Li has extensive experience in regional economic management and has worked with the Chinese president before.
«:»When Li Qiang, the Communist Party chief of Shanghai, followed President Xi Jinping onto the stage at the Great Hall of the People as the second — ranking Politburo Standing Committee member, he became the obvious choice to be anointed China’s next premier at the annual legislative session in March. But the promotion of Li, 63, was not always a shoo-in, particularly after the debacle of Shanghai’s Covid-19 lockdown last spring. The constitutional limit of two terms means Li Keqiang , 67, must step down as premier, a position traditionally reserved for the second or third-ranking member of the party and someone with broad regional administration experience. Filing out at No 2 indicates Li Qiang is in line to take over that role, as the top official in charge of China’s economic and social development. As premier, he will be the top official helping Xi to take on the challenging task of reinvigorating China’s economy, stalled by the triple-whammy of strict zero-Covid regulations, weak consumer demand and tensions with the United States, as well as much of the West. Li Qiang has decades of experience in development and regional economic management but, perhaps more importantly, he has a lot of trust and rapport with Xi, something that will be crucial for him in the new position, according to analysts. “He has a much closer relationship with Xi compared to [Premier] Li Keqiang. If he becomes the premier, Xi is likely going to give him much more room and power to manage the economy,” said Deng Yuwen, a former deputy editor of the Study Times, the official newspaper of the Central Party School. “But that’s not enough. At least in the early stages, he also has to do a lot to win the confidence of the State Council team and the outside world,” added Deng, now an independent political researcher in the United States. Li Qiang’s ties with the president date back to 2004, when Xi was the party boss of Zhejiang province and Li his de facto top personal aide. Li served in the role for three years, until Xi left to head the party in Shanghai. During the Zhejiang years, he accompanied Xi on almost every inspection trip and edited all of his speeches, including a personal column in the provincial party mouthpiece, called Zhijiang Xinyu, or “new words from the Zhi River”. The material was later compiled into a book widely circulated among party cadres looking for clues about Xi’s thoughts. Li was also credited with helping to draft and distil Xi’s policy direction in Zhejiang, an approach that later became known as the “double eight strategy”, a list of eight comparative advantages of Zhejiang and eight corresponding actions. Many of those policies have now evolved into “Xi Jinping Economic Thought”, the guiding principle for the economic policy of China’s ruling party. How Shanghai party chief could beat tradition to become China’s next premier Qiao Yide, vice-chairman of the Shanghai Development Research Foundation, described Li as a “faithful follower” of the Chinese leadership. “But he is not just an enforcer. Over the past five years, Li also took bold initiatives to improve the economy, such as lowering the threshold for outsiders to obtain residency permits in Shanghai and creating five new towns to ease the land supply shortage,” Qiao said. Li followed in Xi’s footsteps, becoming party boss of Shanghai himself in 2017, a tenure that was largely trouble-free.
