Zhu Rongji, new Premier of the State Council of China, is recognized as an economic planner because of his achievements of successful macro-economic control in the past three years.

Zhu, 68, was born in Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province. He joined the Party in October 1949. After graduation from the prestigious Qinghua University where he majored in electrical engineering, he served as deputy head of the production planning office of the Northeast China Ministry of Industries. He then worked in the State Planning Commission and the State Economic Commission for years, where he was acknowledged as an official who "knows economics."

In 1987, Zhu was appointed mayor of Shanghai, China's largest industrial and financial city. His three-year term as Shanghai mayor saw tremendous changes in the development and opening-up of Pudong, and in telecommunications, urban construction and communications. For these he won confidence inside and outside the Party and acclaim from the common people.

In 1991, Zhu was appointed vice-premier of the State Council and director of the State Council Production Office. Zhu Rongji has focused his attention on tackling tough economic problems in industry, agriculture and finance. Here is his profile in detail from China Daily (Zhu's photo from China Daily).

Zhu's reform plan (UPI; 03/19/98)

BEIJING, March 19 (UPI) China's premier has vowed to maintain stable economic growth for the next three years amid the background of sweeping government reforms.

In his first news conference as premier, Zhu Rongji detailed a bold plan for trimming the bureaucracy and revitalizing education by the turn of the century.

The eight-point effort calls for a moderate economic growth rate of 8 percent, while keeping inflation below 3 percent and ensuring the stability of the national currency.

At the same time, Zhu said he will overhaul five sectors of the economy, including agriculture, banking and the tax system.

Although the plan is scheduled to take three years, Zhu said he will lay the groundwork during a top-down reshuffle to be completed by the end of 1998.

Zhu aims to begin with an overhaul of the nation's bloated bureaucracy and a 50 percent cut in the number of government workers.

His lean Cabinet has already reduced the number of ministries from 40 to just 29.

The central level reshuffle is expected to filter down to local-level governments, which have been given three years to reorganize.

Zhu's team will then "determine the size, posts and number of new government institutions and redirect people to their new jobs."

Some 4 million bureaucrats will be made redundant in the process.

After the government is put in line, Zhu plans to turn his attention to the economy and money-losing state-owned enterprises.

Zhu said, "Large and medium-sized enterprises will be lifted out of their current difficult situation and we will establish modern enterprise systems in these companies."

By the end of the three-year shake-up, Zhu hopes to post a significant budget surplus, which will be diverted into education and scientific research.

Although he admits the plan is ambitious, Zhu said he is determined to push through the reforms and "revitalize" China regardless of any "land mines" that may lie ahead.
Copyright 1998 by United Press International.

Zhu plays to the gallery (Reuters; 03/19/98)

By Scott Hillis BEIJING, March 19 (Reuters) - China's new Premier Zhu Rongji, famous for a glum face and short temper, charmed the international media on Thursday by poking fun at himself and coolly responding to every question.

"I am rather ugly," dead-panned Zhu at his first news conference as premier.

As his audience burst into giggles, the contrast with the stiff, humourless performances of his predecessor Li Peng was obvious to all.

Li would answer only four questions at the traditional news conference on the final day of the National People's Congress. Questions and answers were prepared in advance.

Zhu not only ad-libbed for 75 minutes on live national television, he played to the gallery.

Spotting the attractive Taiwanese anchor for a cable television channel partly owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, Zhu told the assembled media: "I really enjoy watching her show."

"Mr Zhu, I just want to tell you that you are my idol too," gushed the Phoenix channel anchor, Wu Xiaoli.

A Time magazine reporter set the tone for the news conference by asking when Chinese presidents and premiers would be democratically elected. Zhu was rubber-stamped as premier by parliament on Tuesday, and President Jiang Zemin was given a fresh five-year mandate by the docile body.

Unfazed, Zhu kicked off his answer with a joke.

"Yesterday, I saw the cover of the latest issue of Time magazine. It carried my picture," he said.

"A few days ago, Newsweek also had my photograph on its cover, but the Time photo really seemed a bit better-looking than that one," Zhu said.

"But I can't really blame Newsweek because in fact I am rather ugly."

Then he began a discourse on democracy.

"Of course I'm in favour of democracy," he said, praising village-level elections introduced in China and noting that elections took place for Chinese factory leaders.

But he said any vote for the presidency would require legal changes.

"Procedures for democratic elections differ between China and foreign countries, and between East and West," he concluded.

"I found Premier Zhu refreshingly lively and confident," said a Chinese television journalist when asked to compare Zhu with Li.

Dressed in a navy blue suit set off by a silvery tie, Zhu, 69, was obviously most at home expounding on China's economy.

