At Five Minutes to Midnight Wen Jiabao Decides to Say Something!! But Not Much

For years Wen Jiabao has had nothing to say about urban development, architectural preservation or heritage – too busy locking upo dissidents I suppose – and then just as he’s about to enter that good night with the political changes in China next year he suddenly pipes up apparently accusing land developers of destroying traditional heritage and leaving the nation with a culture of “phony” modernisation – no shit Sherlock!

Of course when you dig deeper what really worries Wen is that people pissed off about land seizures, corrupt developers and rapacious officials will rebel rather than any notion of preserving China’s heritage. However, he does point out the stupidity of the ‘knock it down, rebuild it looking old’ tactic which is common and has left the country littered with crappy reconstructions of buildings now lost forever.

So much so good – ultimately Wen doesn’t really have much to say of any substance as usual – even Xinhua seems to be skeptical if I’m intepreting their final line of the article rightly – “Wen has repeatedly vowed to do more for ordinary people, including ridding his government of corruption and ushering in political reforms.” He has indeed and sadly failed totally to achieve these objectives. Shouting about it at 5 minutes to midnight in his political career is a tad pointless.

The whole article here