CALL it the Year of Living Dangerously. Certainly it is a far cry from La Dolce Vita. In the opening days of China's annual session of the National People's Congress, one refrain was that 1994 would be a crucial year for economic reform.
That could, quite possibly, turn out to be a great understatement. With senior leader Deng Xiaoping's health failing, and the potential for chaos that his death would leave open, the leadership has to be very careful. That does not mean it can afford toslow down the economic momentum too much.
Making the economy boom and pressing ahead with a quasi-capitalist transformation have become basic tools in the communist regime's survival kit. On the other hand, like China's championship women runners, the regime knows that there is no gain without pain. The trick is to make sure those suffering - for example, workers in the city who face the prospect of losing their cradle-to-grave security blanket while inflation soars - do not hurt too badly.
In short, the leadership will find itself engaged in a delicate balancing act.
Listening in the Great Hall of the People to the most important papers of the Nation People's Congress - Premier Li Peng's work report, Finance Minister Liu Zhongli's budget and State Planning Commission Minister Chen Jinhua's Economic Plan - one gets the impression that China's leadership is acutely aware of the hazards ahead, but rather unsure of how to bypass them.
Potentially, the biggest problems are the economic growth rate, which the government wants to bring down to nine per cent after 13 per cent expansion for two years running, and inflation resulting from overheating. Even among top officials, there are few who think the government will be able to cool the economy to such an extent and keep within the inflation target of 10 per cent. The momentum for growth is simply too great.
