Profile | Li Keqiang

On Dec 29, Li Keqiang talks with villagers in the Qingbao village of Longfeng township, Enshi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture, Central China's Hubei province. Huang Jingwen / Xinhua

On Jan 5, Li asks Zhou Yuehua (left), a rural doctor from a village in Chongqing, to go before him after his meeting with Zhou and 17 other model rural doctors in Beijing. Yao Dawei / Xinhua

On Dec 12, Li meets with foreign guests attending the 2012 Annual General Meeting of China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development in Beijing. Wang Ye / Xinhua

Leader gets credit for streamlining the Cabinet

Li Keqiang, 57, was appointed Chinese premier on Friday. He takes on the role at a time when China is the world's second-largest economy. He is the first premier born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and holds dual academic degrees in economics and law.

During his five-year tenure as vice-premier, Li was widely acclaimed for his acumen and determination in facing challenges, and his professionalism. He made remarkable achievements in overcoming difficulties, and he sought to accelerate the economy, improve people's livelihoods and deepen reforms.

Three decades of rapid development have made China a middle-income country. However, the nation is still on a difficult journey with many obstacles ahead. Building a moderately prosperous society by 2020 in a country with a population of over 1.3 billion will be an epic and historic task.

Upon his appointment as premier, Li bowed deeply and smiled as he received the applause of some 2,900 legislators in the Great Hall of the People, underscoring his sense of duty as the premier of a big country and conveying the wisdom and strong-mindedness of a mature statesman.

Reform

Market-oriented reform has long been on Li's political agenda. During his investigative tour to Baotou of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in February, Li stressed "the hand of the market, the government and the people should join together" to unleash the power of the reform.

Li chaired a seminar on reform six days after the conclusion of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November.

At the seminar, Li put forward the "reform as dividends" theory. "Reform at present has entered deep water and has to sail in a head wind. We may avoid mistakes if we make no endeavor, but we must bear a historical responsibility," he said.

As China's national strength continues to build, the endeavor to face up to conflicts and difficulties ahead and advance reform reflects an ingrained awareness in the Chinese people of being prepared for potential dangers and the CPC's sense of mission.

Administrative reform became a top priority after the 18th CPC National Congress. The second plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in February endorsed a plan for the institutional reform and functional transformation of the State Council, which was adopted by the National People's Congress on Thursday. It was Li who led the drafting team.

Li insisted on cutting cabinet departments down to 25 to be more efficient. This round of cabinet restructuring is the seventh to take place in China since the country's reform and opening-up in the late 1970s. Like any reform, this round represents a difficult challenge.

A commentary published in Nouvelles d'Europe, a Chinese-language newspaper in Europe, said China's institutional restructuring will advance step by step, adding that it is high time for China's new leaders to translate their political courage and intellect into political decision-making.

In mapping out the plan, Li said administrative reform is not merely a reduction in the size of the cabinet, but a reform that prioritizes the transformation of functions. He called for decentralizing power over the market, society and local authorities by decreasing government intervention. Functional transformation is integrated with institutional restructuring in his proposal.

Led by Li, the drafting team carried out field research in multiple sectors, provinces and enterprises. Li presided over seminars to seek expert opinions that could aid in resolving difficult problems.

As vice-premier, Li knew well how difficult coordination could become when multiple departments took charge of the same task. Food safety was supervised by a dozen regulatory bodies, which often led to different regulators passing the buck in terms of doing their duty. Marine surveillance forces were spread among five departments, making them too divided to work together.

Li has strongly advocated change to tackle persistent problems in the railway sector, which operated both as administrative agencies and enterprises. He also demanded the integration of departments in food safety and marine sectors with duplicate functions.

He has also pushed to reduce and decentralize government approvals for investment and businesses, and cut market access examinations and administrative charges. Because many entrepreneurs complain business registry procedures are too complicated, Li helped change the system by granting licenses more freely. Entrepreneurs are now allowed to register their companies by agreeing upon registered capital, instead of actual contributions.

While reviewing a price reform plan for coal and electricity, Li approved of its market orientation but believed that it was too characteristic of a planned economy. "Given that all coal is sold at market price, why are there still restrictions on quantity and price? The contracts between enterprises brook no checks from the government. The contract law shall solely apply," he once said.

The plan had to be further revised for adoption. Now the revised version has been implemented, lending a strong push for coal and electricity reform.

Transformation

The 18th CPC National Congress urged the synchronized development of industrialization, IT application, urbanization and agricultural modernization. During his inspection of the State Grain Administration on Jan 15, Li summarized these "four modernizations," as being similar to the "four modernizations" of agriculture, industry, national defense and science and technology China put forward in the 1950s. New modes of modernization are expected to help China develop through transformation.

