"That picture will be worth countless yuan to me," said an Irish company representative, after managing to get close to Chinese premier Zhu Rongji for a group photograph in Beijing's Great Hall of the People during the recent visit by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to China.
"I'll hang it in my office in China where everyone can see we are really serious players. It will raise our profile enormously. That's the way things work here."
Zhu Rongji, known as "The Boss", has so much clout in China that evidence of getting close to him can inspire great respect. The stream of world visitors pouring through Beijing these days also treats China's great reformer with something approaching awe. Indeed the adulation from the West has become so intense that diplomats in Beijing warn visiting prime ministers not to overdo it and cause loss of face for the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin.
President Jiang seems happy with the situation however. He has adopted the role of senior international statesman, the embodiment of a quasi-superpower, forging grand alliances with the world while giving his premier full authority to get on with the reforms so desperately needed in China's crumbling state-owned sector.
Thus the man once known as "Onechop Zhu" for his intolerance of bureaucracy (a transaction often involves several "chops" or document seals), has had to take on vested commercial interests such as the army generals, who control 4 per cent of the civilian economy, and regional party chiefs, not to mention conservatives in the top leadership. But it was too much to expect one man to reverse the direction of half a century.
Recent events suggest that Mr Zhu, for all his power and zeal, has like Icarus flown dangerously close to the sun. He may not have plummeted to earth but he has antagonised many powerful people and resistance to his reforms has been building to a critical level. With the Asian economic crisis cutting into China's exports (down 6.7 per cent last month), and foreign investment declining (down 30 per cent for the year), it was the worst possible time to begin reforming bankrupt state-owned industries. Enthusiasm for painful reform among top party officials has also been diminished by a rash of demonstrations and protests by laid-off and unpaid workers which have caught the leadership off guard.
The Communist Party is concerned about the increasing boldness of dissidents who have applied in several cities to register a pro-democracy political party which could become a focus for otherwise disparate protests. The first signs of real trouble for Mr Zhu came when state banks were told to disregard new instructions and continue making loans to failed industries to prevent more lay-offs. Officials were first told to speed up the dismantling of state enterprises, then some were castigated for being too hasty and uncaring about the fate of workers.
Mr Zhu's plan for a massive injection of funds from banks and government bonds into the economy to help maintain an 8 per cent growth rate are also coming unstuck. Finance authorities are allocating funds on schedule but "construction keeps being delayed", admitted Deputy Finance Minister, Mr Lou Jiwei, this week. Projects include water conservation, new forestry, airports, railways, roads, telecommunications, state granaries, power grids and housing. He blamed misuse of funds, construction delays and poor planning for holding up spending of the proceeds of a 100 billion yuan (£8 billion) bond issue this year. Mr Lou said only 29.8 billion yuan of 56.5 billion yuan made available for construction by the end of September had actually been spent. "Government at all levels are not fully prepared for their projects," he complained.
The radical housing reform announced with great fanfare before the summer has also slowed down. Chinese householders were encouraged to buy their subsidised apartments, thus releasing into the economy large reserves of private savings. But the plan is spluttering due to unrealistic prices and corruption, with officials grabbing the best apartments for their families and friends.
China's Gross Domestic Product rose 7.6 per cent in the third quarter of this year and growth was 7.0 per cent in the first half and 7.2 per cent for the first nine months, but Mr Zhu has said growth would need to top 10 per cent in the final quarter to ensure 8.0 per cent growth for the whole year. On Sunday, China's top economic planner, Mr Zeng Peiyan, insisted the 8.0 per cent growth target was within reach. But was he being over-optimistic? Western experts in Beijing are divided into two camps, according to an economic attache in Beijing: "those who believe the figures and those who are more sceptical and argue that the real figure could be as low as zero".
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing Mr Zhu is corruption. President Jiang has admitted that corruption threatens the power and prestige of the Communist Party and has described the anti-corruption crusade under way as a "life-and-death struggle".
As part of the campaign, Mr Jiang in July ordered the army to give up its commercial empire, a blow particularly aimed against rampant smuggling. The military is said to be involved in illegal schemes to import cheap crude oil and then sell it at the inflated state prices in China. The government has also ordered all courts to "make cleaning up business activities their most serious duties".
An internal struggle over corruption came to a head on Wednesday when the Chinese parliament dismissed the two top anti-corruption prosecutors, Mr Luo Ji and Mr Huang Lizhi, because they had "violated discipline and are not suited to be prosecutors" according to the official Xinhua news agency. The most intriguing insight into the fight against corruption came in an internal speech by Politburo member Mr Wei Jianxing which was leaked in Hong Kong. He identified four areas of rampant corruption: in the personnel field, where the phenomenon of accepting bribes to sell government posts is common; in the financial field, where detection is difficult; in the construction field, where graft is affecting engineering quality, and in the judicial system where corruption in public security departments, law courts and prisons causes "seething public resentment".
The leadership's concern at the extent of corruption ensures that Mr Zhu has powerful backing in the anti-corruption fight. He recently visited the set of Focus, a television programme which exposes corruption, and told reporters that they should not be afraid to investigate even the premier himself.
Analysts say that for all his immense difficulties Mr Zhu should not be written off. Far from it. Mr Jiang and the party leaders know that the premier has been given a near-impossible task at a time when China is suffering the backwash from the worst financial crisis in Asia since the second World War and are willing to give him time. Mr Zhu hates being compared to Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, as some Western visitors do, because the former Soviet leader's reforms led to political chaos in Russia. But to escape the comparison he has to ensure that his edicts for economic reforms are carried out, something Mr Gorbachev failed disastrously to do.
