China’s political leadership is largely unknown to outsiders and still a mystery to most Chinese. There is a generational change taking place at a time of exceptional economic growth. The interview given by Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, to The Times today, before his forthcoming visit to Britain, Germany and Finland, offers an insight into what disturbs those at the top of the Communist Party. And it highlights the Chinese fondness for calculated opacity — his five guiding axioms reflect a love of history and enigma. “To ordain conscience for Heaven and Earth” is a most lofty ambition.
Mr Wen is regarded as a talented technocrat, a bold economic reformer and a political operator. He is also, by the standards of his colleagues, candid. He admits openly that endemic corruption is now a pressing problem that is not merely a threat to China’s economic development but is the cause of enormous popular resentment, especially in areas where people have been forcibly resettled to allow land to be exploited where they lived. While this is common knowledge in Beijing, others would not have con-ceded this failing frankly to foreigners.
Mr Wen should indeed be very concerned about official corruption. He and others have launched numerous crackdowns and made high-profile arrests, and there have been executions for misbehaviour. Yet the acceptance of bribes is becoming more, not less, common. China is close to a point where it is more rational for a bureaucrat to be corrupt than not — on the “safety in numbers” principle.
The temptations for those awarding permits and licences are enormous. This is doubly so in relation to construction projects. Half of all the new buildings erected on the planet this year will be in China. The competition for the best sites is intense and it has become commonplace for money and lavish gifts to be traded for a favourable outcome. The luxury car sector is thus enjoying a spectacular boom in tandem with the building industry.
Mr Wen and his comrades would help their own cause if they saw independent media as allies, not rivals. An assertive press would have, and in some cases has already shown, every incentive to investigate and to reveal abuse of office. It could break the cycle in which those who accept bribes pay others who should be supervising them not to bother with an investigation. The press can be pesky but it has a valuable social purpose.
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Yet, at the moment, the party command is nervous of any criticism that the media might make and is inclined to restrict press freedom further. This will prove counterproductive. China’s stunning growth rates are not a given and it is not clear that the country has a credible plan to develop what is its most important resource: its people.
An insightful press is vital to that process, irrespective of the broader argument about whether China can be a first-rate economic power without democratic institutions. Mr Wen wants, rightly, to stop “the bad guys from running wild”. But corruption is more likely to be exposed if the press can report without fear or favour.