Chinese leaders mark Lunar New Year with poverty pledge

China's leaders spent the Lunar New Year holiday with locals in the impoverished countryside, where growing discontent has spilled over into violent protests, and pledged Sunday to do more to improve living standards.

Chinese state television showed President Hu Jintao sharing a bowl of dumplings with a farmer and Premier Wen Jiabao asking an elderly women if her bed was warm enough.

Beijing's leaders regularly use the new year holiday to underline a policy direction. Last year, Hu spent the holiday — the most important in the Chinese calendar — with AIDS victims.

China's communist leadership has made tackling poverty in the countryside a key priority, as it acknowledges that three decades of economic and social reforms have left great swaths of the population behind.

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So we ask: where is our leader today? Planning to invade another country?

turned their backs on the people. Uncle Fidel would be proud of them!