Chinese Premier Signals Need to Share the Wealth
By Edward Cody
BEIJING, March 5 -- Premier Wen Jiabao, opening
China's annual legislative session, promised Friday
to make sure more citizens share in their country's
meteoric economic growth, particularly farmers and
migrant workers left behind by the boom.
Wen, delivering China's equivalent of the State of
the Union address, emphasized the social-welfare
concerns that have been his and President Hu
Jintao's hallmarks since they assumed power a year
ago. Making China's economy grow was not enough, he
told nearly 3,000 deputies in the National People's
Congress, saying that its fruits must be more
equitably distributed through policies based on
"putting people first."
Wen's remarks, in the cavernous Great Hall of the
People on Tiananmen Square, suggested again that
China's leaders have concluded the often raw,
get-rich atmosphere of recent years needs to be
softened, lest the discontent of millions of rural
poor and laid-off state workers turn to hostility or
even unrest. The concern, at the apex of the
nominally communist State Council, or government,
underlined how far China had moved from its
egalitarian underpinnings in more than two decades
of market-oriented economic reforms.
"Rural incomes have grown too slowly, the task of
increasing employment and improving social security
is arduous, development in different regions of the
country is not balanced, the income gap is too wide
among some members of society and pressure on
resources and the environment is mounting," he
declared.
Deputies broke into applause when he outlined
measures to reduce farmers' taxes over the next five
years until, he promised, "agricultural taxes will
be rescinded." The government estimates two-thirds
of the country's 1.3 billion people still live in
the countryside.
The National People's Congress has traditionally
done little more than approve and make laws of
measures decided by the ruling Communist Party. This
year's session, scheduled to last through March 14,
is likely to enshrine in legislation recent party
decisions to guarantee private property and human
rights. But the body, elected at the local level
from among party-approved candidates, also serves as
a sounding board for the leadership and a conduit
for the concerns of China's vast and varied
population spread over 3.7 million square miles.
In some ways, the message of compassion handed
down by Wen was a statement of the obvious. Under
the proud new skylines of Beijing, Shanghai and
other prosperous cities live millions of rural
migrants who, with no work opportunities at home,
cadge low-paying jobs on construction sites or in
restaurant kitchens. Unscrupulous or bankrupt
employers have often been caught refusing to pay
members of this floating population, particularly
contractors who argue that they themselves are not
being paid for construction underway.
But Wen, 61, has hit the rich-and-poor theme
repeatedly as head of government. In a speech last
month, he urged officials to put into practice what
he called a "scientific concept of development" that
would balance economic growth with social progress,
urban boom with rural well-being.
In a now-famous visit to central China in October,
he heard a complaint from a 42-year-old country
woman named Xiong Deming about $270 in unpaid
construction wages due her husband and made sure the
couple got the money. Xiong, hailed for her
chutzpah, was named to an economic people of the
year list in December and awarded a public service
prize by the main government television network.
"Measures must be taken to ensure that rural
workers in cities are paid on time and in full," Wen
said Friday. "We must pay very close attention to
solving the problem of their wages being docked or
not paid on time. The State Council has decided to
basically solve the problems of default on
construction costs and wage arrears for migrant
rural workers in the construction industry within
three years."
The premier said his government also planned to
let some steam out of China's heated economy to
dampen the demand for energy, raw materials and
transport. The target growth rate for this year is 7
percent, he said, down from 2003's torrid 9.1
percent.
One tactic, he said, would be the issuance of $3.7
billion fewer construction treasury bonds than last
year. The government used the bonds to stimulate the
economy during what Wen described as "a period of
insufficient demand" that clearly had ended.
Moreover, the bonds issued "will be directed toward
rural areas, social undertakings" and other
categories not yet benefiting from China's new
wealth, Wen said.