Let's see how those dare-to-die squads are faring,' goes a remark making the rounds among Beijing's pundits. The barb is aimed at Zhu Rongji, who vowed at a press conference the day after becoming premier he would face down 'multitudinous minefields and 30,000-metre abysses' as he went about overhauling the system.
Consider also these two much-circulated jokes comparing Mr Zhu with predecessor Li Peng..
'One guy with middling intelligence has left the State Council . . . to be succeeded by a smart madman.' The other one goes like this. Zhu Lin, Mr Li's wife, was teasing her husband the afternoon of the new premier's now-famous press conference: 'You were premier for 10 years and Zhu for one day. But you never had this kind of adulation from the media.' Mr Li replies: 'But I'm sure Old Zhu won't last 10 years.' Two months after becoming head of government, Mr Zhu seems as popular as ever. At a recent ceremony marking the centenary of Beijing University at the Great Hall of the People, the applause he got from the audience was so much longer and louder than for President Jiang Zemin or Mr Li that that part of the footage was cut from the evening news.
However, Mr Zhu is having a rough ride with the mines and abysses. Targets he has set are not being reached on time. Worse, the reforms have, in classic Chinese fashion, been adulterated - and distorted - to benefit cadres with power and guanxi (connections).
Take administrative streamlining, or Mr Zhu's efforts to cut the eight million civil-service establishment by half.
The take-no-hostages Great Rectifier is coming upon resistance right under his nose: bureaucrats refusing to quit their jobs in the Central Government.