Brave the Economic Crisis with Confidence

PREMIER Wen Jiabao spoke these words when answering a netizen's question – one of the 29 posed to him – about how China could survive the rampant global financial crisis. On February 28, 2009, the premier chatted with the public online via the live broadcast channel of www.gov.cn and www.xinhuanet.com. Most of the 29 questions concerned the world's and China's financial situation. The premier told them: "At this crucial moment, the most important thing of all is to restore and boost our confidence. Only equipped with confidence can consumers dare to spend and entrepreneurs dare to invest, can state leaders get creative and come up with timely and resolute countermeasures, and can our country have new hope."

Premier Wen Jiabao speaks at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum's Third Annual Meeting of the New Champions (Summer Davos) in Dalian in September 2009.

The Attitude

On several other occasions previously and later, Premier Wen stressed and reiterated the importance of confidence in overcoming the global economic crisis. On September 24, 2008, in New York, when meeting with the American economic and financial personages, including then President Timothy Geithner of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and former Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin, Premier Wen said, "In the face of the crisis, courage and confidence is more important than gold." The Chinese premier has been giving pep talks from the very beginning of the financial crisis, reiterating on various occasions that to a certain extent it was a crisis of confidence as well as a credit crisis. Commentary from around the world recognized that the Chinese premier was trying to boost the spirits of the affected countries.

Late in 2008 and early in 2009, when inspecting Zhejiang, Shanghai and Jiangsu, Premier Wen repeated that confidence was an effective weapon in weathering the global economic turbulence. Premier Wen attended the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos on a "mission of confidence" in late January 2009 and visited four European countries. Again, on March 13, 2009, Wen told reporters at the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, "This year's sessions have convened at a crucial moment in the international financial crisis…… We've proposed a package of countermeasures. To realize the plan, I think consolidating our confidence is still the foremost requirement. Confidence generates courage and strength with which we can overcome difficulties."