This past Friday, on the last day of the annual convocation of the National People's Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/tim_johnson/1... target=_blank>fielded questions from Chinese and foreign journalists in a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Broadcast live on state television, Wen's meeting with the 1,200 journalists lasted nearly two hours. The questioners included representatives of AP, the Wall Street Journal, People's Daily, NHK, China Central Television, and Financial Times.
The carefully choreographed event was moving along nicely until the reporter from Le Monde asked the premier about democracy in China. The English edition of Xinhua, which carries only a thumbnail sketch of the event and does not specify either the identities of the questioners or even the questions themselves, quotes the premier's response: "The essence of China's socialist democracy is to let the people be masters of the country and enable them to oversee and criticize the government. . . China will take into account of [sic] its own conditions and build a democracy in its own way."
The Chinese edition of Xinhua, which carries a "full transcript" of Wen's press conference, gives a more detailed account of both the questions and answers. According to the Chinese transcript, the Le Monde reporter asked,
"Recently you published an article in People's Daily. In it you stated that the socialist system and socialist democracy are not mutually exclusive. You also stated that the initial stage of socialism was to last another hundred years. Does that mean that China does not need democracy in the next one hundred years?"
Xinhua's Chinese transcript records a lengthier, albeit still incomplete, reply from the premier. Neither reproduces the second part of the journalist's question, nor Wen's reply to it. The French reporter asked if Wen had read a book recently published in Hong Kong in which the deceased former premier and party chief Zhao Ziyang is quoted as calling for political reforms. To this question, which was translated into Chinese during the live television broadcast of the news conference, Wen gave a terse response: "As for the book you mentioned, I don't think there is any connection between that and what I have talked about because I have not read it."
While in office, Zhao Ziyang had pressed for economic reforms. During the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement, he was sympathetic toward the demonstrators and was opposed to using force against them. After the military crackdown, Zhao was removed from office and placed under house arrest until his death in January 2005.
At the height of the 1989 protest, Wen Jiabao was Zhao's chief of staff and accompanied his boss during a visit with protesting students at Tiananmen Square. Wen is believed to have secured his political ascension only by subsequently distancing himself from Zhao.
Taking a cue from Xinhua, other websites, including the hugely popular Web portal sina.com, deleted all references to Zhao in their reports on Wen's press conference.
Zhao Ziyang at Tiananmen Square, May 19, 1989.
Wen Jiabao is standing behind and to the right.
