China: After securing a 3rd term, President Xi gets his acolyte “elected” as China’s new Premier
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As expected, a day after Xi Jinping, 69, managed to secure for himself an unprecedented third term of five years as China’s President, his nominated acolyte Li Qiang was formally “elected” by the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), as the new Prime Minister on Saturday.
Li Qiang, the former Communist Party leader of the country’s biggest city of Shanghai and who led China’s brutal Zero-Covid lockdown until December 2022, will now lead the government, replacing the retiring incumbent Li Keqiang.
Li, 63, received 2,936 votes from nearly 3,000 delegates at the NPC—with just three delegates voting against his appointment and eight abstaining. After President Xi Jinping, he will now be the second-highest-ranking official in China’s single-party-ruled and closed political system.
A close confidante of President Xi Jinping, he is believed to be a ‘pragmatist’ and will be tasked with reviving China’s struggling economy.
Taking an oath, Li swore to remain loyal to China’s constitution and to “work hard to build a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious and great modern socialist country.”
After installing him as Number Two, Xi Jinping has strengthened his one-man rule as China reopens from the bruising Zero-Covid policy that fuelled widespread anti-government protests in November-December 2022. The country is also facing a falling birth rate that threatens its economic growth engine.
Since Communist Party founder-chairman Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, leaders in China had been limited to two terms in office. When Xi had this restriction changed in 2018, it transformed him into an all-powerful figure with a reach not seen since Chairman Mao.
Li is best known for enforcing a barbaric Zero-Covid lockdown on Shanghai last spring as the party’s top boss of the Chinese financial hub, proving his loyalty to Xi in the face of a large number of complaints from residents over their lack of access to food, medical care and essential services.
As premier, Li will oversee the revival of a sluggish economy still emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic and confronted with weak global demand for exports, lingering US tariff hikes, a shrinking workforce, and an aging population.
At the opening of the NPC’s annual session on Sunday, outgoing Premier Li Keqiang announced plans for a consumer-led revival of the struggling economy, setting this year’s growth target at “around 5%.” Last year’s growth fell to 3%, the second-weakest level since at least the 1970s.
Unlike many other countries, the Chinese premier’s role is restricted to the country’s economy. He has no direct authority over the armed forces, who take their orders explicitly from the party, that is its General Secretary-cum-Chief Military Commissioner-cum-President Xi Jinping and plays only a marginal role in foreign relations and domestic security.
