Wen Jiabao

Premier of the People’s Republic of China
Incumbent

Assumed office 16 March 2003
President Hu Jintao

Deputy Li Keqiang
Hui Liangyu
Zhang Dejiang
Wang Qishan

Preceded by Zhu Rongji

Born 15 September 1942 (age 67) Tianjin, China

Political party Communist Party

Spouse(s) Zhang Peili

Children Wen YunsongWen Ruchun

Residence Beijing

Alma mater Beijing Institute of Geology

Profession Geologist
Wen Jiabao Wade-Giles: Wen Chia-pao; born 15 September 1942) is the current Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, serving as the country’s head of government and leading its cabinet. He also holds membership in the 16th and 17th Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, the country’s de facto top power organ, where he is ranked third out of nine members.
Wen is a geologist and engineer by profession and holds a postgraduate degree from the Beijing Institute of Geology, where he graduated in 1968. He was subsequently sent to Gansu province for geological work, and remained in China’s hinterland regions during his climb up the bureaucratic ladder. He was transferred to Beijing to work as the head of the Party General Office between 1986 and 1993, and accompanied General Secretary Zhao Ziyang to the Tiananmen Square during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. In 1998, he was promoted to the post of Vice Premier under Zhu Rongji, his mentor, holding the portfolios of agriculture and finance.
Since taking office as Premier of the People’s Republic of China in 2003, Wen has been a key part of the fourth generation of leadership in the Communist Party of China, along with General Secretary Hu Jintao. Soft-spoken and known for his strong work ethic, Wen has been one of the most visible members of the current Chinese administration, and has been dubbed “the people’s premier” by both domestic and foreign media[1]. His populist approach to policy and his commoner image with the public separates him from the rest of China’s power elite.

Early life and rise to power

A native of Beichen, Tianjin, Wen Jiabao went to the famous Nankai High School from which his predecessor premier Zhou Enlai graduated. According to his official biography, he joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in April 1965 and entered the work force in September 1967.
A postgraduate and engineer, Wen graduated in the major of geological structure at Beijing Institute of Geology. Having studied geomechanics in Beijing, he began his career in the geology bureau of Gansu province; from 1968-1978, he presided over the Geomechanics Survey Team under the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau and head of its political section. Rising as chief of the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau and later as Vice-minister of Geology and Mineral Resources, Wen would rise through the ranks of the Central Committee and Politburo in the 1980s and 1990s. Wen’s move from Gansu to Beijing occurred while the party, then under the leadership of General Secretary Hu Yaobang, was conducting a talent search; Wen was quickly appointed to serve as the deputy in the Party General Office, an organ that oversaw day-to-day operations of the party’s leaders. He remained in the post for eight years.
Wen Jiabao is the only Director of the Party’s General Office to have served under three General Secretaries: Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Jiang Zemin[2]. A political survivor, his most significant recovery was after 1989, when Wen accompanied General Secretary Zhao Ziyang to see demonstrating students in Tiananmen Square. His political fate was markedly more fortunate than Zhao; Zhao was purged from the party days later for “grave insubordination” and lived under house arrest in Beijing until his death in January 2005. Wen was able to survive the political aftermath of the demonstrations.
During a political career dating back to 1965, Wen has built a network of patrons. Throughout this period Wen, a strong administrator and technocrat, has earned a reputation for meticulousness, competence, and a focus on tangible results. Outgoing Premier Zhu Rongji showed his esteem for Wen by entrusting him, from 1998, with the task of overseeing agricultural, financial and environmental policies in the office of Vice-Premier, considered crucial as China prepared to enter the World Trade Organization. Wen served as Secretary of the Central Financial Work Commission from 1998 to 2002.

First-term Premiership

Wen has been the third-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s highest ruling council, since November 2002. During the transition of authority as Hu Jintao assumed the presidency in March 2003, Wen Jiabao’s nomination as premier was confirmed by the National People’s Congress with over 99% of the delegates’ vote. As premier, Wen has overseen the continuation of China’s economic reforms and has been involved in shifting national goals from economic growth at all costs to growth which also emphasizes more egalitarian wealth, along with other social goals, such as public health and education. In addition, the Chinese government under Wen has begun to focus on the social costs of economic development, which include damage to the environment and to workers’ health. This more comprehensive definition of development has been encapsulated into the idea of a xiaokang society.
Wen’s broad range of experience and expertise, especially cultivated while presiding over agricultural policies under Zhu Rongji has been important as the “fourth generation” seeks to revitalize the rural economy in regions left out by the past two decades of reform.
Initially regarded as quiet and unassuming, he is said to be a good communicator and is known as a “man of the people.” Wen has appeared to make great efforts to reach out those who seem left out by two decades of stunning economic growth in rural and especially western China. Unlike Jiang Zemin and his protégés on the Politburo Standing Committee, who form the so-called “Shanghai clique”, both Wen and Hu hail from, and have cultivated their political bases, in the vast Chinese interior. Many have noted the contrasts between Wen and Hu, “men of the people” and Jiang Zemin, the flamboyant, multilingual, and urbane former mayor of the country’s most cosmopolitan city. Jiang, unlike the more reserved Hu and Wen, is known to quote maxims from Chinese and Western philosophy and recite poetry in many languages.
Like President Hu Jintao, whose purported brilliance and photographic memory have facilitated his meteoric rise to power, Wen is regarded as well-equipped to preside over a vast bureaucracy in the world’s most populated and perhaps rapidly changing nation. In March 2003, the usually self-effacing Wen was quoted as saying, “The former Swiss ambassador to China once said that my brain is like a computer”, he said. “Indeed, many statistics are stored in my brain.”[3]