Premier Wen Jiabao is the new poster boy of Chinese politics. The least wooden of the otherwise universally poker-faced top communist leaders, the poetry-loving, baseball-tossing premier has successfully projected a populist public persona that has won him fans on the mainland and abroad. Compared to his mysterious boss, Hu Jintao , anecdotes about this so-called 'man of the people' are legion. Mainland journalists are fond of telling tales of him breaking off from inspection tours meticulously planned by local cadres to chat with random villagers. And an old green coat, that has reportedly accompanied him for over a decade, would be a worthy exhibit at any museum to communism as testimony to his grass-roots credentials. As he trots up and down the country to remote backwaters, it is said he has inspected about 2,500 counties - a total that would take nearly seven years to reach at the rate of one county per day. He's been televised hugging rural children, eating dumplings with coal miners and shaking hands with Aids patients. And he's believed to be the first senior leader to acknowledge the country's HIV/Aids problem and to call on the nation to treat those affected with 'care and love'. 'I'm sure Wen goes home crying every night,' veteran New Jersey-based China watcher Gordon Chang said. 'This guy's got a heart.' The mild-mannered premier is, in fact, known to have a heavy heart. 'Long did I sigh to hold back tears, saddened as I am by the grief of my people,' Mr Wen once said, quoting lines from the ancient patriotic poet Qu Yuan , of the plight of millions of peasants and laid-off workers left out of the boom. The premier swiftly moved to change the lot of the rural poor. Since he took the top government job in the spring of 2003, massive spending has been planned on health and education. Agricultural taxes were abolished, rural subsidies pumped up, school fees scrapped and free textbooks distributed. Analysts say it's arguably the most generous deal for farmers since 1949. Rural angst is but one of many things that keep Mr Wen, 65, up at night. The list ranges from the nitty-gritty of state bureaucracy to toxin-leaking chemical plants, constant coal mine disasters, housing market bubbles, exorbitant pork prices and fake drugs and poisonous toys that have undermined exports. And formidable tests are ahead - with the Olympic Games looming, nobody can afford even a small hiccup in the stock market. Despite all this, the premier still manages to find time to pay regular visits to top scientists, artists and academics, exchange letters with Hong Kong children and exhort millions of mainland students to open their minds by 'looking up at the sky more often' - a reference to the great German philosopher Friedrich Hegel that serves as one example of his widely perceived erudition. Many analysts think the former secretary of two ousted reformist party chiefs - Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang - is himself a covert democrat. This year has seen him toss around the 'D' word more often than before, whether in formal speeches, in casual chats with overseas Chinese or in his literary musings. In the months leading up to the 17th party congress and facing a conservative backlash against the country's headlong embrace of market economics, the premier put the word out that there was no turning back. 'Wen is a liberal at heart,' Beijing-based political scientist Hu Xingdou said. 'But China's unstable political milieu mellowed him. He's learned to make compromises. 'He's an idealistic pragmatist and a down-to-earth reformist. Both left and right accept him. That's why he can reach the pinnacle of government.' His across-the-board appeal was probably one main reason why he was given the gruelling task this year of 'melting the ice' with Japan, whose ties with China had descended to chilly depths. His genuine warmth, rarely seen among top Chinese leaders, was felt by ordinary Japanese with whom he performed tai chi, drank green tea and even threw a baseball. 'Wen is indeed highly regarded outside China, and he at least makes an effort to reach out to the common person,' said June Dreyer, professor of political science at the University of Miami. Critics say the well-intentioned premier does not have the same force of personality as his predecessor, Zhu Rongji , and is ineffective in pushing through macroeconomic policies. 'We look around but where's the economic tsar?' said Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a Hong Kong-based political scientist. 'As a result, many central directives are completely overridden at the local level.' Others argue the real problem is systemic, rather than a question of personal style. 'The thing is that he's captured by a political system that doesn't allow him to implement good policies,' Mr Chang said. 'It doesn't really matter what's in his heart; what does matter is what's in his brain. He knows he cannot do what needs to be done (opening up the political system to accommodate further economic reform). 'He may want to do it. On some occasions he even tries to do it, but he can't. In a certain sense, I feel he's given up. He cannot help China in the political context in which he finds himself. 'He may have the world's best intentions but they're completely irrelevant.'
