Wen Jiabao's umbrella

Aug 4, 2007

MAYBE it is because we are so underwhelmed by the boilerplate rhetoric about Marxist-Leninist ideology, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Important Thinking of the Three Represents, but close observers of the Chinese political elite are frequently distracted by what can only be described as the trivial.  And so, this week, in another typical politico-human interest story, China's netizens worked themselves into a frenzy over the issue of Wen Jiabao's umbrella.

While visiting the flood-stricken province of Anhui, Premier Wen, very sensibly, took a large black umbrella with him.  What shocked observers was his willingness to hold the umbrella himself, rather than getting some office flunky to do it for him. 

It doesn't seem to take much to be a hero in Chinese politics, and Wen - with his understated, mildly empathetic and impeccably well-mannered approach to ordinary members of the public - always seems to fit the bill. 

We have always been struck by the good cop-bad cop approach to the international Communist movement.  On the one hand, we have wild revolutionary romantics like Lenin or Che Guevara, impassioned justice-seekers like Zhou Enlai, Ho Chi Minh, Rosa Luxemburg or Alexander Dubcek, and fiery intellectual mavericks like Trotsky.  On the other hand we have Caligulan tyrants like Stalin, Ceausescu and Mao, bureaucratic functionaries like Brezhnev, unhinged peasants like Khrushchev and opportunistic timeservers like Honecker or Jaruselski. 

In China, the two sides have been variously represented over the years by Mao and Zhou Enlai, Mao and Peng Dehuai, the Gang of Four and Deng Xiaoping, Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, or Li Peng and Zhao Ziyang. 

With the personal motives of Hu Jintao remaining - at best - enigmatic, Wen became China's Great White Hope.  While Hu goes on world tours, Wen visits stricken poultry farmers or indigent coalminers and upbraids officials for failing to deal with local problems.  Netizens also point out that he wore the same coat for ten years.

Some media observers have speculated that Wen Jiabao will stand down at the Seventeenth Party Congress as a result of stress.  This prompted the Foreign Ministry to give the journalists concerned a thorough dressing-down.   Of course, while he remains in place, he is a beacon of hope for reformers, and whatever happens, it is enough to know that Wen is still there, apparently opposing some of the government's most egregious moves.