22-28 October 2023

Weekly newsletter tracking high-level policy signals sent by China’s top leaders. For more information, visit About Five Things.

Commentary

Li Keqiang’s death must have been one of the things on China’s leaders’ minds in recent days, though what thoughts they might be having is of course impossible to know.

We do know, however, what many other people have been thinking from the numerous comment and other articles that have filled the media in the last few days. Much of that has been about his having to operate in the shadow of Xi Jinping.

From our perspective, however, it is possible to see Li as a success in his own right. For us, what made him stand out as a leader were his achievements as a policy maker and implementer, starting when he was sent to run Henan province, first as governor and then as its party chief in the mid-1990s.

There, he upped the aid and public health measures for the many people in the province with HIV-AIDS, oversaw a switch to growing higher quality wheat that significantly boosted rural incomes and pushed reforms that helped raise the province from being near the bottom of China’s provincial GDP table to being in the middle third.

From Henan, he was transferred in 2004 to the rustbelt province of Liaoning in north-east China. There, closures of state-owned enterprises had led to millions of workers being laid off. Again, he found ways of nudging growth upwards, notably by pushing the development of a more mixed-ownership economy by restructuring many of its remaining SOEs into joint-stock companies.

Those shows of competence led him in 2007 being called back to Beijing to become a vice premier. In the five years before his elevation to premier, he worked across a wide range of policy areas, from development and finance to health care and the environment. He also worked with the World Bank, including giving his backing to its report prepared jointly with the State Council’s Development Research Centre, China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious and Creative High-Income Society, perhaps the most important blueprint for China’s future produced since 2000.

As Xi Jinping’s right-hand person from 2012 onwards, Li tackled air pollution – cleaning Beijing’s notoriously dirty atmosphere – and advanced reforms of the medical and health care system. Drawing on Taiwan’s experience, and a school of domestic healh economists trained in the West, Li bolstered China’s weak rural health care system, vastly increasing the insurance coverage in the countryside, and focused on improving community centres, long the missing part of China’s donut-shaped (strong at the bottom and the top) configuration of clinics and hospitals.

He also oversaw a gradual but continual liberalisation of the business environment, eliminating red tape for private Chinese companies and further opening various industries to foreign participation.

His achievements epitomised China’s approach to governance since its last radical shift, entering the WTO — his body of work focused on incremental change.

Now, his fingerprints remain across everything from the loosening of urban residency restrictions and China’s technology goals to its continuing health care reforms and efforts to attract more opening of manufacturing and the financial sector wider to foreign involvement.

Of course, more than two decades on since China opened its doors to greater involvement in the global economy, a different approach looks like it might be needed.

Yet for anyone who is interested in figuring out how China works, particularly in how changes and positive results can be realised, Li’s achievements and the way in which he brought them about are well worth studying.

Top-ranked articles for 22-28 October 2023
% = percentage of publications monitored carrying the article

1. 13th National Congress of Chinese Women opens in Beijing; Xi Jinping and other party and state leaders attend meeting, offer congratulations
中国妇女第十三次全国代表大会在京开幕 习近平等党和国家领导人到会祝贺Xinhua News Agency, 23 October 2023
Chinese / Machine translation / 46%

2. Xi Jinping emphasizes need to build strong sense of Chinese nation’s community and promote high-quality development of Party’s ethnic work in the new era at 9th CPC Central Committee Politburo ninth collective study session
习近平在中共中央政治局第九次集体学习时强调 铸牢中华民族共同体意识 推进新时代党的民族工作高质量发展Xinhua News Agency, 28 October 2023
Chinese / Machine translation / 42%

3. Flower of women blooms in new era: Record of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core leading the development of women’s causes
巾帼之花绽放新时代——以习近平同志为核心的党中央引领推动妇女事业发展纪实Xinhua News Agency, 25 October 2023
Chinese / Machine translation / 41%

4. In collective conversation with members of new leadership team of All-China Federation of Trade Unions, Xi Jinping emphasizes that the Party should adhere to the overall leadership of trade unions and organize and mobilize hundreds of millions of workers to actively participate in the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation
习近平在同中华全国总工会新一届领导班子成员集体谈话时强调 坚持党对工会的全面领导 组织动员亿万职工积极投身强国建设民族复兴伟业Xinhua News Agency, 23 October 2023
Chinese / Machine translation / 41%

5. (Authorized for release) Obituary notice for Comrade Li Keqiang from Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, National People’s Congress, and National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
（受权发布）中共中央 全国人大常委会 国务院 全国政协讣告 李克强同志逝世
Xinhua News Agency, 27 October 2023
Chinese / Machine translation / 39%

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