“…The popular hero of China’s earthquake rescue effort isn’t a strapping firefighter or a seasoned cop - it’s the country’s bespectacled premier, a self-described Grandpa who’s been clambering over piles of rubble to rally victims in the hardest-hit areas…”

Source: AP

The popular hero of China’s earthquake rescue effort isn’t a strapping firefighter or a seasoned cop - it’s the country’s bespectacled premier, a self-described Grandpa who’s been clambering over piles of rubble to rally victims in the hardest-hit areas.

Premier Wen Jiabao swapped his normal dark suit for an all-weather jacket and bullhorn, arriving in Sichuan province just hours after it was rattled by the 7.9 magnitude temblor.

“The central government hasn’t forgotten about this place. We will rescue those who are injured. If the roads are blocked, we’ll use airplanes to lift them out,” he announced to weary survivors in the epicenter of Wenchuan, his voice strained after days of similar visits broadcast continuously on state television.

His apparently tireless efforts - supervising orange-jacketed rescue workers, urging trapped schoolchildren to hang on - have won wide praise from Chinese, who see him as the “people’s premier.”

Unelected and authoritarian, the communist leadership still needs to cultivate popular support to make ruling a huge, highly mobile people easier and so it searches for ways to strengthen bonds with ordinary Chinese. Leaders like Wen who personally spearhead disaster relief efforts from the scene help renew the public’s faith in the party.

“By focusing on the leaders and the action they’re taking … you demonstrate that the party is taking action. It legitimizes the party by doing that. It legitimizes the leadership,” said David Bandurski, a researcher at the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong.

The image building gets a strong boost from the Communist Party’s control over all media. Wen’s declaration when he arrived at a collapsed school that the search for survivors would continue “as long as there’s a glimmer of hope” has become the sound-bite of the disaster, replayed endlessly on state-run television.

Chinese leaders, most of them engineers by training, are usually shown on state television sitting motionless during meetings, dressed in identical suits and sporting heavily combed jet black hair. Wen’s in-the-field performance during the earthquake is just the most dramatic of his appearances at disaster scenes in recent years.

He has turned up at coal mine explosions, comforting relatives of dead miners, and trying to calm throngs of Chinese waiting in railway stations after storms this winter stopped trains for days. The displays of sympathy have made the 66-year-old Wen the leadership’s most popular figure.

“The premier is not young anymore and he’s been in the disaster area for three days and three nights without sleep. He has the people in his heart,” said a 40-year-old accountant surnamed Liu, who was reading along a flower bed in Beijing.

Jiang Shimin, a 72-year-old retiree, mentioned recent media reports that said Wen had fallen and hurt his arm while walking through a disaster zone. “However, Premier Wen refused medical care and pushed away the medic. That’s rare. I was so moved,” he said.

Not everyone is enamored with Wen. Some Chinese criticized his first stiff appearance after the quake, reading a statement on a plane taking him to the disaster zone. A small minority of posts said Wen’s presence at the scene attracted cameras but did little to help actual rescue work.

Still, images of the premier wearing a yellow hardhat to enter a collapsed building and stroking the cheeks of a hungry child have captivated the coverage. State media reported that he crouched amid the rubble of an elementary school and shouted to a trapped student: “This is Grandpa Wen Jiabao, hang on child, we will rescue you!”

A Guangzhou Daily news story headlined “Wen Jiabao: I Just Want the 100,000 People out of Danger, That’s an Order” drew nearly 35,000 comments in the nine hours after the story was posted on the Internet portal sina.com.

One entry was a poem, which opened with the lines, “Please premier, we beg you; Please premier, get some rest.” Another comment, identified as being from Zhaotong city in Yunnan province, read: “I can only say, with tears, that I really really love you.”