BEIJING (Reuters) – A reformist member of China’s decision-making Politburo, Li Yuanchao, is set to become the country’s vice president this week instead of a more senior and conservative official best known for keeping the media in check, sources said.
Li’s appointment would be a sign that new Communist Party leader and incoming president Xi Jinping’s clout is growing, a source with ties to the leadership said. Xi fended off a bid by influential former president Jiang Zemin to install propaganda tsar Liu Yunshan in the job, the source said.
Jiang was a major power behind the scenes in the administration of outgoing President Hu Jintao.
The post of vice president is largely symbolic. However the job would raise Li’s profile, give him a role in foreign affairs and further bolster Xi, who took the top jobs in the party and military at the Communist Party congress in November.
The promotion of Li may also signal a willingness on the part of Xi to pursue limited reforms that Li is known to have advocated in his previous posts, such as making the selection of Communist officials more inclusive.
Leadership changes in China are thrashed out behind closed doors through horse-trading between new leaders and outgoing or retired leaders anxious to preserve their influence and protect family interests, but reshuffles must go through a choreographed selection process.
Two other sources, who declined to be identified because it is sensitive to discuss elite politics with foreign media, also confirmed that Xi had decided to make Li his vice president rather than Liu.
The National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, will vote in Xi and Li as president and vice president respectively on March 14. Li Keqiang, the party’s new number 2 official, will succeed Wen Jiabao to become premier and oversee the economy and day-to-day running of the cabinet.
“Li Yuanchao will be vice president, not Liu Yunshan,” the source with leadership ties said.
“It was Xi’s decision and a sign he is strong and able to say ‘no’ to Jiang,” the source told Reuters.
In November, Liu was promoted to the seven-man Politburo standing committee with responsibility for propaganda and ideology. He has also taken over two of Xi’s previous positions: president of the Central Party School, which grooms up-and-coming cadres, and top seat on the Secretariat of the party’s elite 205-member Central Committee.
