The Chinese Premier’s Northern Exposure : By Russell Leigh Moses in Wall St Journal, Apr 14, 2015

An unusual and highly publicized visit to northeastern China by Premier Li Keqiang was more than just a sop to a region hard-hit by a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.
The trip, which took place last week and was widely covered in the Communist Party media, was a signal that economic anxieties have started to occupy a more central place in the party’s thinking about reform.
While concerns about the economy are by no means new in China, the party expended most of its energy on political changes, including an muscular anti-corruption campaign and an ambition legal reform plan. But with the country nervously adjusting to a “new-normal” of lower economic growth, and with first-quarter GDP growth numbers looming, Li appears to be pushing harder for a change in tack.
It’s not uncommon for Chinese leaders to take inspection tours to signal new directions in policy. Often, senior officials will take trips outside Beijing in an effort to explain initiatives that have just been agreed to. It’s also the case that leaders have sometimes tried to make their case for policy change by traveling outside the capital because they’ve been unsuccessful in convincing their central government colleagues.
Li’s expedition was unusual in that it went north, when most such trips involve jaunts to the country’s more reform-minded southern regions.
The most famous southern trip was that undertaken by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1992. His so-called Southern Tour aimed to overcome resistance to reform from party conservatives after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and is credited by many with kick-starting the economic changes that would eventually bring about China’s dizzying growth.
President Xi Jinping did likewise, visiting Shenzhen–the main stop on Deng’s tour —shortly after assuming office in a bid to assume the mantle of reform.
Li’s visit to China’s often-struggling northeast industrial heartland nation’s northern areas was also significant in that it undermined the prevailing political wisdom in Beijing that salvaging the Communist party, not saving the economy, should be the leadership’s priority.
That issue could be seen in the extensive reportage across the state-controlled media (in Chinese here and here) portraying Li as both a friend of the common laborer and a severe taskmaster, comforting workers and chastising cadres, inquiring about the health and safety of assembly-line personnel on a visit to a factory, and querying migrant workers about whether or not they were being paid on time. State media insisted that Li’s questions were “not just homely chatter”, but reflective of his plan for “human-centered urbanization, which would provide benefits and protections for all citizens.”
Li wasn’t reluctant to rebuke those officials who, in his words, “attempted nothing and therefore accomplished nothing” (in Chinese). He noted that there were too many instances in which “people engaged in hard struggle, but cadres didn’t bother.”
Interestingly enough, while Li was quick to castigate cadres for being indolent, he gave only glancing attention to the problem of graft during his trip to China’s northeast. That take on the challenges actually preventing good governance in China separates Li’s stance from Beijing’s current focus on fighting corruption first and foremost.
What’s this highly laudatory portrayal of Li’s visit signal?
One takeaway is that Li seems unafraid of keeping to his own path, particularly when it comes to advancing alternatives to the current orthodoxy of how to rejuvenate China. While many cadres and commentators speak of the need to “build loyalty, spirit and commitment” within the Communist Party (in Chinese), Li’s focus is elsewhere, on problem-solving through less government oversight of decisions (in Chinese).
That’s not a division of labor within the Chinese leadership, but a real difference in priority. The acclamatory press coverage of Li’s recent visit suggests that Li and his views are in the process of garnering more support than they had in recent weeks.
More consequential is Li starting to separate himself from the pack a bit more. While policy debates in Beijing are good, political divisions aren’t. If there’s dissension within the Chinese leadership about what’s the best route to national rejuvenation, it will be all that much harder to make policy—especially if China’s economy continues to stagger. But bad numbers might be good news for Li and his alternative way forward. http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/04/14/the-chinese-premiers-northern-exposure/?mod=chinablog&mod=chinablog