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foundation for sustained and rapid growth. Zhu has never shied away from talking of rapid growth: the point of his programme is after all to avoid a slow-down and the loss of the "favourable opportunities" to which Lam refers.
5. Jiang's speech to the leaders of ten southern and central provinces (reported in "People's Daily" of 4 October), was very much in this vein. Jiang repeated that the basic means of solving problems and promoting economic development was through persisting with reform. It is true that he did not talk (at least as far as the press reported) in much detail of more short-term measures, but he did talk of the need to strengthen macro-economic control and of unswervingly following the instructions and leadership of the CCP: this must be taken to include Zhu's measures. In any case the meeting, which brought together leaders of provinces with very considerable degrees of development (eg Guangdong and Guizhou), dwelt more on the East-West development gap, than on other issues. It would have been odd if he had not quoted Deng's injunction to seize the opportunity.
6.
There is moreover reason to believe that the authorities may be increasingly confident about the success of the economic measures which they are pursuing. Figures for August published this week (and which we are reporting separately), show a continuing drop in industrial growth rates, and some signs of a levelling-off in the inflation rate, although it remains worryingly high at over 22% in the main cities. This may be encouraging them to focus increasingly on the reform agenda, but as more learned articles (eg from the State Statistical Bureau) indicate, there is a clear recognition that some more immediate tasks still await completion.
7. Lam is right to point out that Jiang's speech can be seen in terms of political positioning for the succession battle to come. Most of China's top leaders, and particularly Jiang Zemin, are exploiting every opportunity to promote themselves. Jiang is still working on establishing himself as some sort of successor to Deng Xiaoping. Knowing that he was only Deng's third choice, and a compromise one at that, he has been trying hard since his appointment in 1989 to live up to his role.
Whenever circumstances
permit, Jiang takes centre stage. He seems to have some well-placed proteges in the media world: for some time now the press have been pushing an image of Jiang as the man of the people. In fact few Chinese people seem to take him very seriously, but some believe that he will be around for a long time to come because
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