BEIJING: Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who died on Wednesday aged 97, was never one to mince his words.
When the four-volume selection of his speeches came out in 2011, they shocked readers with his description of “tofu dregs” flood dykes built by “parasites”, and erring bankers labelled as “half-wits”.
It was little wonder that his blunt comments from his years in power became best-sellers, finding eager readers in a nation whose then leaders were seen as wary and cautious, prone to often bland public pronouncements.
Yet the reaction to Zhu’s speech selection from his time as vice premier from 1991 to 1998 and then as premier until early 2003 also reflected deeper anxieties coursing through China as it approached a transition that ushered in Xi Jinping as leader.
Reformist former officials and intellectuals held up the 2,042 pages of Zhu’s words, many made public for the first time, as an unflattering mirror to the conservatism and conformism of current leaders. Magazine editors and internet users scoured the volumes for any comments that offer a message for the present.
Indeed, many of the problems that dogged China’s economy as Xi prepared to take power dominated “The Authentic Speeches of Zhu Rongji”: local government debt and reckless bank loans, inflation and feverish urban growth, and corruption devouring public trust and coffers.