Li Qiang

Li joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in April 1983. He was the secretary of the Communist Youth League of Rui'an County. He then served in progressively senior roles in the provincial department of civil affairs. He later became the Communist Party secretary of the city of Yongkang, and then party secretary of the prefecture-level city of Wenzhou. By then he was only 43, and was the youngest party secretary of Wenzhou in history.[3] In 2004, Li became the secretary-general of Zhejiang's Provincial Party Committee and earned a seat on its Standing Committee in the next year, serving under then Zhejiang's party secretary, Xi Jinping, in charge of administration and coordination.[4] During this time, he became close to Xi, eventually being regarded as a close ally of him.[5] In February 2011, he became the Political and Legal Affairs Secretary of Zhejiang province, and several months later was made deputy party secretary.[6]

According to Guangming Daily in 2015, during his tenure in Zhejiang Li told a professor at the Zhejiang University that the province's local government needed an "independent think-tank like the RAND Corporation" to evaluate its performance, saying that it was "very difficult" for official organizations and officials to give objective analysis and criticize their superiors.[7] This led the professor to establish a non-governmental group of experts in 2009, with Li as its honorary director.[7]

After the 18th CCP National Congress, he became an alternate member of the CCP Central Committee. On December 21, 2012, he became the acting governor of Zhejiang, succeeding Xia Baolong who was promoted to the provincial party secretary, and was officially elected as governor on January 30, 2013.[4][8] He served as governor until July 4, 2016.[9] During his tenure in Zhejiang, he asked the non-governmental group of experts to write reports on his performance that "tell the truth", and later paid them a visit for a face-to-face feedback after feeling their first reports weren't critical enough.[7]

In 2014, when Zhejiang was preparing to hold an international internet conference, Li proposed that the host city turn into a pilot zone for unblocking China's strict internet controls for Western firms, an idea that was ultimately not approved by the central leadership.[10] He also started a project to create small towns that have a pro-business climate and good physical environments, a project endorsed and spread to rest of China by Xi.[10] The Economist reported in 2023 that "many such towns became speculative hotspots for housing developers".[7]

In 2015, Li accompanied CCP leader Xi Jinping on a state visit to the United States. On June 30, 2016, Li was named party secretary of Jiangsu province.[11] He served for 15 months, becoming the shortest serving Jiangsu party secretary in the history of the People's Republic. During his tenure, he arranged meetings with business officials such as Jack Ma of Alibaba Group to encourage investments.[10]

On October 29, 2017, following the 19th Party Congress, Li was appointed as the party secretary of Shanghai.[6][12] He was also appointed as a member of the CCP Politburo in the same year. He is considered to be "business-friendly", having implemented pro-business policies while in Shanghai such as the opening of the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market.[13][14] He oversaw increasing foreign investment in the city, including the gigafactory of Tesla, Inc.[15] He has also implemented policies like lowering the threshold for internal migrants to obtain residency permits and creating five new towns to lessen the land supply shortage.[16]

In 2022, Li was blamed for a two-month lockdown in Shanghai, which significantly impacted the economy.[17] Nevertheless, reportedly he was more open to the idea with living with COVID.[10] There were also views that the Shanghai lockdown was pressurised by pressures from the Central government, and that initially, Li had adhered strictly to the guidelines of leading epidemiologists in China, including Dr Zhang Wenhong, who maintained a 'flexible strategy' on anti-Covid measures.[18][19] It is also said that Li and Zhang had a good personal relationship, as the two were both from Rui'an, a city under the Wenzhou prefecture. According to The Wall Street Journal, Li is one of the few people in the top leadership that wants China to introduce Western mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Reportedly, he tried to arrange for BioNTech to provide its vaccines in China.[10]

Despite his closeness to Xi, Li is seen as pro-business and supportive of economic reforms,[16][13][28] promoting private sector and service sector development.[29] According to The Economist, "[r]educing bureaucratic interference in the market is one of his favourite themes".[7] In 2003 during his tenure in Wenzhou, he said that "without the private economy, Wenzhou’s urban development would be set back by at least a century".[10] In 2014, Li said that "there should be more Alibabas and more Jack Mas". Li said in 2015 that economic reforms were a matter of "life and death" and that "the government cannot be an unlimited government." He also said that "to build a limited yet effective modern government, you need to transfer a lot of managerial power to social organizations."[28] According to The Wall Street Journal, Li has close ties with Jack Ma.[10] The newspaper also reported that Li suggested to the government to ease its regulatory actions against businesses and acted as a mediatory between businesses and the government during the government's crackdown on private businesses.[10] Li has also been supportive of innovation related to information technology and artificial intelligence, and has called for more focus for the "real economy".[29]