Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
Wen, 65, was the sole candidate for the job. Xinhua news agency, which reported from the National People's Congress (NPC), did not immediately give the number of votes cast in favor of Wen.
His re-election completes the top leadership line-up for the next half-decade, the legislature having given Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Dealing with international public opinion will prove harder than putting down the dissent in Tibet, analysts said.
"It's going to be a very tough PR [public relations] challenge. But basically China is still in very firm control in Tibet," said Joseph Cheng (鄭宇碩), an expert on China at the City University of Hong Kong.
While the premier is nominally No. 3 in China's political system, the position is widely seen as the second-most important, following that of Chinese Communist Party secretary-general, an office currently held by Hu, 65.
Wen has been in charge of the management of the economy, which often presents formidable challenges, as China seeks to open up to the world at the same time as it dismantles the remnants of its past socialist system.
In recent months, Wen has led China's struggle to rein in inflation, now at its highest level in nearly 12 years, eroding many of the monetary gains ordinary Chinese have had from rapid economic growth.
Efforts to keep inflation in check have been moderately successful at best, suggesting Beijing is having a harder time controlling the economy than in the past when much of it was state-owned.
The NPC, widely regarded as a rubber-stamp body, also elected Xi Jinping (
Recent unrest in Tibet throws into high relief the missing piece in China's ambitious reform endeavor: the absence of political freedom, analysts say.
The problem"is that despite economic growth and improvement in social services and also some improvement in governance ... you still have problems," Cheng said. "The most serious lesson for the Chinese authorities is that in the end when the regime wants to control everything, there is a denial of basic rights for the people. There is no democracy, and so you still have tension."
Mao Shoulong (
"Basically, the leaders regard the current period as a strategic opportunity for China's economic and social development, so probably they would rather put aside political reform for the time being," he said.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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