The new Chinese premier, Li Qiang, seemed to have pushed all the right buttons to project a pragmatic, pro-business style of government.
The press conference on Monday, which immediately followed the closing of the annual session of the National People’s Congress, was the only media event that the Chinese premier or any other senior leader would attend in a year, broadcast live on television. national. Given its importance, the press conference is strictly choreographed, with questions from the journalists preselected to give the leader the comfort of presenting the issues he wants the public to hear and help him avoid uncomfortable questions.
As Li Qiang’s first public debut at a media event since his inauguration as prime minister on Saturday, the event has yielded several interesting takeaways.
1 – Li sent a very clear message that he would focus on reviving the economy in the next five years. Nine out of 10 questions were asked about the Chinese economy and issues related to Hong Kong and Taiwan. He used most of the time to project confidence and pragmatism, trying to reassure the private sector and vowing to meet the challenges of declining populations and rising unemployment.
In particular, he acknowledged that the Chinese private sector, which contributes around 60% of GDP and 80% of the country’s employment, had fallen on hard times. “In fact, last year there were some inappropriate discussions about private entrepreneurs, which made them feel frustrated,” he said.
A gross understatement, but he was nonetheless the first senior leader to publicly admit the difficulties facing the private sector. He li promised that the business environment would improve, and under his leadership, all kinds of businesses would be treated equally.
2 -Although Li is number 2 in the leadership hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party, he made his position and his position very clear, which was hired to focus on execution, transforming plans into actions and achievements. Asked by a Chinese journalist to outline his administration’s priorities, he minced no words, stating that the plans were already laid out in the political report presented by President Xi Jinping at the 20th Party Congress in October 2016. past. His job was to ensure that those plans were fully and accurately implemented.
His frank acknowledgment that he is focused on execution stands in stark contrast to the style of his immediate predecessor, Li Keqiang, who tried to present himself as something of a partner to Xi when he first became prime minister in 2013. Before Xi arrived to power in 2012, it was widely believed that his predecessors had some kind of partnership agreement with their prime ministers, such as Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, and Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. The idea was that while Jiang and Hu, as head of the party and president of the state, were in charge of everything, the prime ministers had wide leeway to run the economy. But things are very different under Xi’s leadership. Even before Xi won his third term as party chief last October and as president last week, it has been abundantly clear that he is the undisputed supreme leader.
recognized that the Chinese private sector, which contributes around 60% of GDP and 80% of the country’s employment, had gone through a rough patch
3 – My belief that Li would focus on reviving the economy was bolstered by the fact that his debut public press conference only lasted about 80 minutes, including interpretation time, compared to annual events held in recent weeks. decades by its predecessors, which used to exceed two hours. His predecessors, including Li Keqiang and Wen, gave ample time to questions about China’s relations with its major trading and strategic partners, such as the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and even ASEAN countries.
At Monday’s press conference, however, Li devoted little time to China’s international relations and diplomacy. In response to the only question on Chinese diplomacy and the China-US relationship, Li said he would not elaborate on China’s policy toward the United States, referring reporters to the foreign minister’s press briefing, Qin Gang, a couple of days earlier, in which Qin took a tough stance against the United States and warned that Washington’s policy toward China could lead the two countries into potential conflict.
Instead, he took a more conciliatory tone and briefly addressed the issue of decoupling, one of the many sticking points between the two countries.
“I know that in recent years, some in the United States have been touting the idea of delinking from China, but I wonder how many people can really benefit from this kind of hype,” he said.
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“China and the United States are closely intertwined economically. We have both benefited from each other’s development.”
“China and the United States can and should cooperate. And there are many things that both countries can achieve by working together. Encirclement and repression serve no one.”
All this has clearly shown his intention to keep attention focused on reactivating the economy after three years of zero restrictions on covids.
Li spent little time on China’s international relations and diplomacy.
4 – He has tried to project a pro-business and pragmatic style of government. Citing his local experiences in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, where China’s private sector has thrived, he has repeatedly commented on his meetings with private businessmen and multinational executives.
Li also stressed the importance of undertaking field trips to conduct research and studies.
“My experience is that when you sit in the office, you see a lot of problems, but when you get up close to the people, you see all kinds of solutions. After all, the brightest minds are among the people.”
Ultimately, Li appears to have pushed all the right buttons to project a pragmatic, pro-business style of government.
Article republished from the media Thought of the Day on China within the framework of an agreement between both parties to share content. Link to the original article:https://wangxiangwei.substack.com/p/chinas-new-premier-li-qiang-appeared
Former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post (SCMP). He has a master’s degree in journalism and a bachelor’s degree in English. For 20 years he worked for China Daily and was a correspondent for BBC China. He now resides in Beijing as an editorial advisor to the SCMP.
