Let's go to work, says Mr Zhu, and party cadres tremble

IT WAS just four years ago that Zhu Rongji admitted privately that China's rising inflation rate was keeping him awake at night and that worrying about the country's economy had knocked several pounds off his weight. As China's economic policy supremo, Mr Zhu tamed inflation and reined in the economy. Tomorrow, he gets the ultimate reward - appointment as China's first new prime minister in 10 years. Given the country's dire economic problems, however, 69-year-old Mr Zhu seems to be in for a bout of extended insomnia.

The promotion of Mr Zhu is the key event at this year's National People's Congress. He is seen as the only man capable of tackling one of the hardest political jobs in the world. Even the odd Chinese official seems enthusiastic; one said recently how colleagues had read an internal Zhu speech and were "so excited they could not sleep that night".

Mr Zhu's reputation is of a man who tolerates neither fools nor procrastination. "Some executives do not feel guilty in the least when their businesses are suffering great losses," he blasted last week. "How can such enterprises change for the better with such people in charge?" For the first time, with Mr Zhu in charge, there is the possibility of someone getting to grips with China's real problems, rather than simply mouthing the rhetoric of reform.

His appointment also represents the ultimate political rehabilitation. In 1957, Mr Zhu was condemned as a "Rightist" and sent to the countryside for allegedly praising Hungary and Yugoslavia's brands of reformist communist economics. He was only brought back to favour in 1979, rising to Vice Prime Minister in 1991, and Politburo standing committee member in 1992. His image has been burnished by a menu of anecdotes about "Boss Zhu", as he is known. As mayor of Shanghai in the late Eighties, he was also nicknamed "One Chop Zhu" as he cut through layers of red tape bureaucracy. One of his first actions in that job was to send the city's tourism cadres out to clean the city's public toilets.

Regional bosses dread a visit from "Boss Zhu" as he regularly rebukes officials in public.He also takes a tough line on corruption; he is said to have noticed that one local official was wearing an expensive watch which could not have been bought on his salary - and sacked the man on the spot.

In his new job, Mr Zhu intends to sack incompetent state enterprise managers, shed 4 million civil servants, and overhaul a state sector which has 37 million surplus workers. If this was not tough enough, the massive restructuring will start implementation just as economic growth is slowing, foreign investment is set to dive, and exports are suffering competition from competing neighbouring countries whose currencies have hugely devalued.

It would be a tall order for anyone, and adds up to a lot of sleepless nights. If it works, Mr Zhu will go down in the history books as the intellectual heir to the late Deng Xiaoping. If he fails and the restructuring prompts angry social upheavals, he will be the scapegoat. He is the brainiest Chinese leader, but already has enemies for his abrasive working style, and does not have a bedrock of political support. "If President Jiang Zemin had a free hand, I suspect that Zhu would not have been his choice as prime minister. In many ways, Zhu has forced himself upon everyone, because really he is the only qualified candidate," said a Western diplomat. "He's going to have to start being a little bit more political about things."

Mr Zhu was born in 1928 in southern Hunan province, studied engineering at Qinghua University, and joined the Communist Party in 1949. After 1979 he worked at the State Economic Commission, and became Shanghai major in 1988 when Mr Jiang was the city's party secretary.

Immediately after the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen massacre, when Shanghai was in the grip of huge demonstrations, streets were barricaded, and public transport ground to a halt, Mr Zhu went on television and managed to calm the situation by telling the city he had "never considered using troops or exercising any military control". Viewers took note that he did not describe the Peking demonstrations as counter-revolutionary, as the official propaganda insisted. "The event that occurred recently in Peking is a historical fact, and historical facts cannot be covered up by anybody," he said.

But Mr Zhu does not want to be cast by Westerners as the man who will liberalise China's political system. In the early 1990s, when he was labelled "China's Gorbachev", he vigorously rebuffed the tag. "There is no sign that Mr Zhu feels that to accomplish his economic targets China needs a radical restructuring of its political system," said the Western diplomat. "He keeps his thoughts on politics to himself."