Visit takes political flavor
Chinese premier says democracy is goal

Farah Stockman

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a packed audience at Harvard Business School yesterday that democracy is China's ultimate goal and that the country's recent economic success was a product of reform and "respect for the freedom of the Chinese people to pursue happiness."

"There is no question that to develop a democracy is the objective of our endeavor," he said in response to a query from the audience. But the Communist Party official added that China would build a "socialist democracy," and that doing so would require a better education system and would take many years.

In the Boston area on the final stop of his three-city US tour, Wen also visited a Middleton dairy farm and a Massport shipping terminal, and had lunch with business and political leaders at the Seaport Hotel in Boston.

At Harvard, the third-highest official of the world's most populous country did not break new ground in describing his hopes for gradual progress toward full democracy, according to China scholars. But his style, his willingness to engage the audience, and his use of common American themes raised hopes for China's new group of leaders.

"He said nothing that was surprising. It was more the manner," said Roderick MacFarquhar, a political science professor at Harvard. "I think he was well advised on how to address an American audience, especially an American academic audience. . . . I hope it bodes well for better conduct on domestic affairs in China."

Wen peppered his talk with quotes from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson and examples of how ancient China had inspired Western thinkers. He even took questions from raised hands in the audience rather than written questions.

"That told me that he is a confident leader," said Julian Chang, executive director of Asia Programs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "I think it makes me personally encouraged about the new generation of leadership. This shows that they are very cosmopolitan and adept, that they can tailor their message and be aware of world opinion, and how the message plays."

Wen, who spoke in Chinese and had his remarks translated, joked that he was wary of speaking at Harvard because he knew the questions there would be difficult. He spoke about how he had taken inspiration from students this year during the outbreak of the SARS epidemic and how China planned massive economic growth that would make it a "medium-developed country" by 2049.

He also said he and President Bush had agreed in their meeting Tuesday on ways to handle the $140 billion US trade deficit with China, a sore point for US businessmen and US-China relations. Wen said he hoped to increase the flow of US goods to China -- including cotton, wheat, and soybeans -- and proposed setting up a high-level team to resolve the trade imbalance.

Noticeably absent from his speech, however, was the tension with Taiwan, where President Chen Shui-bian has announced a referendum asking its citizens if they want China to renounce the use of force and remove missiles it has pointed toward Taiwan.

The referendum dispute handed a political victory to Wen during his American visit: Bush said publicly for the first time that the United States opposes any steps by Taiwan to change the status quo and move toward independence. The United States has pledged to protect Taiwan from China in a confrontation, but also needs China to help manage the crisis with a belligerent North Korea. Bush has warned Chen against the referendum, but the Taiwanese leader, who is running for reelection, said yesterday the vote would go forward.

During yesterday's speech, Wen talked with pride of China's 5,000-year-old civilization and an economy that he said had grown 9 percent annually in recent years. But he also acknowledged that Communist China had "made a few detours and missed some opportunities" and that the country suffers from vast inequalities between urban and rural people.

"China's development is blessed with a rare period of strategic opportunities and if we don't grasp it, it will slip away," he said. "We can rely on no one except ourselves to resolve the problems facing our 1.3 billion people."

Wen, a 61-year-old geologist by training whose adroit management skills helped him climb to the top of the Communist Party hierarchy, was given a standing ovation before he spoke. The largely Chinese audience waved flags and laughed loudly at his jokes and stories, which were translated to English-speakers through headsets.

Wen said China was working hard to improve its record on human rights, and declared, "I'm not suggesting that China's human rights situation in impeccable."

That remark might have been a reference to a cloud over Wen's visit to Harvard: the arrest and detention of Yang Jianli, a Brookline resident and Kennedy School alumnus who was arrested in 2002 after traveling to China on someone else's passport to observe the labor unrest. More than 100 Harvard faculty members signed a letter asking for his release. His wife, Christina Fu, a Harvard employee, said she did not attend the speech yesterday because she did not win a ticket in the lottery used to determine who could attend. Security regulations prohibited lottery-winners from giving away their tickets, according to Fu and a professor with Harvard's Asia Center.

Outside, about 60 protesters from the Taiwanese and Tibetan communities peppered the road with signs and banners, including "China out of Tibet" and "Bring Dictator Jiang to Justice." A dozen practitioners of Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual movement, wore bright yellow shirts, but inside the 800-seat auditorium, none could be seen.

Meghan Howard, a Harvard senior and president of Students for a Free Tibet, managed to sneak in a Tibetan flag and sit near the front. When Wen talked about how much he loved his people, she stood and unfurled it, yelling: "We will never stop fighting. Free Tibet!"

As she was escorted out, Wen didn't miss a beat.

"Please allow me to continue my speech," he said. "Ladies and gentlemen, I will not be disrupted because I am deeply convinced that the 300 million Americans do have friendly feelings towards the Chinese people and I'm deeply convinced that the US-Chinese relations will not only serve the interests of these two countries, but the stability of the whole world."

Globe correspondent Brendan McCarthy contributed to this report. Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman @ globe.com.

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Source: "Boston Globe".