Astral Codex Ten

Li Keqiang

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Li Keqiang

Article

Li Keqiang is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 06, 2022 and April 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “The only non-engineer was Li Keqiang, an economist”; “Premier Li Keqiang, the official with the economics portfoilio, is the second most powerful person in China after Xi himself”; “unlike Li Keqiang who was clearly in the CYL faction”. It most often appears alongside Bo Xilai, CCP, Central Military Commission.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: April 06, 2022
  • Last seen: April 28, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping
April 06, 2022 · Original source
When Xi Jinping first joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2008, eight of its nine members were engineers. Paramount Leader Hu Jintao was a hydroelectric engineer. His second-in-command Wen Jiabao was a geological engineer. There were two electrical engineers, a petroleum engineer, a radio engineer, and two chemical engineers (including Xi himself). The only non-engineer was Li Keqiang, an economist.
For a while in the early 2010s, the leadership (including Xi?) wanted to stop propping up these failing public enterprises (the Chinese term is “zombie companies”), or at least make them profitable. We saw articles like Xi Jinping’s Ambitious Agenda For Economic Reform In China and China Unveils Biggest Reforms In Decades, Shows Xi In Command. This doesn’t seem to have happened. Some of it might be internal leadership fights, some might be officials fearing the consequences of laying off workers, but a lot seems to be ideological: Xi likes having all of the power, and the state owning lots of companies adds to that. Now article titles look more like Xi Dials Back China’s Economic Overhaul and China’s Faltering Performance On Economic Reform. Some analysts point out that Premier Li Keqiang, the official with the economics portfoilio, is the second most powerful person in China after Xi himself and the last relic of the old CYL faction - so some of the flip-flopping might be a shadow conflict between Xi and Li where both try to calculate whether having a good economy or a bad economy scores them more political points at any given moment.
Inline links: Xi Jinping’s Ambitious Agenda For Economic Reform In China, China Unveils Biggest Reforms In Decades, Shows Xi In Command, Xi Dials Back China’s Economic Overhaul, China’s Faltering Performance On Economic Reform, a shadow conflict between Xi and Li
Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping
April 28, 2022 · Original source
At the same time, the downfall of Bo Xilai was also a gradual process that took months, which publicized fissures within the party unseen for decades. In addition, Xi was well-liked and had a stellar reputation. He was not seen as a close associate of the Shanghai gang, unlike Li Keqiang who was clearly in the CYL faction.