Prime Minister Zhurongji

Zhu Rongji has a reputation as "a man that likes to get things done"
By Duncan Hewitt

Laughter may not be a phenomenon readily associated with Chinese leaders, but Zhu Rongji has proved himself adept at charming international audiences with his blunt, often self-deprecating style.
At the World Bank/IMF conference in Hong Kong he had business and economic leaders eating out of his hand. "Please don’t come too quickly" he warned as he welcomed them to open banks in China. "If you come too quickly and if you can’t make any money because of that, please don’t complain to me."

One of the reasons foreign investors like Zhu Rongji is that he has a reputation for getting things done. "He personally follows up on all his policies and directives," said Anne Yang, who as head of the US China Business Council in Beijing, has observed him in action.
"He uses a meritocracy, he puts in place people who are capable and also respond. And also he’s willing to fire people, which is pretty unusual in China. And so people do respond when Zhu Rongji wants something."

Zhu Rongji’s determination may stem from his experiences as a victim of Maoist political purges in the 1950s and 1960s. Early promise saw him given a job in the state planning commission fresh from university, where he studied electrical engineering. His pragmatic and forthright approach brought him two separate spells of re-education in the countryside.

In the 1980s, Zhu Rongji bounced back, rising rapidly through a string of economic posts. In 1989, China’s year of political unrest, he had become mayor of Shanghai. As popular protests that year spread from Beijing to Shanghai, Zhu Rongji’s record as an opponent of corruption helped him retain significant public sympathy, despite the execution of several protesters who derailed and burnt a train.

His public pledge not to call in the army to disperse demonstrations was widely felt to have defused a major crisis in the city. Soon, with his former Shanghai boss Jiang Zemin, now party leader, Zhu Rongji became deputy prime minister. According to Professor Song Guoqing of Beijing University, his success in taming runaway inflation while maintaining economic growth proved his qualifications for the top job.

"In China, especially in the reform process, different people have different opinions. So there needs to be someone who has a hard character, who can do things quickly. Before becoming prime minister Mr Zhu showed he was a man who could get things done. As PM he faces a whole new set of challenges.

At a time when China needs to create jobs to absorb millions of unemployed, the economy is up against an increasingly saturated consumer market, with falling spending and prices. The challenge for Zhu Rongji is to achieve the same success in tackling a flagging economy as he demonstrated in cooling the overheating of the early 1990s.

Zhu Rongji’s supporters say e has no political ambitions beyond his five-year term, and will therefore be willing to take tough decisions like last year’s plan to slash China’s bloated bureaucracy. Yet if he is to succeed, and maintain social and economic stability, Mr Zhu will need a full repertoire of political skills as well as a deep reserve of political will

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