China scraps premier's annual news conference for first time in 30 years

to Beijing now in a surprise move today with China saying for the first time in 30 years the country's Premier will not speak with reporters after this yearly big national meeting it's a big deal because this annual news conference is usually one of the very few opportunities for journalists to be able to question top Chinese leaders it comes as the government has declared its commitment to transparency and to fostering a friendly business environment well at the same time president xiin ping is

consolidating his power pushing some other Chinese officials into less visible roles Josh Letterman is joining us now it's not as though China is considered a Bastion of press transparency right but now even one of these rare opportunities to hold power to account is gone that's right and it's certainly sending the signal hie that China's top leaders don't want to answer tough questions uh from journalists because this tradition has dated back to 1993 it was really the Marquee event of the annu

al parliamentary uh Summit and over the years you know a lot of the questions were screened in advance but there were opportunities to ask the Chinese Premier about things like human rights violations about challenges with the economy which may be one of the reasons that China's leaders don't want to have uh this news conference this year and in the coming years because uh the Chinese economy really has been suffering of late a massive real estate crisis diminishing foreign investment as well as

economic growth rates that are really slowing and so this will avert the need for China's leaders to have to answer really specific questions about uh the financial indicators the the state of their economy uh but of course it also really reflects the fact that President XI has Consolidated power during his time the premier the number two role in the Chinese government is not nearly as powerful as it used to be the other piece of this too is the way that you know we've talked about this before

um we've talked about with our colleague Janice Macky frer as well the idea of Shifting sort of perspective on Chinese social media the idea that censors were regulating discussion of this change there um how do you see that fitting into the bigger picture Josh because again I think it's very different for American viewers we you know who can largely get on social media platforms and and share their opinions unfettered so long as they don't infringe on others rights that's right we're not used t

o doing a search on X forly Twitter or Facebook or anything else and having it simply uh not appear because the government doesn't wanted to but according to the New York Times that's exactly what happened today on Chinese social media when people were searching for the phrasing of the statement that was put out announcing this news conference would not take place it simply brought up an error message and so it's a little bit ironic given that this news conference in the past had been really one

of the emblems of China's claim that it is moving towards Mor's transparency towards a more democratic system that it wants to be open to the rest of the world especially to business and foreign investment and yet the mere fact that they were shutting down this news conference they didn't really want people talking about on social media and so we still see the very clear uh resistance that Chinese government has especially under President sh Shin ping to the type of transparency that is expecte

d of most political systems around the world T Josh Letterman thank you very much for unpacking all of that for us tonight super interesting coming out of China appreciate it thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or followup on social media