Premier Li Keqiang greets me in the Hong Kong room of the Great Hall of the People like an old friend. As he whispers a few words in English, two dozen press cameras flash in unison. So much for the coveted private interview with China’s number two. My off-the-record encounter will make the number three item on CCTV’s prime time news programme, watched by 135m people every day.
Li is a confident performer, a pomaded black-haired protégé of former president Hu Jintao. He made his reputation in the late 1990s as governor of Henan, a backwater province of 94m people in central China. Hank Paulson, former US Treasury secretary, recalls in his forthcoming book Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower that Li was dogged by a series of crises ranging from a tainted blood plasma scandal, a related HIV outbreak and a rash of deadly fires that killed hundreds of people. This briefly earned him the nickname Three Fires Li. In the UK, thanks to his promises of generous Chinese investment in our creaking infrastructure, he has been dubbed Li Ka-Ching (mimicking the sound of a ringing cash till).
Today, Li finds himself in the vanguard of economic reform, seeking to rebalance an export- and investment-dependent economy towards greater domestic consumption while maintaining the high levels of growth needed to create jobs and tackle social inequality. A Chinese official likens the challenge to a fisherman seeking to keep a catch of cod alive on the long voyage home. The most effective method is to throw a catfish in the crowded tank: 15 to 20 per cent of the cod will die but the rest will be forced to swim around, creating the oxygen necessary to survive.