For more than 30 years, China’s prime minister’s annual news conference was the only time a senior leader answered reporters’ questions about the state of the country. It was the only opportunity for members of the public to evaluate China’s number two for themselves. It was the only time some Chinese could feel a slight sense of political participation in a country without elections.
On Monday, China announced that the prime minister’s press conference, marking the end of the country’s annual rubber-stamp legislature, would no longer take place. With this decision, an important institution from China’s reform era no longer exists.
“Welcome to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” one commenter wrote on the social media platform Weibo, reflecting the sentiment that China is increasingly resembling its dictatorial, hermit neighbor. The search term “press conference” was censored on Weibo, and very few comments remained as of Monday evening Beijing time.
Although increasingly scripted, the prime minister’s press conference at the National People’s Congress was watched by the Chinese public and the global political and economic elite, looking for signs of economic policy changes and, occasionally, high-level power plays happening beneath the surface.
“As organized as it was, it was a window to see how official China works and how official China explains itself to the Chinese people and the rest of the world,” said Charles Hutzler, a former colleague of mine who attended at 24 press sessions. since 1988 as a journalist for Voice of America, The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.
The decision to scrap the news conference reflects the dire economic conditions facing China and the growing tendency by leaders to put the country in a black box. And there’s one obvious takeaway: Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, is the sole leader of a country of 1.4 billion people.
The end of the press conference also erased the last vestiges of the reform era.
In the 1990s and 2000s, China held two major televised events every year: the annual Lunar New Year televised gala and the annual press conference with the prime minister. (Think the Super Bowl and the Oscars in the United States, and even more so because China had few TV channels and the Internet was new.)
The first memorable political moment for many Chinese was in November 1987. Outgoing Premier Zhao Ziyang mingled with foreign correspondents at a reception at the end of the Communist Party congress. Talkative and smiling, he answered questions: Was there a power struggle within the party between reformers and conservatives? Was there freedom in China? Where was his elegant double-breasted suit made? Mr. Zhao, who was elected general secretary of the party at the congress, even suggested: “Personally, I believe that I am more suitable for the position of prime minister.” But they all wanted me to be general secretary.
Such a public statement from a Chinese official would be unthinkable today.
Mr. Zhao was later fired for opposing the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989. He died while under house arrest. THE transcription and the video reception shows that he dodged questions, with the exception of the one concerning his trial. (The suit was from a Beijing fashion house called Hongdu, or Red Capital.)
The press conference with the prime minister was institutionalized in 1993, but only became a must-see television event when Zhu Rongji, a sharp-tongued and good-natured premier, took the stage in 1998. Expressing his determination to be a good prime minister, he said: “No matter whether it is a minefield or a bottomless pit, I will move forward without hesitation. »
This event was so popular that two people involved in the event became nationally famous: a woman journalist from a Hong Kong television station who asked a question, and a Foreign Ministry employee who interpreted for him in English.
Mr. Zhu’s successor, Wen Jiabao, did not make much noise during his press conferences until his last one, in 2012. Talk about China’s need for political reform — that was about the last time a senior Chinese leader spoke about it — and presaged the downfall of Bo Xilai, a political rival of Mr. Xi.
Li Keqiang, who served as prime minister under Mr. Xi for a decade and was sidelined most of the time by his authoritarian boss, scored a point on transparency in 2020 when he said that some 600 million Chinese, or 43% of the population, had earned a monthly income of only about $140. His comments undermined Mr. Xi’s claim that China was conquering poverty. When Mr. Li died suddenly last October, many Chinese took to the Internet to thank him for telling the truth.
Most of the time, prime ministers used the opportunity to answer questions from international media and to discuss economic and foreign policy. According to a 2013 study article According to a state-backed publication, in the first news conferences held by Mr. Zhu, Mr. Wen and Mr. Li each answered nearly half of the questions from foreign media.
The prime minister’s press conferences, attended by up to 700 journalists each year, were initially intended to provide interview opportunities for foreign media, allowing them to better understand China, the article said.
Under Mr. Xi’s leadership, the Chinese government has expelled and harassed foreign journalists, raided the offices of multinational companies and engaged in disputes with major business partners. Stopping the press conference will make China more isolated and less transparent to the outside world. This does not bode well for the economy.
A possible reason for the cancellation is that China is facing its most severe economic challenges in decades. But the country has weathered difficult times before, including the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the global financial crisis of 2008. Prime ministers then had no problem communicating the country’s policies with the public and the government. world.
The question is to what extent China, under Mr. Xi’s leadership, values open communication. Media and internet censorship has never been so severe in decades.
Many Chinese observers have speculated that the failure of the press conference could be an attempt at self-preservation by the current Prime Minister, Li Qiang. Mr. Li was Mr. Xi’s chief of staff in the eastern province of Zhejiang in the 2000s and owes his position to Mr. Xi.
Since taking office last March, Mr Li has downplayed the stature and influence of his role. He flew charter flights instead of the equivalent of Air Force One, to which he is entitled, making Mr Xi the only one to benefit from this status. He reduced the frequency of meetings of the Chinese cabinet, chaired by the prime minister, from a week to a few times a month. His portraits do not appear on the website of the cabinet. Nor were they on the major news portals on Tuesday when he presented the government activity report, an annual rite for the prime minister. As usual, headlines and portraits of Mr. Xi dominated these sites.
Mr Li canceled his press conference, commentator says wrote on X, probably not because he lacks eloquence. “It was probably because Li Qiang felt that he would become the focus of the media at the press conference, thus eclipsing the genius of the general secretary,” the commentator wrote, referring to Mr. Xi . “He hopes to remain forever the shadow of the secretary general.”
