China PM marginalised over quest for reforms

The next day,censors silenced the news medias dogged reporting on railway negligence,then started censoring posts on microblogs about the crash.

Such indignities are not new. As Wen enters the twilight of a decade as Chinas third-ranked leader,he appears to be struggling to remain relevant in a political system that covets his benevolent public image but has little use for his ideas.

The leading spokesman for what passes for political liberalism in China,Wen is by most accounts ideologically isolated on the Communist Partys nine-member Politburo standing committee. More than once,his views have been rebuffed,tacitly or openly,in party organs. There are tantalising hints of rifts with his boss,President Hu Jintao.

Grandpa Wen,is easily Chinas most popular politician. But in the Communist Party his advocacy of reform has sapped his influence. He has become such a high-risk figure,one official news media editor says,that a state radio network last year balked at his offer of an exclusive exchange with listeners on air.

Some scholars of Chinas leadership say his unspecific calls for democracy and people power actually fit comfortably within a Communist Party committed to absolute rule. Others question his credentials,calling him less a reformer than the good cop in a bad-cop system.

But in a mostly faceless and closed-mouth leadership,no one strains so publicly at his tethers or suffers as many rebuffs as Wen. That pattern has intensified as jockeying begins for next years choices of a new politburo and the next generation of Chinas top leaders.

Wen can be crafty. In April 2010,analysts puzzled over a Peoples Daily essay by him published while President Hu was in Brazil extolling Hu Yaobang,the leader forced to resign in 1987 for his reformist bent. One anecdote described a Hu Yaobang visit that Wen arranged with Guizhou Province villagers secretly,he wrote,because Hu Yaobang did not trust local leaders to let them speak freely. President Hu was mightily displeased by the jab,said an editor with high official connections.