Li believes the deep integration of industrialization and IT applications is the orientation and impetus of industrial upgrades. He has noted that the integration of IT and power-generating technology in developed countries can significantly boost the utilization of renewable energy generation by being open to small companies and families.

Because it is difficult to integrate wind and solar power into the grid, Li has called for studying the energy development of foreign countries and opening the grid to small-scale distributed power generation by utilizing information technology. China's National Grid has since been connected to several small solar power generators operated by small companies and families.

He considers urbanization to be the biggest source of development in the coming decades.

Li's doctoral thesis at Peking University, On the Ternary Structure of China's Economy, won the Sun Yefang Economics Prize, the highest honor in Chinese economic circles. It reflected his thorough understanding of both global trends and China's reality. Through deliberation and practice over more than 20 years, Li has nurtured strategic theories of new urbanization.

He believes that China's urbanization should be conducted using advanced concepts and managerial expertise from abroad. He was deeply impressed by the urban layout of European cities, as well as their living environment and public services, during visits in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2012, when he was preparing to visit Europe as vice-premier, he proposed holding a high-level China-Europe forum on urbanization. One month later, almost 600 experts, businessmen and officials from China and Europe gathered in Brussels to discuss sustainable city planning and infrastructure building. The forum became a new platform for strategic and practical cooperation between China and Europe.

Li has been pondering how to achieve a unification of scientific development and cultural progress in the process of urbanization. He has repeatedly stressed that urbanization should be a people-first initiative ambition that will eventually enrich rural residents and benefit the entire population. A key issue is to help more than 200 million farmers-turned-migrant-workers gradually adapt to urban life.

During his tour to an economic development zone in Jiujiang city of Jiangxi province in December, Li went to the homes of migrant workers and listened to their views on employment, income, housing, social security and education for their offspring. He later urged local officials to help the workers resolve these problems.

When Li served as governor of Henan province, he tried to seek a coordinated development of industrialization, urbanization and agricultural modernization. Thanks to these efforts, the inland province's economy ranked fifth among Chinese provincial-level regions.

Henan has also emerged as an industrial powerhouse, while its grain output surpassed 55 million metric tons last year. When attending a panel discussion with NPC deputies from Henan, Li called on the province to further pursue industrialization, IT application, urbanization and agricultural modernization.

Li Keqiang has paid close attention to the development of the service industry, employment and low-income subsidized housing. Over the past five years, China has started the construction or renovation of 30 million units of affordable housing. Seventeen million units have been completed, improving housing conditions for millions of people.

Li has called for closing not only the gap between urban and rural areas, but the gap between different districts within cities. More than 12 million dilapidated urban homes were renovated over the last five years. In February, Li called for a second round of slum renovation.

In the coming five years, another 10 million urban households can expect to bid farewell to slums. Nearly 100 million people will benefit from the two rounds of renovation.

People's well-being

Li spent some of his younger years living and working in the countryside, where he held a job as CPC chief of a production brigade. He came to be acquainted with the hardship and bitterness of rural life and developed a strong devotion to the people. Since assuming office in the State Council, he has conducted frequent in-depth field surveys in his quest to find solutions to improving people's livelihood.

Understanding the truth through research has long been Li's work style. His inspection tours were always low-key and he has maintained this approach since entering the central government.

Li is adept at examining small clues to find what is coming and seeking proper ways to resolve systemic problems.

On a snowy day in December, Li arrived in Qingbao village in Longfeng township in Hubei province, which he visited five years ago. Gathering villagers to his side, Li listened to their complaints and recorded them in his notebook.

Upon departing, he spotted a cornfield on a steep slope on the roadside. Climbing up the muddy slope, he grabbed a handful of soil.

"That's exactly the farmers' way, just like what we farmers do when checking our land," recalled villager Yang Fang.

Villagers cited access difficulties, stressful management and poor harvests as their biggest problems in cultivating the sloping fields. After discussing the matter with villagers, Li suggested turning the cultivated land into economic forests, relocating villagers to towns, and adjusting the local industrial structure. His proposal has been put on the State Council's agenda and a national work conference was held in Longfeng in March.

Li's profound understanding of agriculture impressed a villager, who recalled that when Li came to the paddy field, he instantly bent over to check how the rice grew and discussed with the villager how to increase the harvest and farmers' income.

Prior to this year's Spring Festival holiday, Li made an unplanned visit to the house of Gao Junping, a resident of a run-down area in north China's Baotou city. Surprised by the new visitor, Gao's grandson, who had been taking an afternoon nap, fled into a bedside closet half-naked.

As Li chatted with Gao on the bed, the young boy darted out and ducked under a quilt, exposing his buttocks to the camera. The unedited footage broadcast by China Central Television made a splash online, with netizens applauding Li's down-to-earth work style and the "cute and spontaneous" images.

