Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang has been elected for a second term in office to steer some of the major structural reforms in government and the Communist Party of China (CPC) that are being marshaled by President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Li was elected as Prime Minister by the carefully handpicked members of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament. He received 2,964 votes in favour and two against.
“Newly-elected Chinese President Xi Jinping signed his first presidential decree to appoint Li Keqiang as premier Sunday morning during the ongoing session of China's national legislature,” state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The lawmakers also approved the appointment of Xu Qiliang and Zhang Youxia as vice chairmen of the apex Central Military Commission (CMC), which imparts strategic direction to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Their postings are part of a major revamp of the PLA, some of whose top leaders had been imprisoned or sacked, falling to Mr. Xi’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign.
President Xi, who took the oath of allegiance to the Constitution for his second term on Saturday, heads the CMC. He is also the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) — the core of China’s party-state.
Significantly, the parliamentarians voted for Yang Xiaodu’s as the head of the newly constituted anti-graft National Supervisory Commission (NSC).
The NSC centralises, and will spearhead, the anti-corruption campaign, armed with enormous powers, which will cover the CPC, the state owned and private enterprises, as well as other organs of the state machinery at all levels across the country.
It merges the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and a raft of other smaller government anti-graft agencies. The new body has been assigned a higher status than the Supreme Court.
Some analysts say that the NSC likely to perform a role, which goes beyond anti-corruption. That includes monitoring whether orders issued by Beijing have been followed. In an editorial written earlier this year, Xinhua pointed out that there would zero tolerance towards “corruption by inaction”.
Mr. Yang, who belongs to Shanghai, worked in Tibet for 25 years before heading back home. He was apparently noticed by Mr. Xi, when he became the Party’s provincial head in Shanghai in 2007.
In the judiciary, Zhou Qiang was re-elected on Sunday as president of the Supreme People’s Court.
