WASHINGTON – Speculation has been spreading about the future role and place in Chinas power structure of Premier Li Qiang since the unexplained c
Speculation has been spreading about the future, role, and place in China’s power structure of Premier Li Qiang since the unexplained cancellation of a routine press conference he was expected to hold last month. It was arguably the biggest news about Li, a figure largely unknown to the outside world, since he took office a year ago.
Analysts tell VOA that to better know Li, it is important to understand his place in China’s leadership structure – highly centralized under Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s tight rule – and the two men’s past together, which stretches back two decades.
Path to premiership
Li was born in 1959 in a rural area of China’s coastal province Zhejiang. His family is rooted in the farming communities of Zhejiang, and Li started out working as an industrial laborer at the age of 17 after he graduated from high school.
His background differs sharply from that of his boss, Xi Jinping, whose father was one of China’s first generation of Communist Party leaders. His background is also different from that of his immediate predecessor, Li Keqiang, who studied at the prestigious Beijing University and whose father was a local party official.
Li Qiang’s climb within the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party began after studying at an agricultural college in his home province. After graduating in 1982, Li did not work in factories or in the rural communities again.
From 2000 to 2002, Li presided over the Zhejiang provincial bureau of commerce. In 2002, at age 43, he rose to become the youngest Communist Party secretary of Wenzhou, known to be a capital of entrepreneurs, in his native Zhejiang province.
That same year, Xi Jinping moved from Fujian, another coastal province, to lead Zhejiang as its party secretary, directly overseeing Wenzhou and other municipalities.
FILE – Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, chats with Chinese Premier Li Qiang during a session of China’s National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 12, 2023.
It was during Xi’s tenure in Zhejiang, from 2002 until he left for Shanghai in 2007, that the two men had opportunities to know each other. From 2004 to 2005, Li served as the chief of staff to Zhejiang’s provincial Communist Party committee, essentially Xi’s chief of staff.
