is seen as much more a ‘man of the people’ who is more in touch with the needs of China’s 1.4 billion citizens. He is fiercely proud of his country, and genuinely cares about the needs of the people. [sniff, sniff] I’m getting all teared up here. Okay, enough of the gushing. A “populist” is what political scientists would call Wen, and he has been dubbed “the people’s premier” by locals and foreigners alike….for his populist approach and commoner image….again, much like Hu Jintao. But I digress…. Domestically, Wen has helped oversee and manage the huge economic growth spurt that China has undergone in the last decade. He has earned a reputation for meticulousness, competence, and a focus on tangible results…and damn if he has not got them results too. China is now the 3rd biggest economy in the world! Growing at a blistering rate! But with big growth has come big problems, and Wen has been ponying up to the responsibility.

In fact, in his role as the primary leader of the domestic governmental issues, Wen has shifted focus from China’s ‘economic growth at all costs’ goal to focusing on more social issues like the growing wealth disparity, rural poverty, public health, drug addiction, public education, environmental destruction, and even openly tackling AIDS as a major (and previously not talked about) problem for the country. As the main public face of China (he is on TV more than his boss), Wen also does a hell of a lot of on-the-ground visits across the country promoting programs and listening to the needs of the peoples. Wen studied catastrophic theory while garnering his college degrees in engineering and geological sciences…which has served him well as the johnny-on-the-scene for the multiple earthquakes, snowstorms, floods and other natural disasters that have befallen China under his watch. And his quick actions and attentive demeanor have made all the difference in keeping public support for the current administration extremely high, even under deadly destructive disasters. (In contrast, compare the public debacle that befell the Bush administration after Hurricane Katrina). Dudes, he even is trying to make the Chinese government more transparent too!

After the SARS scare (which the government tried to cover up) and ongoing health problems due to lack of product regulation (there was a big tainted baby formula scandal), Wen has called for more openness and information sharing from the government. Dudes! That is new! Wen has even gone live on-line to do Q&A session direct with the Chinese public…that is crazy! No other high-ranking official in China, (or hell, even in the US) does stuff like that! He even has one of the most visited and most popular Facebook pages ever too! Wen on the web! Totally tight! This is the beginning of a whole new type of leadership for the one-party state. Let’s hope it lasts. However, it is Wen’s international instigations that interest me most….and is what makes him a world events mover and shaker and shaper. He has spent the last decade in an international blitzkrieg of visits to virtually every part of the globe….mostly with an eye towards resource acquisitions and cutting sweet trade deals. What is resource acquisition? A fancy way of saying ‘buying tons of shit’!

In order for China to continue its phenomenal double-digit economic growth, it needs energy and raw materials to keep the factories working…and Wen has been bringin’ home the bacon, baby! Buying raw resources for cheap, and then setting up sweet trade deals in order to establish markets for all the stuff China is making. Win-win-Wen! And in a very savvy foreign policy move, he has mostly focused on the developing countries (read: poorer). He has been personally responsible for strengthening trade relations with key energy and commodity producers in Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America (which especially irks the US since they have been losing influence south of their border for years). Wen brings good business, good trade, and good aid to lots of places on planet earth that have historically been ignored or abused by the other big powers….and this is setting up China as a very appealing alternative option for countries to partner with. The US and Europe are rightly worried….and they should be. The world is being re-shaped quickly, and Wen is one of the guys responsible for the recasting. So who cannot love Wen?

Well, now that I’ve spouting about how Wen-derful he is, I should tell you that Wen Jiabao does have his limits of niceness too. One dude that Wen cannot stand is the Dalai Lama! Wen has been on the active front of Lama-bashing for years, and truly sees him as a separatist threat to China proper, and works hard to isolate and not negotiate with the Lama or any of the more vocal free-Tibetan campaigners. Why would I point this out? Because Wen also uses his considerable influence and diplomacy to make sure that other world leaders don’t meet with the Lama either…including most recently US President Barack Obama’s decision to not meet with the Lama in October of 2009. Wen got game! So Wen Jiabao is a Chinese cat you definitely need to keep tabs on if you truly want to understand how the world works. His boundless energy is transforming China domestically, and his international diplomatic deeds are reshaping the global order too. Know who is Hu, and when to say Wen! Photos

Question: As at at 2012 Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are/were president and premier of which country?
Answer: China