Premier Wen says his responsibility 'heavy'

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, November 24, 2003

Premier Wen says his responsibility 'heavy'

Premier Wen Jiabao said his responsibility as Premier of China is heavy as "the job is demanding and there is endless work to do."

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Premier Wen Jiabao said his responsibility as Premier of China is heavy as "the job is demanding and there is endless work to do."

In an interview given to The Washington Post Friday, he said "1.3 billion is a very big number. So if we use multiplication, any small problem multiplied by 1.3 billion will end up being a very big problem. For a very big aggregate divided by 1.3 billion, it will come to a very tiny figure."

"This is something that is quite difficult for foreign visitors to understand and appreciate," he told Leonard Downie, executive editor of the American newspaper.

In response to a question on whether the core values of Americaand China are different or similar and how that affects the future development of China-US relations, Wen said, "Let me ask you a question. In the past 25 years of reform and opening up, enormous changes have taken place in China's economic landscape. Have people from the outside ever seen the changes taking place in China's democracy and freedom?"

At the moment, people can choose what kind of jobs they want to have, they can choose what kind of information they seek, they canchoose where to visit, said the premier.

It was very difficult or almost impossible for a Chinese personto visit a foreign country or even to visit Hong Kong, part of his own country, 25 years ago. At the moment, every year, tens of millions of Chinese travelers visit places across the world.

"And in addition, as I said earlier, we now have freedom of religious belief," Wen said.

The Chinese premier still remembered that in the Declaration ofIndependence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

"He put life before anything else," Wen said.

"So when we say that for the Chinese people's human rights, the right to life and development is most important, sometimes our friends in the Western countries find this difficult to understand.I think they only need to refer to the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson. In 1776, in that Declaration of Independence, he already put the right to life before every other right."

"The United States has also witnessed the process of development of democracy if you look at the history, from the Declaration of Independence in the 18th century, the Civil War in the 19th century, and to the Martin Luther King incident in the 20th century."

"If I can speak very honestly and in a straightforward manner, I would say the understanding of China by some Americans is not as good as the Chinese people's understanding of the United States," he said.

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