Wen Jiabao approved by parliament to be Chinese premier　

    BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- He was seen in SARS wards and AIDS-stricken villages. He visited four provinces in nine days during the past winter weather disaster, bowing to families of deceased heroes and apologizing to millions stranded at railway stations.

    He spent Lunar New Year holidays with coal miners, dined with AIDS patients and stood behind migrant laborers demanding their wages in arrears.

Chinese President Hu Jintao (R) shakes hands with Wen Jiabao after Wen was approved to be premier of China's State Council according to the result of a secret ballot by legislators during the sixth plenary meeting of the First Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing, China, March 16, 2008. (Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    While helping China to achieve double-digit GDP growth for five consecutive years, he has lived up to his motto, "The most important issue under the sun is to care for the well-being of the people."

    Wen Jiabao, the 65-year-old Chinese premier, has gained much popularity since he first took office in March 2003. He was approved by the parliament on Sunday to be premier of the State Council, the Chinese cabinet, for another five-year term.

    His own poem, "Looking up at the Starry Sky," probably can best describe his feelings at the start of his second term, "Eternal fervidity sets on blaze and gives off spring thunder in my heart." 　

    CONFRONTING NATIONAL WOES

    Throughout his first tenure as premier, Wen stood in the vanguard to confront every disaster, visiting dreadful hospitals during the SARS outbreak in 2003, and trekking slippery roads to oversee relief work when the worst snow and ice storm in 50 years battered central, southern and eastern China earlier this year.

    He has visited most of the country's 2,800-odd counties, wearing his homely jacket and sneakers and chatting with farmers, miners and migrant workers.

    He once invited about a dozen grain farmers, rural teachers, coal miners, migrant workers and community doctors to Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound usually off-limits to commoners, to hear their comments on state affairs and government policies.

    "He faces problems squarely," a netizen wrote of the premier on the website of China Central Television.

    Since becoming premier in March 2003, Wen has underscored the well-being of the people, particularly those in the underdeveloped western regions. He has led the government in a strenuous campaign to provide equal education, medical care and other social security coverage for the country's 730 million farmers.

    For five years, his government work reports to the annual parliamentary session were full of inspiring new policies aimed at improving the livelihood of the people, and led to the agricultural tax exemption and direct subsidies to grain farmers.

    Wen, whose own parents were teachers, underscored time and again the importance of education, and facilitated the exemption of tuition and miscellaneous fees for primary and middle school students in the rural areas, as well as for students of six leading teachers' universities across the country.

    This year, he further promised nine years of free compulsory education in both urban and rural areas.

    Trained as a geologist, Wen is cool-headed and steadfast, and confronts the nation's woes with the persistence of an avid prospector, and the precision of a professor.

    "It's hard to be premier of the world's most populous nation," Wen said on several occasions. "A trivial issue becomes a big one when multiplied by 1.3 billion, and an astronomical figure becomes minute when divided by 1.3 billion."