Chinese premier's caring image is a sham, dissident's book alleges
A Chinese dissident is risking jail to publish a new book that debunks one of the central myths of the ruling Communist Party: it claims that Premier Wen Jiabao's image as a kindly, caring grandfather if the nation is a sham.
The picture of tearful "Grandpa Wen" standing on the rubble in Beichuan after the 2008 earthquake that claimed 80,000 lives, exhorting rescuers to work harder and comforting survivors, did much to shore up support for the Communist Party at the time.
Last week he was again on the front line, standing in the mud of Gansu, hugging the families of victims and rallying rescuers at the site of the mudslides in Zhouqu. The way he sheds tears at the disaster sites and embraces those who are HIV-positive has earned him a reputation as a genuine man of the people.
But Yu Jie, the Beijing-based 36-year-old author of Wen Jiabao: China's Best Actor, said Premier Wen was simply playing a role, acting as a mediator between an authoritarian government and its citizens in order to hold the party together. The book, which has been published in Hong Kong, also attacks the suggestion that Premier Wen is a progressive figure, or a reformer.
"There is only one objective for all that Wen Jiabao has done since he took the reins, and it is to 'act'. He knows that this old car – the Chinese Communist Party – is going to fall apart," says an excerpt from the book.
There is little new research in it but the opinions contained in it are not generally openly expressed in China.
"Even today there are still many people who believe Wen is 'the people's good premier' who can't act on his plan because of pressure from certain interest groups," Mr Yu writes in one essay in the book. The dissident takes the example of the Sichuan earthquake, where Mr Wen promised the parents of student victims an investigation into the collapsed schools, but never delivered.
Mr Yu's views could cost him his freedom. He was interrogated by state security after news that he was writing the book leaked out, and was told that he could end up in jail like his fellow dissident Liu Xiaobo.
drive from www.independent.co.uk