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PRC must pursue political reform, Wen
Jiabao says
REUTERS , BEIJING
Monday, Aug 23, 2010, Page 1
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, center, visits
Gansu Province after it was devastated by flood-triggered landslides on Aug. 8.
PHOTO: AFP
China has to pursue political reform to safeguard its economic health, Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao (·Å®aÄ_) said during a visit to the booming town of Shenzhen,
Xinhua news agency reported.
Wen¡¦s call for political reform lacked specifics, but his comments reflect
broader worries that unless the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) embraces at least
limited reforms to make officials more answerable, then corruption and abuses
may erode the country¡¦s economic prospects.
¡§Without the safeguarding of political restructuring, China may lose what it has
already achieved through economic restructuring and the targets of its
modernization drive might not be reached,¡¨ Wen was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
¡§People¡¦s democratic rights and legitimate rights must be guaranteed. People
should be mobilized and organized to deal with, in accordance with the law,
state, economic, social and cultural affairs.¡¨
Wen said he also wants to ¡§create conditions¡¨ to allow the people to criticize
and supervise the government as a way to address ¡§the problem of
over-concentration of power with ineffective supervision.¡¨
Wen has developed a reputation as the member of CCP leadership most sympathetic
to relaxing some of the country¡¦s top-down controls.
Wen will retire as premier in early 2013. He has used recent speeches and
comments to indicate that he wants to spend his final years in office focused on
improving social welfare, promoting more balanced and equitable economic growth,
and addressing public discontent with the government.
In Shenzhen, a small village that has exploded into a city of 14 million people
in the last three decades, Wen said the Shenzhen story showed that reforming and
opening up to the outside world ¡§is the only road to achieving national
prosperity and the people¡¦s happiness.¡¨
¡§Regression and stagnation will not only end the achievements of the
three-decade-old reform, the opening-up drive and the rare opportunity of
development, but also suffocate the vitality of China¡¦s socialist cause with her
own characteristics,¡¨ the premier said.
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