Li Qiang, the former Communist Party chief of Shanghai, took office on Saturday as China’s premier, the country’s No.2 post, putting the close ally of President Xi Jinping in charge of reviving an economy battered by three years of Covid-19 curbs.
Widely perceived to be pragmatic and business-friendly, the 63-year-old Li faces the daunting task of shoring up China’s recovery in the face of global headwinds. On Saturday, Li received 2,936 votes, with three votes against and eight abstentions, according to totals projected on a screen inside the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing. Li will make his closely watched debut on the international stage on Monday during the premier’s traditional media question-and-answer session after the parliamentary session ends. Li was put on track to become premier in October, when he was appointed to the number-two role on the Politburo Standing Committee during the twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress.
Li takes office as tensions rise with the West over a host of issues including US moves to block China’s access to key technologies and as many global companies diversify supply chains to hedge their China exposure. The career bureaucrat replaces Li Keqiang, who is retiring after two five-year terms. Li was Xi’s chief of staff between 2004 and 2007, when the latter was provincial party secretary of Zhejiang province.
Numerous other officials are due to be confirmed on Sunday including vice premiers, a central bank governor and other ministers and department heads.
China’s economy grew just 3pc last year, and on the opening day of parliament Beijing set a modest 2023 growth target of around 5pc, its lowest goal in nearly three decades.
Li’s top task this year will be beating that target without triggering serious inflation or piling on debt, said Christopher Beddor, deputy China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics. China’s post-pandemic recovery has been uneven, with February inflation unexpectedly soft, while Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com Inc warned on Thursday that rebuilding consumer confidence would take time.
On Friday, the Xinhua news agency reported that an official with China’s state planning agency had met with a vice president from US chip giant Qualcomm Inc and conveyed that it will provide a good business environment for multinationals. People who have interacted with Li say they found him practical-minded, an effective operator and supportive of the private sector – a stance that would be expected in someone whose career put him in charge of some of China’s most economically dynamic regions.
As Communist Party chief between 2002 to 2004 in his home city of Wenzhou, a hotbed of entrepreneurialism, Li came across as open-minded and willing to listen, said Zhou Dewen, who represented small and midsize enterprises in the city.
“He took a liberal approach of granting private companies default access to enter the market, except when explicitly banned by law, rather than the traditional approach of keeping private companies out by default,” said Zhou. Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council and a former U.S. official, said Li sought to level the playing field for foreign businesses, pointing to the speed with which U.S. carmaker Tesla was able to get its Shanghai factory there operational in 2019. “Clearly nothing got in the way once a decision was made. There was a clarity of a kind in his decision-making, an authority, and that really helps,” said Allen, describing Li as comfortable in his own skin.
Born in Ruian county in what is now Wenzhou, the 17-year-old Li went to work in 1976 at an irrigation station in his hometown, a desirable job in what turned out to be the final year of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Li entered Zhejiang Agricultural University in 1978, the year that campuses were reopened in China and competition for places was fierce. He received master’s degrees from the central party school in Beijing and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. It was in Zhejiang, home to some of China’s biggest private companies – where Xi was provincial party secretary and Li was his chief of staff between 2004 and 2007 – that the two men would have built their personal bond.