Parliament gives Premier Li second term

Beijing: China’s rubber-stamp parliament gave Premier Li Keqiang a second five-year term, but he faces a tenure deeper in the shadow of the country’s powerful leader Xi Jinping.

Li, 62, was re-appointed yesterday with 2,964 votes in favour and two against during the annual session of the National People’s Congress at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, one day after Xi was unanimously given a second term.

In another sign of Li’s diminishing stature in government affairs, Xi’s former anti-graft buster and trade negotiator, the economist Wang Qishan, was appointed vice-president on Saturday.

Xi has also turned to his top economic aide, Liu He, to deal with US trade frictions, dispatching him to Washington this month, though it has not stopped President Donald Trump from considering new punitive measures against China.

For his part, Xi now has a clear path to ruling the country indefinitely as the parliament voted last week to abolish the two five-year terms limit for the president.

Li “was sidelined from the premier’s traditional economic policy bailiwick early on in his tenure,” Jonathan Sullivan, director of the China Policy Institute at Nottingham University, said.

“The most influential figures around Xi are allies that he has manoeuvred into central positions,” Sullivan said, referring to Wang and other officials.

“That does not leave a lot of room for Li Keqiang to exert much influence, to the extent that his progressive marginalisation would not be a big surprise.”