Reports of rift between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Chinese premier Li Keqiang were heard after the latter urged government officials in a rare meeting to take steps to boost the economy.
Trey McArver, co-founder of research firm Trivium China, told news agency Bloomberg News that Li showed ‘palpable’ frustration at the slowness of local authorities to implement stimulus measures passed in recent months.
Li’s sudden meeting with officials from nearly all government departments including propaganda, environment and utilities and also cadres from the bottom-level of China’s Communist Party shows that he is trying to build consensus on urgent revival of the economy.
Li’s hurdle is his boss, president Xi Jinping, for whom Zero Covid is the primary objective ahead of his expected win ushering him towards a landmark third term following a rubber-stamp election which will be held during a twice-a-decade Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership conclave later this year.
Following the meeting, eight senior local government officials and financial bureaucrats, speaking to news agency Bloomberg, said that officials are caught in a dilemma, as they are unable to decide who to follow.
Thousands of cadres and officials listened to Li who warned that an even worse economic crisis than the one in 2020 is looming and urged them to focus on economic growth.
He urged them to see that China avoids a contraction in the second quarter.
However, there is little chance that officials will listen to Li, as Xi presses them to push for zero Covid-19 cases. This shows that Chinese bureaucrats and local level workers are unsure who to listen to.
Officials mentioned above told Bloomberg that if the professional growth were to be taken into account, then most officials and cadres would focus on containing Covid.
They told the news agency that a cadre’s hard work means ‘nothing if they fail to contain an outbreak’. They said that there are plaudits for kicking off economic projects but it is not equal to plaudits earned for controlling the outbreak.
The dilemma has caused a policy paralysis as the benchmark CSI 300 Index remained flat after falling as much as 1.1% on Wednesday.
Li is put between a rock and a hard place as Xi wants to root out Covid and also ensure Chinese economic growth – which faces the major hindrance thanks to Xi’s insistence on Covid Zero.
(with inputs from Bloomberg)
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