CPC 20th Politburo Standing Committee: Xi Jinping starts his historic third term, Li Qiang ranks second, and Hu Chunhua is expected to be prime minister – BBC News 中文

According to Chinese political conventions, the order of appearance of the seven Politburo Standing Committee members usually determines their subsequent specific positions.

Zhao Leji and Wang Huning, who remain in office, may succeed Li Zhanshu and Wang Yang as chairman of the National People’s Congress and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, respectively.

In terms of age, the new Standing Committee did not include some younger potential successors. Li Qiang (born in 1959), Cai Qi (born in 1955), and Li Xi (born in 1956) will be 68, 72, and 71 years old respectively in five years’ time. According to the CCP’s “seven up and eight down” conventions, they have all reached retirement age. Only Ding Xuexiang (born in 1962) is only 65 years old after five years and may stay in office, but Ding Xuexiang has never been in power, and according to his political resume, he is less likely to take over.

Hu Chunhua, who was born in 1963, is often seen as a potential successor by the outside world, but he has not been included in the new Politburo Standing Committee, nor has he even entered the list of 24 members of the Politburo.

The second-ranked Li Qiang may officially replace Li Keqiang as China’s new premier at the national “two sessions” next spring.

Li Qiang, a former worker, studied agricultural mechanization at a technical school. In 1984, he became secretary of the Ruian County Party Committee of the Communist Youth League in Zhejiang Province, and was soon transferred to the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Civil Affairs, responsible for rural work.

In 1992, he became the deputy director of the Provincial Department of Civil Affairs, and served in many places in Zhejiang for more than ten years.

In 2016, Li Qiang was transferred to Jiangsu as the secretary of the provincial party committee. In 2017, he was promoted to a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and was transferred to the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee.

In March this year, the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in Shanghai raised questions about Li Qiang’s continued promotion. The severe blockade that lasted for more than two months has led to frequent crises in people’s livelihood in Shanghai, and the economy has been hit hard. When Li Qiang inspected a residential area, he was rarely reprimanded by emotional residents.

It is worth noting that, compared to Hu Chunhua (the current vice premier), Li Qiang has never had any experience in serving in the central government, and at the age of 63 (born in 1959), due to his age, he will be 68 in five years. Only serve one term as Prime Minister.

The fifth-ranked Cai Qi, the current secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, is likely to serve as executive vice-premier of the State Council.

In previous predictions, Cai Qi’s name appeared less frequently. Cai Qi is also Xi Jinping’s former ministry in Fujian and Zhejiang.

He has a rocket-like leap in officialdom. At the “18th National Congress” in 2012, Cai Qi was not a member of the 18th Central Committee or an alternate member. Five years later, at the “19th National Congress”, he became one of the few exceptions. As a member of the Central Committee, he directly enters the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

“Twenty” he entered the Standing Committee, and ranked fifth.

Cai Qi transferred from a college to the General Office of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee in his early years, and gradually climbed the ranks. In 1997, he became the mayor of Sanming City.

Two years later, he was transferred to Zhejiang to serve as the mayor of Quzhou City, and later the secretary of the Quzhou Municipal Party Committee, which coincided with the trajectory of Xi Jinping, who was also transferred from Fujian to Zhejiang. At that time, Cai Qi attracted attention because he was one of the few high-ranking officials who used Weibo, and his followers reached more than 6 million.

In 2014, he was transferred to the Central Committee as Deputy Director of the Office of the newly established Central National Security Committee. In 2016, he became the Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee of the capital Beijing, and in 2017, he became the Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee.

After he came to power in Beijing, he quickly launched a series of rectification actions, such as demanding “population control” and large-scale forcible demolition of cheap rental houses, leading to a highly controversial campaign to clean up the “low-end population”.

He also proposed removing plaques and billboards from the roofs of buildings in Beijing to “brighten the skyline”. Beijing authorities reportedly removed nearly 9,000 plaques in two months. But the action was criticized as a waste of money and labor.

During Cai Qi’s tenure, Beijing successfully hosted the Winter Olympics amid the epidemic, which may be regarded as a “bonus item” in his career.

Ding Xuexiang, who has long played the role of Xi Jinping’s secretary, may succeed Wang Huning in charge of ideological work.

The 60-year-old (born in September 1962) is a close aide to Xi Jinping.

Ding Xuexiang was an engineer, which made his career start at the Shanghai Institute of Materials. In 1996, he became director.

In 1999, he became the deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission, and in 2001 he was appointed as the mayor of Shanghai Zhabei District.

In 2007, at the age of 45, he served as a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and Secretary General, and became the political secretary of Xi Jinping, then Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. Although the two had been together for less than a year before Xi was transferred to the central government, that time may have earned him Xi’s trust.

In 2013, he was promoted to deputy director of the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and soon after was given the new title of Xi Jinping’s personal office director. Since then, he has accompanied Xi Jinping to visit home and abroad many times.

In 2017, he became a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, and concurrently director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee. He is regarded as Xi Jinping’s “right-hand man”.

Li Xi has been elected secretary of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, succeeding Zhao Leji.

Unlike several other new members of the Standing Committee, Li Xi and Xi Jinping have no direct experience of working together.

Li Xi has worked in his home province of Gansu for 22 years, from secretary of the provincial propaganda department secretariat to secretary of the provincial party committee. In 2004, he was transferred to the Standing Committee and Secretary-General of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee.

In 2011, Li Xi came to East China from the west, and after a brief period of “gilding” in Shanghai for three years, he was transferred to Liaoning in the northeast as the secretary of the provincial party committee.

At that time, Liaoning experienced a series of incidents such as the bribery case of the National People’s Congress and the falsification of economic data, and the appointment of Li Xi was regarded as a “firefighting captain”. During his four years in Liaoning, he reorganized the officialdom and carried out reforms.

In 2017, Liaoning publicly admitted that the province had falsified financial data from 2011 to 2014. In these years, Li Xi’s predecessor Wang Min was in charge of Liaoning, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment.

The experience of rectifying the officialdom in Liaoning may be a “bonus point” for him as secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

In 2017, Li Xi joined the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and was transferred to Guangdong as the “top leader”. Guangdong is a major economic province in China and a springboard for the Politburo Standing Committee, and his career may still go further.

In addition, according to the nomination of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Central Committee will also decide the candidates for the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China through the candidates of the Central Secretariat; Committee members.