China’s Li Delivers A Polished Future
China’s Vice-Premier Li Keqiang cuts the polished, poised figure of the world leader he is about to become. Tipped to succeed Wen Jiabao as prime minister when China’s leadership changes generations in 2012, China’s headliner in Davos delivered a flawless summary of China’s five year plan to deliver sustainable long-term growth–maintain steady and fast GDP growth, encourage domestic demand, modernize strategic industries, particularly green tech ones, continue with economic reform, minimize the income gap, develop urbanism across China, create jobs and spread the social safety net. Down to the white shirt, red tie and well-cut suit, he could have been a western chief executive doing a roadshow.
To round it off, there was a five-point action plan for China’s growing global citizenship: continue to cooperate over recovery from the global financial crisis; fight protectionism and conclude the Doha round of trade talks; pursue balanced development, both North/South and South/South; jointly tackle the global issues of climate change, energy and food security, public health, and natural disasters; and improve the structure of global governance to reform financial regulation, international financial institutions and increase the involvement of developing nations. And all done with only the gentlest jibes against the developed countries. "We came to see the future," said one (Western) participant.
What wasn’t to like in such a perfect world?
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"What wasn't to like in such a perfect world?" Your vailed Sarcsm!
Davos is a forum that expects speeches of substance. In their various ways, Sarkozy, Leuthard, Lee Myung-bak and Clinton all did that.
\nVice premier Li has had little global exposure. He needs to prepare himself for greater challenge internationally when taking over from premier Wen. Just reading out speeches smoothly does not promote him to world leader status automatically overnight.\n\nTo call the shot at the global stage, China requires top leaders with a completely new world-view and bold mindset. Disappointingly, there are very few at the moment.\n(vzc43)\n
I look forward to the words becoming action plans. China is moving up the platform and it is nice to know that they understand that China has to act responsibly in all global matters. Instead of pre-judging China, we should take a step back and see what come out of it. Every country has its own priority in dealing with issues. I would say let's give it the opportunity to showcase rather than bashing it.
Li's speech was a public performance, delivered in the main conference hall and one of the top plenary session addresses of the meeting, so I think it fair to judge it in those terms. Certainly from what I hear from those who met Li in private meetings he was both impressive and more forthcoming about the challenges that China's leadership faces.
There is a dichotomy in that though China and its economy is big in terms of raw numbers, it still sees itself as a poor, developing country when those GDP numbers are looked at in per capita terms. By that measure, as Li pointed out in this speech, China doesn't even rank among the 100 largest countries. So it is stepping onto the global stage cautiously, but stepping out it certainly is. The balance of economic power is shifting eastwards and with it global power. That is not necessarily a zero-sum game. Colleagues in the Chinese press pointed out today that the Western press had ignored what they saw as a key passage in Li's speech where he said that China's fast economic growth had boosted global growth and that Beijing was committed to continuing this "win-win".
China has much more talent and ambition than the West can begin to know. This man is one reflection of that. There are many others. China has and will continue to amaze and will lead this century. America meanwhile, is going to spend it in the wilderness. And will have to live with second billing and if Americans do not get their politics back in shape in a way that actually respects its intended democracy, it might in the second half, not even be on the billing at all.