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Article: Three hours with Li Peng. (China's prime minister makes a 3-hour speech on the economy)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- March 30, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IT IS not easy to feel sorry for China's prime minister, Li Peng. He tends to look either smug or surly, and he will long be associated with the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989. But in Beijing on March 25th, as he plodded through a three-hour speech at the opening session of China's annual parliament, the National People's Congress, some at least of the 3,000 delegates must have felt a twinge of sympathy.
Mr Li was faced with the task of trying to make sense of China's eighth five-year plan and a ten-year "development strategy". At the same time he had to sound confident about the ultimate triumph of socialism, against all the evidence that it has failed. ...