The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

46. Wen’s power lies in the State Council’s premier responsibility
system that allows the premier to exercise dominant authority
in economic management and state administration.
47. The purge of Chen Liangyu, Politburo member and Shanghai’s
Party secretary, was an exceptional case, but this happened
after Hu’s consolidation. Hu also took great care not to implicate
other Party leaders of Shanghai origin.
48. Beijing’s taxi drivers are famous for bad-mouthing senior
officials, so their attitudes can be evaluated as a true indicator of
popularity of the leader. Each time I take a taxi in Beijing, I ask
their opinions about state leaders and their policies. I also ask my
friends to talk to the taxi drivers for this purpose. Hu commands
a high level of respect among them, in contrast to their relatively
low regard to Jiang whose pretentious style makes him unpopular.
49. Jin Renqing, China’s former finance minister, was summoned
by Hu and Wen a number of times in 2006 to discuss how
state expenditure should be prioritized. Under the new ideological
guidance Hu and Wen reset the rules of appropriation: leaning
toward the poor; the western regions; and the peasants. Specifically,
700 billion Yuan, the bulk of the increased central revenue in
2006, would be mostly spent on creating a safety net for the rural
and urban poor. Tuition fees for 150 million rural children will be
spared. Medical care will be enlarged from covering 50 percent of
peasants in 2005 to 80 percent in 2008. Each farmer receives an annual
50 Yuan insurance plan (individual contribution of 10 Yuan;
40 Yuan from local and central governments) for hospital visits.
Jin’s interview with Wu Xiaoli, Phoenix TV, March 3, 2007.
50. For more comments on this point, see You Ji, “Leadership
by ‘Lines’: China’s Unresolved Succession,” Problems of Communism,
Vol. 39, January 1990, pp. 28-44.
51. See Hu Jintao’s speech on RMA to the enlarged Politburo
meeting on May 24, 2003, The PLA Daily, May 25, 2003.
52. Ni Eryan (妮尔砚), “解放军伙食有新标准” (“The PLA has
New Food Standards”), 大公报 (Takung pao), July 1, 2009.
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