China's 'boss' being promoted to premier

Zhu Rongji will be named China's premier at the National People's Congress this month

From Correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon

BEIJING (CNN) --- Having reduced inflation, Zhu Rongji is being promoted to China's premier and he has a new mission: fixing the country's ailing state-run enterprises.

Known as the "the boss," Zhu is being promoted this month at the National People's Congress from vice premier to premier, replacing the more conservative Li Peng.

His promotion stems from his work reducing China's inflation. Four years ago, inflation was running at 20 percent until Zhu stepped in.

He fired the head of China's Central Bank and traveled around the country, cracking down on wasteful government spending and firing incompetent officials.

CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon reports 2 min, 9 sec. VXtreme video

Inflation is now running at less than 1 percent.

As premier, his biggest challenge will be to overhaul China's money-losing state-run enterprises.

Last month, he toured China to see for himself what could be done. He concluded that China's economic success depends on finding new jobs for the growing ranks of unemployed.

To do that, Zhu wants to make the Chinese economy more flexible. He plans to streamline the state bureaucracy and overhaul the banking the system.

"These are very difficult programs which will face a lot of resistance from below and from other conservative leaders," said Wen Tang of the University of Pittsburgh.

Another challenge Zhu faces is to keep China's economy growing while most of Asia is slumped in financial crisis.

Zhu's status as an economic reformer is well known. But his views on political reform are not. He says he wants to give the Chinese people more economic freedom. But the question is: Does he believe in the other kind of freedom, too?

 

Newsmaker profiles:

• Li Peng - Chinese Premier
• Jiang Zemin - Chinese President

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Related sites:

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• China.Com
  • 9th National People's Congress
• China News Services
• ChinaScape - Chinese Web Index
• The complete reference to China/Chinese Related Web Sites
• Welcome-To-China.com
• Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C.
• Inside China Today

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