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With Chinese leader Xi Jinping receiving a norms-breaking third five-year term as president on Friday, the other six men who serve with him on the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee are beginning to take up their new portfolios.
All are party veterans with close personal and professional ties to Xi, China’s most powerful figure in decades.
Chief among them, the party’s second-in-command Li Qiang is widely expected to take over as premier, nominally in charge of the Cabinet and caretaker of the economy.
Li is best known for ruthlessly enforcing a brutal “zero-COVID” lockdown on Shanghai last spring.
Shortly after Xi received unanimous approval from the National People’s Congress, the party’s third-ranking official Zhao Leji was put in charge of the nearly 3,000-member ceremonial legislature.
A member of the Politburo Standing Committee until October, Han Zheng was made vice president.
Underscoring the overwhelmingly male makeup of the Chinese political elite, the Politburo Standing Committee has only men on it. The 24-member Politburo, which has had only four female members since the 1990s, also has no female officials after the departure of Vice Premier Sun Chunlan. The other key body, the 200-plus member Central Committee, remains 95% male.
Some details about the current standing committee members in order of their party rank:
LI QIANG
Perhaps the official closest to Xi, Li Qiang is widely expected to take over as premier, nominally in charge of the Cabinet and caretaker of the economy. Li is best known for ruthlessly enforcing a brutal “zero-COVID” lockdown on Shanghai last spring as party boss of the Chinese financial hub, proving his loyalty to Xi in the face of complaints from residents over their lack of access to food, medical care and basic services.
