Bold Guangdong chief is rising star in China
2002-08-01

Nations Singapore People Jiang Zemin Zhu Rongji Profession Politician

BEIJING - As one of China's youngest ever city mayors, Li Changchun honed skills that analysts say could soon make him the most youthful member of the Communist Party's all-powerful politburo standing committee.

As leaders meeting in the seaside resort of Beidaihe jockey for power behind closed doors, analysts say the 58-year-old favourite of President Jiang Zemin is headed for promotion.

"If Jiang gets his way at Beidaihe, Li will move up to the standing committee and become a vice-premier," one Beijing-based diplomat said.

Li has shown courage as a swiftly rising star, spearheading industry reform in his native Liaoning province in the 1980s and consolidating central political control over Guangdong, China's richest province, where he is party chief.

As with other Chinese leaders, little is known about a man who appears in public mostly at official functions.

But observers say Li, a chubby man who wears thick, old-fashioned glasses, exudes striking self-confidence and determination leavened with the occasional flash of humour.

At 39 Li became mayor of Shenyang, a traditional centre of heavy industry -- the youngest man to head a Chinese provincial city. Before he was 50 he had governed both Liaoning and Henan, provinces with tens of millions of residents.

He is now the youngest member of the political bureau, the party's command centre.

Li has not travelled widely abroad, but boosted his profile in June with visits to Germany, Poland, Russia and France.

A technocrat with an engineering background, Li made a point of visiting the French technology hub of Sophia Antipolis and took time to dine in a Monaco restaurant.

JIANG'S MAN

But Li's trump card lies in his relationship with Jiang, who is expected to maintain his political influence even if he does step down as party chief at a congress later this year.

Analysts say Li stood beside Jiang in Guangdong some years ago as the president made one of his first speeches on what is now an all-pervading political doctrine known as the "Three Represents," a sign of staunch support for Jiang's ideology.

Just last Friday, Li was reported to have urged the public to rally around the "Three Represents" theory. This calls for opening the doors of the Communist Party, which traditionally represents China's workers and peasants, to private entrepreneurs, a group with a stake in promoting economic liberalisation, private property rights and the rule of law.

Jiang is said to have handpicked Li to bring Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong, firmly under Beijing's control and to clean up its reputation of rampant corruption and smuggling.

Some analysts say Li himself is tainted by links to corruption as head of Liaoning in the late 1980s Others maintain that major scandals there broke only after he left.

Li's push to clean up Guangdong, home to free-wheeling Cantonese speakers often resistant to central party rule, has extended as far as the moral sphere, analysts said.

"He has worked pretty hard to clean up the morals and lifestyles of the super-rich," said Lai Hongyi, a research fellow at the East Asian Institute in Singapore.

"This has earned him a mixed reputation. He has probably drawn positive remarks from the Woman's League over concubines of rich bosses, but he may also have scared away some investors."

Guangdong sources say Li, an outsider with scant knowledge of their dialect, has battled economic crime in the Pearl River Delta, through which China sends a large bulk of its exports.

ECONOMIC BRIEF?

If Li does become one of the four vice-premiers, he would probably take an economic brief that draws on his experience.

Rumours have swirled that Li might even be a candidate for premier should Zhu Rongji step down, but analysts say his lack of experience in Beijing would be too much of a handicap for now.

"Li has lots of experience at the provincial level but I don't think that is enough," said a second diplomat. "I think he seems like a reliable choice for something more than he does at the moment, like vice-premier."

As a potential key player, Li is expected to do little more than continue down the path of well-charted reforms.

"He's certainly interested in economic and political reform like the rest of them, but only as long as the party remains firmly in power," said Cheng Li, a political science professor at Hamilton University in New York. (Reuters)