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Wen Jiabao re-elected China’s Premier

— Photo: Xinhua

another term: Chinese President Hu Jintao (right) with Wen Jiabao after Mr. Wen’s re-election in Beijing on Sunday.

Beijing: Wen Jiabao was appointed by the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s Parliament, to another five-year term as Premier on Sunday.

Mr. Wen (65) is the nation’s top economic official and has been at the forefront of efforts to rein in spiralling inflation among a host of fiscal and economic challenges.

The Premier will face a tough job in the ensuing months as inflation climbed to a nearly 12-year high of 8.7 per cent in February, driven by a 23.3 per cent jump in food prices, according to government data. While Mr. Wen has pledged to try and keep inflation down to a manageable 4.8 per cent this year, economists have widely predicted that the target will be near impossible to achieve. Beijing has issued directives imposing price controls on food, petrol and other consumer basics while simultaneously trying to boost the production of pork and grain to ease food shortages. Thus far, however, inflation continues to rise, creating worries for a leadership that is aware of the impact high prices can have on social stability.

Other thorny issues that Mr. Wen will continue to tackle include overinvestment, excess liquidity, an imbalanced trade structure and too high a dependence on exports and investment. Balancing the needs of economic growth against a deteriorating environment is another challenge that has been high on the Premier’s agenda in the past, but has met with only limited success so far.

Mr. Wen’s re-election came on a day when Beijing remained preoccupied with the unrest in Tibet. The Chinese government has given protesters a Monday evening deadline to surrender in exchange for leniency with the alternative of facing “harsh punishment.”

The timing of the Tibet protests this week has been particularly difficult for the leadership given that they took place during the two-week annual session of Parliament. The NPC session is scheduled to come to a close on Tuesday.

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