Li later held a meeting with the shantytown's neighborhood committee. He remarked that China should not "build high-rises on the one side and keep slums on the other side" in the process of urbanization. He called for greater efforts to renovate the city's dilapidated areas and provide better houses for its residents. "This is an overarching issue concerning people's livelihoods that should be pushed ahead against all odds," he said.

During an inspection tour of Fenghuang county in Hunan province two years ago, Li was told a local girl named Long Guiju was too poor to go to college. Li said he hoped the local government could lend a hand, and he urged a thorough resolution of education-related difficulties. "We cannot only fulfill her own dream of going to college. Such problems should be discovered and resolved in an overall manner," he said.

During this year's NPC annual session, Li again raised the matter of access to university education when attending a panel discussion with NPC deputies from Hunan. He was told eight poor students received financial aid along with Long Guiju.

Li believes that as people's living standards rise, so does their demand for quality of life. He has attached great importance to promoting environmental protection, especially when it involves a threat to public health.

Responding to mounting complaints over worsening air pollution in some cities, Li called for the monitoring and release of PM2.5 (airborne fine particles measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter) data to be conducted nationwide at a conference on environmental protection held in December. As a result, China has adopted stricter air quality standards, and PM2.5 monitoring is now conducted in 113 cities.

Li brings modern managerial expertise when analyzing China's actual condition. He said the government should prioritize basic needs when providing social services, as well as build an all-inclusive security network.

Problem solver

To sidestep difficulties is not Li's style. He always tries to resolve conflicts with resolution, far-sightedness and systematic knowledge. Overseas media have deemed Li a master at resolving complicated difficulties.

Li said that in China's modernization drive, "we must have the resolution and confidence similar to scaling high peaks and also the courage, wisdom and perseverance similar to walking a tightrope."

Having nurtured a global vision, Li always views China's development against the background of international trends and pays attention to interregional development.

During a visit in December to Jiujiang, a port city along the Yangtze River in Jiangxi province, Li said that although coastal regions are important to the overall economy, the central inland regions also play a crucial role.

The central regions must be fully developed to further open up the broader western regions, and bridge the gaps between the country's urban and rural areas as well as between the eastern and western regions, Li said.

After leaving his post at the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China in 1998, Li became head of Henan province, followed by a post as head of Liaoning province. The two provinces' problems were typical of modern China. The agricultural province of Henan was struggling to modernize its agriculture and push ahead with urbanization, while industrial Liaoning was facing painful transformation of its outdated economic structure.

Li proposed a comprehensive approach to develop Henan. He put forward a raft of policies, including building a "national granary," mapping out the province's industrial layout and building a city cluster in central China. He consolidated Henan's agricultural strength while pushing it to become an industrial center and a new growth engine in central China.

As CPC chief of Liaoning, he confronted an economy burdened with poorly operated State-owned enterprises and an industry that had failed to open up, despite the province's vast coastline. Li encouraged the province to turn toward the sea and develop a coastal economic belt.

His efforts helped connect the inland areas of Liaoning to the sea and boosted urban integration in the cities of Shenyang and Fushun. Today, the development of Liaoning's coastal economic zone is a national economic strategy. Li also helped resolve the social security problems of millions of workers and promote the transformation of resource exhausted cities.

When serving as vice-premier of the State Council, Li was tasked with overseeing the country's healthcare system reform, a challenge for policymakers around the world. The reform has been progressing with the goal of providing a basic medical system as a public service to all.

"Reform is 'the biggest dividend' for China, and the dividend shall benefit the country's 1.3 billion people," Li said. China now boasts the largest medical insurance network in the world after its coverage was expanded from 30 percent to 95 percent within three years.

With an inquiring mind, Premier Li will never stop until he gets to the bottom of every question relating to his work, according to Li's aides. At a conference in late November to discuss the reform plan, Li asked speakers to get straight to problems and suggestions. Many new concepts he mentioned, such as "the third transformation of energy use," have interested ordinary people so much that some have read books to better understand what he was talking about.

As a problem solver, Li has been known to readily accept good advice. During a fact-finding tour to Enshi, Hubei province, Li encouraged grassroots officials to speak frankly. At a panel discussion with NPC deputies from Hunan, Li's speech was interrupted by a deputy who was eager to give his opinion. Li patiently listened to him while taking notes, demonstrating his respect of a deputy's right to express himself.

Li is known for his love of reading, a habit he has nurtured since adolescence. His favorite books include literary and historical classics written in both Chinese and English. Li has a profound knowledge of law and economics and he is also an eloquent English speaker.

Li is married to Cheng Hong, an English professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing. Cheng graduated from college in 1982 and met Li while studying at Peking University. The couple have one daughter.

(China Daily 03/18/2013 page6)