Chinese Leader Believes That Worldwide Recession Has Not Hit Bottom Yet

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao addressed his nation's concerns about the worldwide recession's impact with an Internet chat this Saturday afternoon in an attempt to reassure Chinese citizens about the economy much as President Obama did this past week. While Premier Wen Jiabao was upfront with his view that the worldwide recession had not yet hit bottom, he did offer Chinese citizens some positive steps such as self employment to ease unemployment and other serious problems. The Internet conversation with Chinese citizens appeared to have some elements of democracy involved, which marks some further progress in the one party government's attempts to be more responsible to the public concerns.

However, it waa fascinating to see so much focus on Premier Wen JiaBao on official Chinese news websites such as Xinhua, compared to President Hu. This probably does not indicate any sort of power struggle of the Chinese leadership as much as another Chinese leader being delegated responsibility to focus on the economy and other matters. But it was still curious to see so much news suddenly generated by Premier Wen Jiabao himself, and not president Hu which has been the public image of the Chinese government in most matters.

Wen also seemed to strongly support more private enterprise attempts on the part of the Chinese people as an important factor in rebuilding the Chinese economy from the effects of this global recession. One caller with the net conversation was grieving over large Chinese stock market losses, and Wen attempted to offer some reassurance.

But Wen Jiabao also made some interesting news in some statements on foreign policy, including a call for more cooperation with Taiwan to help to address the worldwide recession. And there were significant signs that China wants continued positive growing relations with the United States despite some barbs set off this week by a U.S. State Department document blasting China's human rights record, and a response document by China blasting human rights within the United States.

This first ever Internet conversation with the Chinese citizens is probably a pretty good indicator of the seriousness of the global recession on China, as well as a baby step towards more democracy in this Communist one party state.

Some further news was generated when the Chinese government announced some new food safety rules as well as a crackdown on meat contamination, which should help to shore domestic confidence in food safety as well as aid the export market to the United States and other nations.