He directed questions on foreign affairs to Vice-Premier and outgoing Foreign Minister Qian Qichen.

Zhu even managed a quip about human rights, despite delivering a hard-line defence of the brutal army crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

He had been asked whether he would like to visit Hong Kong, and how he would handle demonstrators.

"I would love to go there again. But since I have been elected premier, I have lost some of my freedoms and my human rights have been restricted," Zhu laughed, patting Vice-Premier Li Lanqing on the back as if sharing an inside joke.

But Zhu clammed up when asked about his experiences in the 1950s as a victim of the late Chairman Mao Zedong's "anti-rightist" campaign.

"I learned deeply from it. It was not a happy experience. I do not want to talk about it," Zhu said.

And he took umbrage at nicknames pinned on him by the Western media. He is known to hate the label "China's Gorbachev" -- understandably so since the former Soviet leader is despised in Beijing for his perceived betrayal of Communism.

"Whether you call me 'Gorbachev' or whether you call me an 'economic tsar', I don't like it," he said.

Zhu's Cabinet (Reuters; 03/18/98)

By Andrew Browne BEIJING, March 18 (Reuters) - In a victory for reformist Premier Zhu Rongji, China's parliament on Wednesday endorsed a new- look cabinet packed with technocrats who back his drive to remake a crumbling socialist economy as a 21st century powerhouse.

The most sweeping government reshuffle and streamlining of the Communist era put key economic portfolios in the hands of experienced managers in the mould of Zhu, who was elected premier on Tuesday.

Among the 29 cabinet ministers were 22 newcomers, most relatively youthful and well-educated.

The line-up reflects the government's overriding concern with building a new industrial and financial system to ride out the Asian economic crisis and engineer China's emergence as an economic superpower.

New ministers were all endorsed unopposed by the National People's Congress. The selection had been decided weeks in advance by the Communist Party elite.

Parliament had earlier endorsed Zhu's plan for radical government downsizing. A total of 15 ministry-level bodies were axed and four new ones created, reducing the total number to 29 from 40.

Political analysts said they expected no major change in China's foreign and defence policies.

Tang Jiaxuan, a 60-year-old career diplomat and Japan expert, was chosen as the new foreign minister.

But his predecessor, Qian Qichen, 69, chief architect of rapprochement with the United States after almost a decade of seesawing ties since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, was likely to keep a grip on foreign policy by retaining his powerful position as vice-premier.

On the military front, defence minister Chi Haotian, 68, was retained.

They described the elections by and large as a triumph for Zhu, 69, in his efforts to seize control of economic policy and attack the twin problems of bad debt among banks, and bad results at loss-making state enterprises.

"All these people have been following Zhu Rongji in controlling the macro economy," said Zhong Xueyi, a professor of economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a parliamentary delegate.

"This shows a continuation of economic policy. They are technocrats," he said.

By some accounting standards, commercial banks saddled with up to $200 billion in non-performing loans are insolvent. Around one third of China's 300,000 state enterprises lose money.

The new cabinet will have to deal with the prospect of social turmoil brought on by growing unemployment.

Some four million civil servants are to lose their jobs as part of efforts to remove communist bureaucrats from day-to-day running of enterprises. By the end of this year, 11.5 million state workers may be looking for new jobs.

Leading the cast of Zhu's followers was central bank governor Dai Xianglong, 54, who was reelected to what will become an even more important job.

The People's Bank of China is to be remodelled along the lines of the U.S. Federal Reserve to give it greater controls.

Zhu and Dai together tamed galloping inflation that hit a communist-era high of almost 22 percent in 1994. Inflation was brought down to one percent without stalling economic growth.

New finance minister Xiang Huaicheng, 59, is the outgoing tax commissioner. He helped boost state tax revenues and overhaul the dusty tax bureaucracy, and has years of previous experience in the ministry.

"Xiang has been very effective as a tax commissioner -- which is probably the reason he's been elevated to this job," said Paul Gillis, a senior partner with the accountancy giant Price Waterhouse in Beijing.

"He has been adamant about bringing China's tax policies into line with international practice. He's been receptive to new ideas," Gillis said.

Wang Zhongyu, 65, one of Zhu's closest associates, was elected secretary- general of the State Council, or cabinet, replacing Luo Gan, 62.

"This is good news for Zhu Rongji. It is going to be a crucial post for carrying out structural reform and they seem to have worked fine together in the past," said one Western diplomat.

"There are not so many worries now about analysing whether a particular minister is pro-reform or conservative," said Mitchell Presnick, China director of APCO, a Washington consulting firm.

"That wasn't the case five years ago, when there was always the outside danger that the whole economic direction could be altered significantly."